House of the week: Model Farm Road, Cork €635,000

Size: 264 (2,850 sq ft)

The widely-travelled vendor selling Sancta Maria was off in congested Hong Kong on business years ago: what with its high-rises and huge population, he quickly realised that built-up, congested city living wasn’t for him, or for his brood - and that awareness informed his decision to buy this place as a family home.

“It’s got the best of both worlds, it’s out in the country, but it’s only a few minutes from the city. You can see the County Hall, Elysian tower and St FinBarre’s Cathedral from the back, but the boundary’s a farmer’s field, and there’s a bus route on the doorstep,” he reasons.

Now, with family reared, the twice-extended home is back up for sale, ready to reprise the same role for new occupants. Given its location, and proximity and ease of access to hospitals such as the CUH, Bons, MUH and now the new Marymount, it’s a strong probability that medics on the housing move will be in the mix during viewings, and bidding, and sale shake-out.

If that’s the case, it will be continuing a bit of a tradition: when first built back in the late 1960s or early 1970s, it was home to Ballincollig’s busiest GP, and the Crotty clan. It changed hands once, and once more, to the current owners (who ended up educating a medic) — so there’s a bit of prescription process going on here.

Sancta Maria is new to market with estate agent Norma Healy of Sherry FitzGerald, who guides at €635,000. She’s confident of it selling well, given a location and setting just off the Model Farm Road near Nangles Nurseries, its 2,850 sq ft with adaptable, family-friendly spaces, a site size of one-third of an acre, and sheer, easy accessibility.

Two of its four double bedrooms have en suites and walk-in robes/dressing rooms, and one is reached via a nursery or study. Downstairs main rooms are big and bright, one has a huge bay window looking over a stubble field where foxes roam, and each side of the house is now flanked with home-office wings or extensions, also suitable for granny-flat extensions with WCs, and “I’ve sold houses with smaller kitchens than the size of the utility room here,” adds Ms Healy.

Quality finishes include things like some solid maple and other hardwood floors, plus a robust, hand-crafted and detailed solid ash kitchen, with wood-burning stove in one of the reception rooms, but as it gets set to leave owners’ hands it is a house that will need some updating.

Another generation of owners will look at things like decor and more modern colours and so on, but there’s nothing too urgent that will break the budget.

Auctioneer Norma Healy says recent sales in the area include houses in developments like Hayfield, for c €580,000, and in Greenfields, close to €550,000. Some of the Model Farm Road’s best houses have gone far higher (a site with derelict cottage recently made around €300k), such is the area’s appeal and Sancta Maria will carry its price given its one-off status, on a great private site, she predicts, lining up open viewings for next weekend.

The wide, two-storey house is set off by a front first floor balcony reached from the landing (but the best views are to the back, miles long to the city and fringing hills) and the c one-third acre gardens have been recently re-stocked, with dozens of rose bushes, while a mature spreading silver birch in the front lawn is a beauty: you can tell the occupants have been good customers across the road at Nangles Nurseries.

VERDICT: Chances to buy comparable homes here in the western suburbs are few, and far between.