TRADING UP: We scan a selection of trading up homes around the country

This week's trading up homes from around the country...

Douglas, Cork €395,000

Size: 126 sqm (1,350 sq ft)

Bathrooms: 2

Bedrooms: 3

BER: D2

There's a side, garage conversion with No 26 Ardmahon Estate, adding to the space and usefulness of this now 1,350 sq ft wellkept suburban semi detached home that’s going to prove popular in viewings.

Fresh to market with Florence Gabriel of Sherry FitzGerald, (who has her second open viewings there today at 11am) and guided at €395,000, it ticks lots of boxes: thelocation’s strong, in increasing demand, the back garden is south-facing and sizeable, and it’s longer views to the back are over a green area, used by children for fun and games.

Houses in this run, between the suburbs of Douglas and Ballinlough, date to the mid 1900s, and when they come for resale, most get significant overhauls and extensions.

Although decoratively dated at least, No 26 can be moved into straight away and worked on, as the new occupants wish.

It has an updated kitchen, interlined main reception rooms via a wide arch, it has pvc double-glazed windows and deep bays in front front, top and bottom, study/play room to the side, and scores a decentenough D2.

VERDICT: As evidence of local demand, Sherry Fitz are already ‘sale agreed’ on 43 Ardfallen Estate a few hundred yards away: it’s a 1,570 sq ft extended semi-d, with five bedroom, that was priced at €510,000.

Glenbrook, Cork Harbour €330,000

Size: 143 sq m (1,549 sq ft)

Bathrooms: 2

Bedrooms: 4

BER Rating: C2

Although built only about 15 years ago, No 4 River View Place overlooking Cork harbour owes quite a bit to its next door neighbour, the period era No 3.

Not only did it get grafted on to what had been an end terrace house, it faithfully copied its features and proportions, and then — as the same individual worked on both houses — both got a distinctive crowning cap of apex attic windows to maximise river views.

No 4 owes one more thing to No 3: its price guide. It’s listed at €330,000, by estate agent Peter Skuse of Cahalane Skuse, and he’s more than fairly sure he’s in the right ballpark, as he sold the very similar, tastily upgraded No 3 (which featured here last summer) for the same sum, €330k.

No 4 comes in with a C2 BER, has gas central heating and is a well-finished four-bed home with dramatic, eyrie-like views over Glenbrook and the Lee’s estuary, on its way to the more open expanses of the harbour, from its uppermost level’s triangular windows.

It also looks directly down on a mix of modern and period homes at the water’s edge in Glenbrook, right where No 1 Bath Terrace with water access and a boat-launching davit is recorded as a June 2018 sale at €510,000, having graced four pages of this publication last August, guiding €480,0000.

VERDICT: Rising tide at Glenbrook.

Union Hall, West Cork €350,000

Size: 85 sq m (900sq ft)

Bathrooms: 1

Bedrooms: 4

BER: N/A

Anyone viewing Beachside, at Squince harbour near West Cork’s Union Hall this past week or two could not fail to be smitten: the setting’s simply sublime. Close enough to throw a stone from the front door into the water, it’s an older-style, modest sized semi-detached home on a hill and by a tiny country road at the scenic and sheltered shingle beach and harbour, overlooking Rabbit Island.

Doing more or less what its name implies, Beachside has side/back gardens, two old, stone outbuildings including one across the narrow through lane, overlooking the water by the waterside, with enormous scope, and upgrade potential, subject to planning - and, it’s all available, lock, stock and outbuildings.

Skibbereen estate agent Pat Maguire guides the old fashioned, but superbly set, four bed dwelling at €350,000, and some near neighbours have done dramatic builds, investments which are surely well warranted given the seaside location, and views.

VERDICT: narrow roads with overgrown ditches, grass up the middle of roads, coves, bays, beaches and accessible islands all combine to give Squince and its neighbouring clusters a dusting of childhood holiday magic.

Think ‘Famous Five go to Rabbit Island’ just for starters: bring dinghies, kayaks, torches, tents and ginger beer.

Beaumont, Cork, €550,000

Size: 249sq m (2,665sq ft)

Bathrooms: 3

Bedrooms: 4

BER: C3

Even though there’s a hideaway character to ‘The White House,’ on a large plot off the Dundanion Road in Cork’s Beaumont, the actual house style looks very familiar, sort of gable fronted, with lots of dash, and some faux stone.

And that’s because it was the home of the late builder Michael Burke and his family, and Mr Burke was responsible for some immediately adjacent neighbouring homes here in Beaumont, as well as the Temple Vale development over his home and garden’s northern boundary; he also did many of the builds in Janeville, on the Blackrock Road, and Ashwood, on the Skehard Road.

Now, the rock-solid, but dated White House comes for sale, with vivid coloured bathroom suites, patterned carpets and curtains, and parana pine sheeting.

But, look beyond that, and there’s a decent four-bed detached 2,650 sq ft family home, with large rooms, and a particularly spacious site with outbuildings, and possible further build potential.

At the end of a long, private avenue, it’s priced at €550,000 by selling agent James G Coughlan, who has it under swift offer at €500,000 from a private buyer.

Jim Coughlan says it’s so secret, he had considered using it as the final spot in a treasure hunt, yet it’s just 150 metres from Beaumont Drive...where new builds on compact sites were recently offered from €650,000 for semi-ds to a detached at €815,000.

VERDICT: Trumps the neighbours.