Starter home: Pasage West, Cork, €220,000/230,000

Sq m 128 (1,375 sq ft)

There’s a choice of these lofty Pembroke Woods homes right now for sale, with just €10,000 in price difference between them, and two selling agents to boot, so you pays your money, and you takes your choice.

Dearer of the duo at €230,000 is 14 Pembroke Heights, a three-storey detached home with top floor master en suite, bright main living space 25’ deep and just over 10’ wide.

The best feature is the landscaped grounds– they’re still full of colourful planting with a choice of outside seating spaces too.

Selling agents for No 14 are Paul O’Shea and Ann O’Mahony of Sherry FiitzGerald, and they say there’s space to the side, and back, for an extension now or at a future date.

Overall current condition is immaculate, they add. The houses, to a curious design and built by Barry Supple with Manor Park Homes, are tall and more typical of builds on narrow sites and where land is at a premium, but here, the sites are grand and wide, and could have taken more traditional, broader homes.

Also in the same estate, agent Cian O’Donoghue of DNG Creedon has the very similar and accommodating No 12 Hillcrest for sale, seeking offers of €220,000, and it too has above-standard gardens, densely planted to the back.

In addition, there’s already planning granted at this Hillcrest home for an extension, with five years to run on the permission.

No 12 Hillcrest is in excellent order, within a walk of Passage’s amenities and the riverside walks, adds Mr O’Donoghue.

VERDICT: Good-sized homes as they stand.