Trading up: Cork City Centre €725,000

There’s a clear move to the sheer convenience of city centre living, with a bounce in apartment values in better located schemes, and high-end units hitting high-end prices.

Size: 150sq m (1, 624sq ft) 

Bathrooms: 3 

Bedrooms: 3 

BER: C2

Just last week, Savills and Sherry FitzGerald launched luxury apartments at Lansdowne Place in Dublin’s Ballsbridge, on Sean Dunne’s famously and costly-acquired Berkeley Court Hotel site, with two-bed apartments priced from €900,000 and three-beds from a Tiger-ish €2.15 million.

All that can be said about those price levels is that they almost make the launch price of a Cork three-bed penthouse apartment, No 19, The Sherkin, Lancaster Gate at €725,000 look reasonable.

It comes just weeks after the Price Register shows No 64 The Fastnet in the same O’Callaghan Properties’ mid-2000s scheme selling for €760,000.

Larger than 64 The Fastnet, the 1,624 sq ft No 19, The Sherkin at Lancaster Gate is a top quality, top floor apartment with a long west-facing balcony, overlooking the River Lee Hotel off the city’s Western Road.

Auctioneer Michael O’Donovan of Savill says the three-bed (one en suite) apartment has exquisite, light filled contemporary accommodation with city vistas from its sixth-floor perch Cork in the Henry J Lyons-designed scheme built in 2007: “It offers something special, and is a great example of what apartment city living can offer at its very best in Cork.”

VERDICT: Sharp out.