Premium upgrade at €825k could suit mobile buyers
39 Belfield Abbey on Cork's Boreenmanna Road.
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Boreenmanna Road, Cork City |
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€825,000 |
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Size |
241 sq m (2,310 sq ft) |
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Bedrooms |
5 |
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Bathrooms |
5 |
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BER |
B2 |
A MOTOR business investment in Tralee sees a family’s fleet of cars packing up at Cork city’s No 39 Belfield Abbey on the Boreenmanna Road, and heading back to the Kingdom – but only after they put a top marque finish on this property which they bought just about four years ago.
The unexpected move from the pristine property comes after owner Declan O’Hara and his wife Abbie’s decision to take over a famous Kerry motor dealership, McElligott’s, a business with a pedigree going back to 1870 and which sells Mercedes, Honda and Kia ranges.
Ironically, living in Cork and running a business in Tralee began to mean too much time spent on the road for Declan, even in a very good German car.
So, with one son doing the Leaving Certificate and another set to finish in UCC in a year, they’ve decided it’s a good juncture to ‘trade-in,’ in motoring jargon, and to decamp once more to Kerry where they’d lived before, hence No 39’s arrival on the trade-up market.
As they get set to trade across the County Bounds, just like a car purchase choice where you get to add extra features and upgrade specifications, Munster motor dealer Declan O’Hara and his wife Abbie had been able to add a long list of extras to their customised Cork city home.
They bought it in 2017, after a long house search, so in his car business parlance, No 39’s offered now for sale ‘fully loaded,’ with numerous extras, and just one careful family of owners.
At the time when they bought here, Declan was General Manager of MSL, Cork’s main Mercedes dealership, having moved up to Cork from Kerry 11 years ago, initially buying a big new A-rated home in Carrigaline.
The couple loved that house, and their time there by the sea but later decided to move into the city from Carrigaline, as their sons had early morning starts for city schools, and for rowing training in the Lee Rowing Club on the Marina.
Those routines had meant 5.30 AM starts on rowing training days, so the family’s motivation to move ‘to town’ was strong (since their move, their sons were able to run to training some mornings, via Richmond Estate, Crab Lane or Ballintemple, but "ten minute run to the Marina" isn't a line you'll see on too many estate agency brochures....!
Notably, it was only after seeing so many second-hand houses come for sale in Cork’s southern suburbs needing indeterminate amounts of work to bring up to spec that they suddenly opted for ‘new,’ or as ‘good as’ if not ‘better than’ new.
When they viewed No 39, fronting Belfield Abbey and looking out towards the very popular Ballinlough Community Park and a tennis club by a Maxol station, they reckoned they’d get the best of both worlds, buying into an established location and to a scheme which got a second wind in it sales after the property market came out of its post-crash slumber years.
Most of Belfield Abbey had been built in the mid to late 2000s by developers the O’Flynn Group, but not all were finished out internally; such was the case with the detached, three-storey, five bedroomed No 39.
The Price Register shows 54 Belfield Abbey sales since 2011, five of them were for over the €500,000 price mark, and the most recent was of No 39 itself, at €592,600, needing final finishes and essential items as kitchen, floors, tiling, central heating boiler etc.
To take their time with the work needed, the family rented another Belfield Abbey house while they trawled showrooms looking for extras, and for the essentials, and they took a year to get it just the way they wanted, they way they are now rather unexpectedly leaving it behind.
First up, it’s private and secure, with a wide custom-built sliding black gate which they got made, shielding the front garden and paved drive where there’s enough room to park four cars (it’s unlikely that any bangers ever made it here?), with now-mature landscaping along the perimeter.
Developers O’Flynns had already spent quite heavily on landscaping, and maintenance, at Belfield Abbey’s first phase as the initial price expectation was that some of the very largest detacheds facing the Boreemanna Road would be priced in the €1m bracket, as the market reached its zenith. Thus, the gardens here have had a ten-year head start on the interiors.
Also notable is the level of masonry detail in the tall boundary walls of the bigger detached such as No 39, using a masterful mix of small and larger pieces of limestone, a feature which continues on the inside of these walls also, and which must have been quite painstaking to do on such a large scale.
Security continues discretely with an upgraded, hardwired Catch alarm and CCTV (as well as a resident large dog,) and the relatively compact site is fully-walled in, with a lot of attention subsequently paid to creating a ‘room outdoors,’ by the stepped sandstone patio. Here, the skills of a Kerry mason were drafted in to build a raised fireplace, done in cut stone and antique brick.
Then, dense planting went in, include bamboo, shrubs trees and climbers to screen the tall back boundary walls sourced from the Pavilion and from Hanleys garden centres, and the whole lot then has discrete outdoor lighting (in front, side and back gardens) to highlight the planting in this residential cocoon.
Inside, the attention to detail was as thorough, with special thought gone into storage ‘solutions,’ in just about every nook and corner.
Celtic Interiors did the all-white gloss kitchen, with elaborate pivoting Häfele’ mechanisms to open out the contents of corner cupboards, and there’s any amount of small, purposeful storage niches (such as under the breakfast bar/island) for tidiness sake.
The same thought went into storage in pull-out sections under the stairs in the hall, and in the utility room (where a hanging bar is useful for shirts once laundered) also done by Celtic Interiors, and the same company did the built-ins in all of the bedrooms, as well as removable study desks.
The family fitted a gas condenser boiler in 2017, and a hot water control panel with an EPH timer, and the boiler low mileage on it and a higher efficiency than was the norm when Belfield builds had commenced in the mid-2000s. The BER’s a very good B1, with all external walls drylined, and it’s both warm and easy and efficient to heat thanks to two stoves, and thermostatically controlled zones so that if either of the wood-burning stoves are fired up the heating will switch itself off.
In the rear family room, next to the kitchen/diner and opening to the patio, the scene-setter is a free-standing Jydepejsen Elegance wood burning stove with what the owners call a 180-degree view, and the rest of the space has comfortable seating and wall shelving and units to facilitate a flat-screen TV, with wiring for cinema/surround sound.
For year-round parties and family gatherings (remember those Pre-Covid-19 days? Hopefully they are around the corner again), this makes for a good entertainment mix, with the interior stove and outdoor fireplace as the opposite heat sources drawing guests in need of heat.
The good or more formal front reception room with bay window, meanwhile, has a second stove, a highly-rated Swedish Scandinavisk A500 Wood Insert Stove, set in a granite surround, and across the hall is a smaller den or study, with very good broadband available (currently via Vodaphone) throughout the house, currently used as a home office.
Flooring at most of the ground floor is a high-quality hard-wearing engineered timber board, and ground level too is a guest bathroom, with tile floor and wallpapered walls (two different gold patterns site easily side by side) above lower timber panelled sections.
As the house was bought at second fix level, there’s above-standard trim, and a well finished stairs, with painted spiked and oak rails, has a runner carpet, leading up to the middle level, which is home to three double bedrooms, and main family bathroom.
In the main bedroom, full-width sliding doors, some mirrored, conceal masses of neat storage and hanging space and the large en suite serving this room has a bath, along with a walk-in double shower which has a Grohe dual rain shower, with a head the size of a dinner plate, along with a backup Mira Elite instant electric shower.
A second flight of stairs leads to the top floor’s two further bedrooms (fully building reg compliant), good sized, with sloping ceilings and with dormer window to the front/south and with Veluxes behind.
Both of these top level rooms have en suite bathrooms with showers, meaning No 39 has four bathrooms in all, plus guest WC.
Overall condition isn’t far short of immaculate, say selling agents Sheila O’Flynn and Stuart O’Grady of Sherry FitzGerald who describe it as a proper turn-key trader up, as pristine outside as inside: consider it valeted?
Next occupants will just have to bring personal items, art and books and furniture to personalise – and they won’t even need a lot of that, given the volume of storage, and the number of built-ins and desks in just about every room.
Auctioneer Sheila O’Flynn sold No 39 to its departing vendors four years ago when it was in a builder’s finish and she says she’s really impressed at the standard it’s been brought to now that she’s back on the selling case again.
She says that she already has several inquiries to view as news of its resale has leaked out, and she prices it at €825,000, noting it’s been quite some time since any of the handful of the larger Belfield Abbey detacheds has come for sale.
While just one or two detacheds elsewhere on the Boreenmanna Road have hit the €900,000 price mark in the past few years, and were on large grounds, one of the more recent solid results was that of 4 Woodbury, the family home of rugby star and now media personality Donnchadh O’Callaghan, which made a reported €675,000 back about 18 months ago.
The location's very handy for swift access to the city centre, Douglas village, the Marina and Blackrock as well as office parks and more and Mahon.
Facilities on the doorstep of Belfield Abbey handily include the 'corner shop' at the Maxol station, as well as a short cut up to O'Driscolls supermarket on the Ballinlough Road beside Woodbury, the community Park and its fairy trail is an enchantment for smaller children, while for older ones the tennis club's a real draw, as are pitches at Páirc Uí Rinn and Cork Con.
VERDICT: Vroom to improve.
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