House of the week: Monkstown/Carrigaline €475,000

Size: Sq m 278 (2,985 sq ft)

SUMMER is coming, in fits and starts, and so is Wimbledon on the telly, and sailing on the high seas. Set to capitalise on all this great outdoor activity is this large family home near Cork harbour, at Raffeen Bridge, Monkstown.

Set just a bit inland from the estuarine tail-end of Raffeen creek on the north-western fringe of Cork harbour, the five-bed home is just shy of 3,000 sq ft, is on grounds of an acre, and has its own hard surface tennis court to boot. There are activities galore in the hinterland, including horse-riding stables nearby; throw in the proximity to Monkstown, Carrigaline and with Cork’s suburbs a 10-15 minute spin away, this is a buy for active families seeking space, says estate agent Jeremy Murphy.

Rafeen Bridge is a new listing on Mr Murphy’s books and he just started the first of a dozen booked viewings this week; he reckons it will have a very wide appeal for families trading up, and the €475,000 asking price isn’t going to deter too many given the amount of property on offer, in a convenient location.

Built around the late 1990s, it’s a detached two-storey home with good attic rooms all done out and with good access to the top floor too. In addition, there’s an adjoining granny flat which is integrated into the house, so it can be re-colonised by family, left to older teenagers, used for home offices, and is pitch-perfect for a family needing quarters for an au pair, or with visiting guests. It all adds well to this house’s adaptability.

The vendors are now trading down, have local roots and have worked on their acre assiduously down the years, but have enjoyed it too; witness the fenced-off tennis court towards the back of the site. Gardens are well-landscaped and shrubbed, tiered to the back with raised beds and with bifurcated stone steps up to the back lawns and to a timber shed.

It’s tall in front, with side wing to the right, and has lots of easy parking and turning space in front, so for older families who might have offspring driving, there won’t be too many requests to move one car to allow another out: that’s one benefit of space.

This is a five-bedroomed home, with two of those five beds en suite with showers, and for those watching water use and incipient water-use metering, the main bathroom has a shower also, in lieu of a bath. Similarly, the granny flat (used right now as a gym and office) also has a shower, bringing this house’s WC tally to five in all, including guest washroom. The BER rating is a decent C3.

In terms of day space, there’s a living room with cast iron fireplace, with French doors to a tiled rear sun room with tiled floor, family room with second fireplace, kitchen/dining room with tiled floor and ash units, plus patio door to the rear patio. Then, there’s a utility, guest loo, and internal as well as external access to the two-roomed granny flat section.

The location is going to suit a family looking to trade up in and around Carrigaline and the harbour area, with its burgeoning employment bases at Ringaskiddy, and Douglas is a relatively short drive also. Back last summer, Jeremy Murphy put the 2,400 sq ft home Saddlefield on a half acre at Maryborough Hill (between Douglas and the Carrigaline Road) for sale guiding €379,000. It had almost 80 viewings, and sold well into the mid-€400,000s. Now, with even more activity in the market (and even though this Raffeen Bridge pad is further out of town) he can well expect to see some familiar faces back looking at this new offer.

VERDICT: All the room in the world for a growing family. Tennis, anyone?