House of the week: Rochestown, Cork, €675,000

THE owners of this aptly-named one-off home called Woodview, or 25A, in the long matured Rochestown Rise development in Cork, barely needed the Grand Stand view they had of its construction, as they lived next door and were building anew last year in their former back garden.

But, for all the view they had, they really only got to wonder at the speed of it all, as there was no need to be watching the builder: “It went up so unbelievably fast, and he was just so good,” they say with huge admiration of the build process of this c 2,964 sq ft insulated concrete formwork (ICF) house.

They highly rate Killarney-based Philip O’Connor, a seasoned Kerry developer who set up his ICF build firm Kompetenz several years ago, to get him through the downturn, doing one-offs: currently 65% of all new-builds in Metropolitan Cork are one-off homes, says the CIF.