Cover story: Harbour home is a sight to ‘sea’

Monkstown, Cork, €625,000

WOULD you buy a family home, sight unseen? The woman selling No 2, Gordon Villas did. Twice.

When the Irish-American woman and her family bought No 2 in 2005, her husband was working on the Continent, and they were based in the north of England, They scouted locations in Ireland, and when this harbour home came along, only her Tipperary-born husband viewed it. Only after it was bought did the woman of the family, a native of Pennsylvania in the US and with two small children, get to see it, move over and move in.