Astra build on tradition

There have been 12 planning permissions and alterations to grants of planning at the Forest Hill development — one of a select, very small handful of new home sites that have managed to stay open, building and selling, during the downturn.

“It’s about listening to the customer, to the buyer, and to the market,” says long-established builder Stephen McCarthy of Astra Construction, who reckons he’s on course to sell about 30 new houses this year. “And it’s quite an indictment of the collapse in the industry that at that relatively low level of building, we’re still one of the busiest sites anywhere in the country,” he admits ruefully.

Astra’s Forest Hill scheme, on the southern fringes of Carrigaline, is getting buyers from all over the greater Cork area, he reckons, driven mostly by first time buyers, who are frustrated by lack of supply of new homes, (Ruden and Astra are Cork’s most dogged survivors, able to offer fresh stock to today’s building standards). And, while Astra have three-bedroomed B1 rated 1,120 sq ft homes for €195,000, Mr McCarthy says some of the buyers of his detached four and five-beds (1,950 to 2,150 sq ft) homes at €335,000/340,000, are first time buyers also, just in very good jobs.