A beginning of the end?

A house building site of 1.8 acres, with full planning for 15 new homes and with 12 of them started, is for sale on behalf of a receiver, guiding at €875,000

It forms the last corner of the Murphy Construction company’s Fernwood scheme, and will finish out the entire development of 240 units when the last 15 homes are built and occupied. The asking price equates to under €60,000 per unit, via selling agents Cahalane Skuse.

Fernwood was launched in June 2005 as Glanmire soaked up swathes of metropolitan Cork’s housing demand, and had planning for 240 units in all, across a range of house types. The development, one of the more popular in Glanmire, includes 30 apartments, a creche and a mix of semis and detacheds. Location is at Glynntown, up above the satellite village/community and on the city side of the M8 near the M8 sliproads.

At the time of the launch, 1,100 sq ft three bed semis were priced at €290,000, four-bed semis were €340,000, and 1,450 sq ft four-bed detacheds were €400,000. Last year several smaller semis sold for €150,000 to €175,000. Currently a four-bed detached is for sale, seeking €375,000.

The land is being sold via agent Niall Cahalane of Cahalane Skuse, for joint receivers Kieran Wallace and David Swinburne, KPMG, and there’ll be good interest for this offer, reckons Mr Cahalane. He says there’s already inquiries from a range of builders, given the appetite for new house stock in the market place and the well-reported shortage of available new-builds to meet demand.

He estimates new three-bed semis here would sell for about €250,000, four-bed semis from over €275,000, and detacheds for over €300,000 each.

A dozen builds were started, with walls up to various levels in a number of cases, and a couple are at foundation level, but there’s been no roofing. Eight of the houses/sites are for three-bed semis of up to 1,420 sq ft. Another four are 1,378 sq ft four-bed semis, and there are three four-bed detacheds to be built.

Fernwood Estate has become one of the more popular residential locations in Glanmire, notes Niall Cahalane. Murphy Construction had built at least 500 homes in Glanmire and was building in Castletreasure at the time of starting Fernwood.

Details: Cahalane Skuse, 021-4279179