Starter home: Lissacaha, Schull, €140,000

Traditional farmhouse on three acres comes with barn and old stone buildings but needs upgrades and money spent, says Tommy Barker.

Sq m 99 (1,067 sq ft)

Bedrooms: 3

Bathrooms: 1

BER: F

Lots of doing-up scope comes with the intriguingly-titled Prairie Cottage, a couple of miles inland of Schull and Goleen, in the wilds of West Cork.

It’s priced at €140,000 because it’s not directly on the region’s much-vaunted coastal strip, now also part of the Wild Atlantic Way, as it wends that route wends its way out towards the dramatic Mizen Head. Also, it needs work.

It’s newly listed with Micheal Duggan of Sherry FitzGerald O’Neill, but also has been listed with Charles McCarthy who dropped the asking price to €140k.

It’s likely to be put under the noses of UK-based home hunters at this month’s Sherry FitzGerald London Property Fair.

Handily, and beguilingly for lifestyle relocaters, it’s about five miles west of Schull, near Dunmanus and Toormore bays, which are on opposite sides of the Mizen Peninsula, and Ballyrissode beach is also reasonably close.

The land includes some pasture, and old pine trees, and there’s some very pretty (but pretty run-down too) white-washed lofted outbuildings with studio/workspace potential.

Two-storey Prairie Cottage is 100 years old, and while some modernising work has been addressed, this traditional style farmhouse needs a good bit more attention. Rooms include three upstairs bedrooms, two ground floor living rooms, kitchen, bathroom and dining room.

VERDICT: There’s charm to be unlocked here.