Starter home: Wilton, Cork €115,000

This one-bedroomed unit has generous living accommodation and is easy on the eye, fitted out with oak-flooring and tasty touches.

Sq m 48 (520 sq ft)

Bedrooms: 1

Bathrooms: 12

BER: N/A

There’s an unexpected decor to 4 Sandbrook, a first floor, one- bedroomed apartment, right by the Sarsfield Road roundabout and flyover, in Cork’s Wilton suburb.

Inside, small and all as it is, it’s been furnished with antique style furniture of some quality, and while that’s what you might expect in a house — especially one decades older — it’s novel and even refreshing in a 1990s suburban apartment. What’s more, it looks right at home.

Estate agent Barry Nagle of Global Properties seeks offers of €115,000 for No 4, and has had it under early offer at €110,000 in recent days.

By not trying to shoe-horn in a second bedroom the 520 sq ft here thus manages to accommodate a 18’ by almost 12’ oak-floored living/dining room, with balcony access, and fireplace with electric fire: other than that, it has electric storage heating.

There’s a pleasant kitchen, with pale painted units, wood work tops and metro tiles as a splash-back, as well as a recently upgraded bathroom with shower over the bath.

Most of the flooring is in oak, including kitchen and hallway, and the bedroom is carpeted, with built-in around the bed. It’s all very easy on the eye inside — possibly even more so than the quite uninspired exterior of these three storey blocks, finished in dash and brick.

VERDICT: Key selling point here is the setting, so close to the sprawling CUH, as well as the Wilton Shopping Centre, and the city south ring road passes very close by Sandbrook, now via a flyover.