Trading Up: A selection of city and country trading up homes

We scan a selection of trading up homes in city and county.

Crosshaven, Cork harbour

Top-deck views come readily at No 8, The Grand, a top-floor penthouse apartment, in a former hotel conversion, in the very heart of Crosshaven.

Views of what? Well, none other the Owenabue estuary, and marinas, and the Royal Cork Yacht Club, no less.

The 1720-founded yacht club has a big anniversary looming, of course, along with clubhouse upgrades, so whomsoever is the next owner of No 8 will be privy to all the festivities on the doorstep, as well as the daily comings and goings of flotillas and floating palaces.

A ground-floor apartment, with grand, high ceilings, sold here in recent months, at €430,000, and now No 8, The Grand, follows in its footsteps, up top in the one-time Victorian hotel building.

No 8’s a two-bed, 1,300 sq ft-plus double aspect apartment, just reduced in price from a summer launch, at €470,000, down now to €420,000, via Sherry FitzGerald estate agent, Florence Gabriel.

It has its living room up to the front for views, through arched windows, while the kitchen’s separate, alongside, and the two bedrooms (one en-suite), plus main bathroom, bring up the rear.

VERDICT: an easy place to drop anchor, in sailing heaven, Crosshaven.

• Size: 127sq m (1,335sq ft)
• Bathrooms: 2
• Bedrooms: 2
• BER: E1

Boreenmanna Road, Cork City €550,000

Set in a city doorstep location is 2 Rockboro Court, the middle home of just three good detacheds, built in the 1980s just a skip away from the Old Blackrock Road and the South Infirmary/Victoria hospital campus, on the city end of the original Boreenmanna Road.

It also is within a couple of hundred metres of the south city link road access onto the Boreenmanna Road, so the options for walking to town, or driving anywhere else are varied.

Such accessibility helped the recent sale of a detached period home a few doors away from Rockboro Court, sold for more then €600,000 by Woodwards for vendors who’d built anew in their side garden.

And, in one of 2018’s swiftest sales of substance, auctioneer Kevin Barry transacted the early 1900s detached Rathcoola, on the Boreenmanna Road, in jig time.

Rathcoola had launched in these pages in April at €920,000, making it to the Price Register by July, at a recorded €950,000.

So, no sales performance pressure at all on estate agent Malcolm Tyrrell of Cohalan Downing, as he puts 2 Rockboro Court for sale, guided at €550,000.

It’s very accommodating, with four reception rooms, and four bedrooms, and it’s bright and well presented, with a D1 BER which is representative of its build era.

Externally there’s off-street parking. while the back has a south/west aspect, with the city link road just out of sight and beneath this uber-convenient location.

VERDICT: city’s on the doorstep.

• Size: 175 sq m (1,880 sq ft)
• Bathrooms: 3
• Bedrooms: 4
• BER: D1

Blackrock Road Cork City, €390,000

Wearing its 1960s roots with a casual ease is a this family home, a four-bed semi-d at No 8, Richmond Estate, just off Cork City’s Blackrock Road: it’s simply a cracking good location.

The estate was built in the very early 1960s, with design touches that included cedar sheeting, and was the first time this fine timber was on-trend, and much revived by architects ever since.

Mixing dash, brick and cedar sheeting, plus with a ’tache of ivy, west-facing No 8’s easy on the eye in front, and even the interior picks up some of the wood sheeting, as a sort of repeat design motif.

After aside conversion/extension (there’s an own-door access, ground-floor room with wet room/bathroom, and, further over headroom , via a spiral stairs,) the entire at 8 now runs to about 1,500 sq ft, and was modernised by its now trading-down owner about a decade ago.

It got new, double-glazed windows, an updated main bathroom, with rainfall shower, a new, coffee-coloured gloss kitchen, and a sun room off the rear dining room, overlooking a mature, walled-in back garden.

Estate agent, Mark Rose, prices it at €390,000 and started his first viewings just a few days ago.

VERDICT: Likely to fly.

• Size: 144 sq m (1,540sq ft)
• Bathrooms: 3
• Bedrooms: 4
• BER: E1

25, The Close, Ballincollig

Tucked away in at the back end of small cul de sac within Ballincollig’s Coolroe Meadows is 25 The Close, an up-to-speed four-bed semi-d, up for sale with a €350,000 price tag.

It’s just over 1,200 sq ft, three of its four bedrooms are doubles, and one is en-suite, so it’s of a size and capability to comfortably accommodate a family for quite a few child-rearing years.

Agents Savills pitch it squarely at the family market, but also feel it will have an appeal to some first-time buyers, many of whom can stretch to this sort of sum, given the employment strength and depth in and around Ballincollig.

Since built back in the late 1990s/early 2000s by O’Brien and O’Flynn, and set at the western end of Ballincollig, Coolroe Meadows has proven popular with a range of buyers, and the past 10-15 years of development, growth and barracks redevelopment in the town has further consolidated the location.

Add in easy access to the Ballincollig bypass, just by the southern access point to Coolroe Meadows, and it even jumps on to the radar of buyers from further afield also.

There’s only three pairs of semis in this cul de sac in The Close, and south-facing No 25 had its first open viewing this past week, and presents well.

It has a wood-burning stove in the front reception room, with box-bay window, and behind is a family room, with access to a well-finished out, family-friendly patio and back garden, plus long (17’ by 9’) kitchen/dining room, along with utility, and guest WC.

VERDICT: open and Close sale.

• Size: 111sq m (1,200sq ft)
• Bathrooms: 3
• Bedrooms: 4
• BER: C1