Half the garden, ‘half’ the price in Douglas, Cork

Glencorran, in Douglas, is now marked way down in, as it’s back, on a smaller site, says Tommy Barker.

Douglas, Cork €545,000

SQ M 220 (2,380 sq ft)

Bedrooms: 4

Bathrooms: 2

BER: E2

Best Feature: Now more affordable, as on a reduced site

WHAT a difference a re-pricing can have. This detached, Douglas suburban Cork home initially went for sale back in August of 2014, for €925,000, with a lovely, leafy and greened-in suburban garden site of one-third of an acre.

Now, it’s back, on half that size of ground, and its price is/was adjusted accordingly to ‘just’ €545,000. But, be warned, it’s already had offers up to €575,000 this week in immediate, above the asking price bidding, as it now appeals to a far wider buying cohort in a still-strong and under-provided trading-up market.

The air’s thin above the €750,000 mark, thinner still above €900,000, but at the €500/600,000 mark there are lots of potential bidders, and a severely unsated demand for those who’ve been sitting it out, waiting for the market to bottom out.

Now that it is a very different proposition, Glencorran already has the ‘wind in its sales’: it was listed this month with Sheila O’Flynn, of Sherry FitzGerald who says “it’s a Triple A location”. She has three bidders push it up by €30k, to €575k, by Thursday.

A portion of this house’s large garden is now being kept back by the house’s owners/vendors: after they went searching for a replacement, to down-size to, they realised they didn’t really want to leave the setting where they’d spent the last 20 years.

Instead, they have decided to do what a number of other Hettyfield home-owners have done in the last decade: build a new home in a section of their gardens.

They’ve engaged architects Collins Brennan Associates, with drawings now going forward shortly after pre-planning consultations, for permission for a detached, two-storey, traditional-styled ‘new kid on the block.’

Those plans will be shown to anyone who is considering buying 75-year-old Glencorran, and they show a sensitivity to the placement of windows. This is to avoid overlooking and to ensure no loss of privacy — for either party.

And, to further assuage any concerns of the future new occupants of the 1939-built Glencorran, the vendors have just erected a tall fence to outline exactly how much garden will be left (pic below).

Already, architects Collins Brennan Associates have done sun/shadow modelling studies to show that even though the new build will be to the south (and with a different entrance, around a corner within Hettyfield), neither will interfere with the other’s light, so there’s no fear of, eh, buying in the dark.

Inside, four-bedroomed Glencorran is as lovely coming into spring as it was back in August, when it filled four pages here as a cover story. It was then ivy-covered and priced at €925,000.

It’s got just under 2,400 sq ft in all, with a gable-end, sunroom-like bay window in the drawing room, thus getting sun from east, north and south aspects, and that great bay faces a white Carrara marble fireplace with antique brass insert.

Other than that projecting bay window, Glencorran was never really enlarged, even during child-rearing years, but even with reduced gardens, there’s still extension/reordering scope on the house’s western end, where there’s a sheltered courtyard next to a detached garage.

Floor-plan/layout is bang-on for aspect, with drawing room, dining room, and kitchen/breakfast room all with large, south-facing windows.

With antique fireplace, French doors to a garden terrace and some decking, the middle room’s currently used as a dining room. Most likely, any new occupants will make a different use of it, as a family/TV room.

What was done in the past two decades was extremely sensitive to the house’s original character, with more than a hint of Arts-and-Crafts style.

It’s stylish, pleasing to the eye and has kept things like the kitchen’s original terrazzo flooring, plus a simmering old Aga, which came with the house back when the vendors bought it.

The hall floor is old maple, with wrought-iron balusters — decoratively under-wrought — on the stairs, with plantation shutters on the wide back window, and three of the four bedrooms have south-facing windows, while the main bathroom’s muted in shades of French grey, with cast-iron roll-top bath, plus separate showers.

There are no en-suites, and there’s also a ground-floor guest WC, with original, sanitary ware.

Back downstairs, in the heart of this tastily-presented home, kitchen units are above the norm, in spalted timbers, made by Home Grown Kitchens, and there are French doors to the side courtyard, side access gate and garage, which has been upgraded and used as a music room.

VERDICT: The Hettyfield estate, just off the Well Road, is already home to several new-builds and majorly upgraded 1900s homes - take an evening stroll around the blocks - , and Glencorran’s vendors are following a neighbourly trend of harvesting sites from their gardens.