House of the week: All's well that Earl's Well in Waterfall

This A1 upmarket County Cork scheme is selling like hot cakes 

Earls Well, Waterfall, Co Cork.

Waterfall, Cork
Starting price: €695,000
Size	215 sq m - 288 sq m
Bedrooms	5 / 4
Bathrooms	4
BER	A

WE made reference in these pages last week to sales at Earls Well, an upmarket residential development in Waterfall, Co Cork, favoured among trader-uppers, not least because of proximity to the city while ostensibly countrified, but also because it’s a scheme offering a house size and a site size increasingly hard to come by so close to urban quarters.

Claire Dennehy, senior negotiator at Savills, had told us that five of six houses were snapped up, (five x four-bed detached and one x five-bed detached). They were released to the market Christmas week, with prices ranging from €695,0000 to €850,000 and were bought straight off the plans.

Such was the interest in these O’Callaghan Properties’ (OCP) houses that Savills released another four homes last Monday and by Tuesday, just one remained. A price hike across the house types did not dampen buyers’ enthusiasm, with the cheapest “E2” type, measuring 2,321 sq ft, rising from €695,0000 pre-Christmas, to €710,000; a larger “F2” type (2,550 sq ft) rising from €725,000 to €740,000 and a larger again “G” type (2,812 sq ft) rising from €795,000 to €820,000, although Ms Dennehy points out that the “G” released this week is on a bigger site, of almost half an acre, compared to the pre-Christmas “G” release which was on 0.44 of an acre.

All told, out of a release of 10 expensive homes in two phases, just two remain on the market, and both are of the smallest house type in the development (E2). For interested buyers, one house from the pre-Christmas release is still available at €695,000, while its equivalent in this week’s release was also available at the time of writing, for €710,000.

The open plan living room oozes comfort and light.

Ms Dennehy describes the demand as “phenomenal” but also possibly predictable, given low-density housing close to cities has fallen out of favour with planners.

Buyers in the Earls Well scheme are largely people looking to upgrade, Ms Dennehy says, from a mix of professional backgrounds and a not insignificant number of young families looking for more space inside and out. There are also some first-time buyers in the mix.

In addition, there are buyers who missed out four years ago on an earlier phase of the scheme at a time when NAMA was involved (and not OCP) and who have success this time around. In fact, this development has been a long time in the pipeline, involving three different developers over the years, starting with Fleming Construction who built nearby upmarket Heatherfield and five houses at Earls Well before falling victim to the crash in the noughties. Nama subsequently built about a dozen houses before receivers of the Fleming group sold off the remaining land with full planning permission for 28 homes. OCP bought at the end of 2018 and even though Covid-19 restrictions have halted construction, the Earls Well homes remain in high demand, with Savills acting as selling agents for all three developers.

Ms Dennehy says once construction industry Covid-19 restrictions ease (indications are March 5) it should be a 12-month build from the time the buyer signs the contract.

The €15,000 deposit is fully refundable up to the point of signing the contract, at which point 10% of the house value, minus the booking deposit, must be paid. OCP is allowing subject to sale  leeway (they acknowledge people need to sell their own homes to buy into Earls Well). Most builders do not allow this, Ms Dennehy says.

The tasty kitchen. 

Included in the home-buying package is €10,000 towards tiling, between €2,000 and €3,000 towards wardrobes, from €15,000-€25,000 towards kitchens (Clohane Wood Products) and €10,000 towards electric gates (optional), so total sums ranging from €37,000 to €48,000, depending on house type.

The homes are on sites measuring from 0.22 of an acre to just under 0.5 and all are ‘A’ rated in terms of energy efficiency. Most have four bathrooms.

Ms Dennehy says despite the price level (the largest ‘D’ type, which measures more than 3,000 sq ft, was at €850,000 in the pre-Christmas release), the houses are “selling faster than anticipated”. However, she says similar demand is evident at other developments such as Reldare on Model Farm Road, also by OCP, where she says there is a waiting list for three-bed and four-bed semi-ds.

“We released a few at Reldare before Christmas and they are all gone now. We have people on a waiting list. We are seeing demand right across the board for this type of housing,” she says.

VERDICT: Generous homes on generous sites for those who can afford them.