House of the week: Douglas Road, Cork €675,000

Size: Sq m 232 (2,500 sq ft)

There’s been a buzz of buying activity around the top of Rosebank Estate on Cork’s Douglas Road in the past six months — now, here’s another market entry to tap into pent-up demand in the city market’s upper echelons.

Called The Elms, this detached family home’s a villa-style bungalow on a half acre of grounds, backing right onto the main Douglas Road at the junction with Rosebank. In its earlier guise, it had close to an acre, with an orchard to the south, but this half was sold off to builders Lanes in the mid 1970s, who built ten townhouses on it in a popular scheme called Elm Close.

Now, the Daddy of them, the original 2,500 sq ft villa’s come for sale, listed with a €675,000 asking price via Catherine McAuliffe and Clare O’Sullivan of Savills. It’s in very clean and well-kept order for its early 1900s vintage, and they say it’s a walk-in job, with gas central heating, and double glazing.

However, while the main rooms are a good size, and bright with a south-west aspect to the front, The Elms seems like a house where a bit of reordering, or a smart extension interlinking between wings, could make a huge difference.

It’s unusual too in that it really only has three bedrooms in its current layout, but two of those rooms have smaller linked rooms that could be made into en suites, dressing rooms or a nursery; families with young children mightn’t mind having a fourth bedroom reached via an existing one, in the short to medium term.

It has good extension potential as well to the back, and to either side, with sun-trap patios at different ends of the day, so it can be viewed as a purchase with future, imaginative options.

The €600k mark has been passed in several recent sales in the immediate hinterland: Directly across the top of Rosebank, these Savills agents got €675,000 for a 1920s 3,300 sq ft home called the Kedges. On a half acre too, the Kedges went for sale March 2012, guiding €720,000 and made €675,000. A bungalow built in the 1980s as a trading down move in part of the Kedges’ gardens, called Ainrush, made €602,000 last year. And, a large, c 2,300 sq ft Edwardian semi-d on very deep gardens on the Douglas Road called Belmont soared past its €475,00 AMV with Clare O’Sullivan of Savills to sell for €620,000, yet needs lots of modernisation.

Dearth of good trading up stock and a strong location, underpin Savills’ €675,000 guide now to The Elms; they can expect to see lots of familiar faces coming to view this option.

Best room is a 22’ by 16 drawing room, with five windows in a generous, central bay, and all ceiling heights are good, over 10’.

Across the inner hall is a 16’ by 14’ family room, linked to a front dining room, a strange shape at 14’ by 8’ and open to the family room thanks to two old, retractable sliding doors: new owners will most likely leave it integrated to the back room, and each has a fireplace.

There’s a quite modern kitchen, with black granite worktops, and across the hall is a big utility, with a back room with a cast iron bathroom.

Bedrooms are off to the far side of the hall, past a guest WC and main bathroom with large shower and a superb, and quite unusual, rounded enamel bath that looks like it was sculpted from white marble, or ice.

One of the three bedrooms is up a half level, in a lofty rear wing that looks like it might have been a former coachhouse, and the back yard has a number of old lean-to shed, plus there’s a double garage. Moving The Elms’s entrance further down the grounds from the junction would work wonders too for privacy.

VERDICT: Good as it stands, but huge scope.