Starter home: Cork City, €185,000

Tommy Barker views a city villa home with due respect for its past.

Size: Sq m 63 (700 sq ft)

Bedrooms: 3

Bathrooms: 2

BER: E1

Best Feature: A charmer

There’s a pleasant, owner-occupied feel to this handy, edge of city pad with pedigree, at 8 French’s Villas, off Cork city’s Cathedral Road and Wolfe Tone Street.

A new listing with estate agent Gillian McDonnell, it’s a relatively compact 700 sq ft semi of some vintage, with attractive lower brick section under a rendered exterior.

Ms McDonnell guides the respectfully kept No 8 at €185,000, and the sale includes a good mix of extras and appliances, so for new owners it’s quite an affordable option.

Big pluses are the character, with things like stripped and waxed old pine doors, there’s a good modern kitchen, and the main wood-floored living room has a wood-burning stove set into a cast iron fire surround. Quite unusually, there’s a ground floor shower room/guest WC, with one of the three overhead bedrooms with an en suite, with another shower.

Effectively priced at the same sort of level as a half decent apartment, No 8 has off-street parking for a few cars, with perimeter planting, and has a nice west-facing rear garden with patio area, lawn and also two storage sheds plus a lean-to.

Set within a walk of the city centre and of Blackpool’s employment base, French’s Villas (built with city council input in the early 1900s, along with McSwiney Villas, McCurtain Villas etc for working families, and gardens were always a feature) is a pleasant looking cul de sac, near many amenities, schools and leisure facilities.

VERDICT: Super-handy location, and a house with character.