€20m Ballincollig  land sale may be deal of 2021 with major developers likely to bid

Executor sale of land in booming Ballincollig could hold 700-800 new homes once developed 

73 acres of land, with 62 acres of that zoned for development at Maglin Ballincollig is going to prove popular - and competitive - in bidding among the 'big guns'.

A QUIET marketing campaign has commenced for one of Cork’s largest proposed land sales of 2021, with expectations high of a €20m+deal on 73 acres on offer at Maglin, Ballincollig.

Capable of accommodating as many as 800 new homes, the land which has been owned and farmed for decades by a local family, Ó Crualaoís, is expected to attract the attention of a number of major developers in the area such as the O’Flynn Group and O’Callaghan Properties, both who are active in the vicinity west of Cork city, as well as the likes of Glenveagh.

Outlined site for sale

Also possibly in the mix might be investment funds such as Elkstone Partners and, possibly even the Land Development Agency.

On offer via a low-key online listing tagged as ‘maglinland’ with a data room set up and being sold by CBRE, it’s understood the hope is to sell by a ‘best bids’ process by the end of October.

Sixty two of the 73 acres, just north of the Ballincollig bypass, are zoned for medium density residential development, capable of holding a new development on the scale of Classis Lake, Ballinglanna, Old Quarter, Mount Oval Village, Castlelake and that ilk, likely to take up to a decade to build out.

The land is adjacent to the very successful Heathfield scheme being developed by MOS/Murnane & O’Shea, where sales via Savills are very strong with long lists of hopeful buyers and where purchasers queued to buy in April 2019 on launch.

Cars parked at the new Heathfield Estate in Ballincollig in April 2019l, with people queuing overnight for the first phase of homes going on sale with Murnane & O'Shea.

Close-by too, the Ballincollig-based O’Flynn Group has acquired a landbank of c 69 acres, paying a reported €20m/€21 million almost two years ago, in a deal brokered for vendors the O’Connors by agents Irish & European.

The anticipated executor sale of this 73 acres for beneficiaries, members of the Ó Crualaoí family, was flagged in the Irish Examiner in April of this year, when funds Elkstone Partners emerged as successful buyers of 105 acres being sold by Nama at Stoneview, Blarney, for an unconfirmed €7m (well above a €4.6m guide), with longer term development scope.

Other funds sitting on cash have emerged in the past year or two as speculative development land buyers, though new measures coming as part of the Government’s Housing for All strategy up to 2030 have been designed to discourage land hoarding.

Agent Denis O’Donoghue of CBRE declined to return calls and inquiries this week on this major Maglin, Ballincolig land sale, with sources predicting its scale and scope it may prove to make it the Munster land sale of an otherwise sluggish year.