Cork Model Farm Road site for homes as religious order's ex-care home comes to the open market

Model Farm Road is one of Cork's housing hot-spots, with recent new builds across the road making €1m-€1.5m  each

City in its sights: Model Farm Road ex-care home property is guided at €1.3m+ by agents Lisney

WITH some local, top house values regularly breaching €1m, the arrival of a suburban Cork development site of close to 0.9 acres truly fits the billing of a Triple-A development opportunity.

Model Farm Road care home site

Coming to market with agents Lisney is a 20-bedroomed care home at the city end of the Model Farm Road, opposite the Vailima development of new-builds, where the last remaining detached home was sale agreed prior to Christmas at over its €1.1m guide.

Nearby, a private house sale of a 1940s home near the church at Dennehy’s Cross, Suncroft, has just fetched €1.3m.

The Price Register shows 11 €1m+ transactions in the past decade with a Model Farm Road address. That number is set to grow rapidly when the six €1m-€1.5m sales results at the Vailima development make the Price Register.

No 5 Vailima is selling  for over its €1.1m guide: other homes are larger, and more valauble

Into this fevered fray, agents Margaret Kelleher and Johnny McKenna of Lisney are selling a former 9,000 sq ft care home on 0.86 acres. It adjoins a separate dwelling with yard onto the Model Farm Road, and has the family-owned Lee Garage to its the western side.

The location is between Woodlawn/Dennehys Cross and Bishopstown Avenue, 3km from Cork city centre and in the very heart of the western suburbs’ medical/educations nexus, with some of the city’s strongest residential values.

While this 0.35 ha/0.86-acre property might make for a site assembly play, it’s likely to be bought as is, with scope for an upmarket residential scheme.

Lisney’s guide price is €1.3m, and it’s understood that it is selling the site, which has 140’ frontage to the Model Farm Rd for an unidentified religious order.

Coincidentally, the sale comes just a month or two after the Ursuline Sisters sold its own order’s private home on 3.2 acres in Cork’s Blackrock village for €3.94m (via Savills), acquired by Lyonshall for residential development.

Lisney previously sold an 8,300 sq ft convent building on a larger, 1.3-acre site off Model Farm Road by Highfield Lawn.

St Catherine’s Convent was bought for €1.764m, according to the Price Register, well over its €1.3m AMV, and was acquired by an investor who intends to develop it in coming years. It’s currently let to the HSE, which is using it for outpatient/consultant services, given its proximity to the major CUH/CUMH medical campus 500m to the south.

Well-set  in western suburbs

Similarly, this ex-nursing home property may have rental income potential pending redevelopment and zoning is ‘sustainable residential neighbourhoods’ in the Cork City Draft Development Plan 2022-2028. It “boasts enormous development potential, given its location in an established residential area within walking distance of CUH, UCC, and close to MTU, as well as convenient access to the N40 South Ring Rd network”, according to Lisney’s Ms Kelleher.

With the keen residential focus on the area, the agency says it expects “strong levels of interest in the property given that the property has an established use, and as a site it represents an excellent development opportunity in one of Cork’s most sought-after residential locations”.

DETAILS: Lisney 021 4275079