Lindville home joins summer 2021 coterie of Cork homes which may approach the €1m price mark
33 Lindville is one of 60+ houses built in the assuredly upmarket Ballintemple/Blackrock Road scheme in the late 1990s in the grounds of a former private hospital, with a leafy central avenue and a good mix of detached and semi-ds. Pictures: Jed Niezgoda
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Ballintemple, Cork |
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€875,000 |
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Size |
259 sq m (2,780 sq ft) |
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Bedrooms |
5 |
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Bathrooms |
4 |
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BER |
C1 |
OK, let’s not jinx the sale, but… just how close to the Big Note, the 'magic' €1m mark, might 33 Lindville go?
Set in a Cork development where owners might be assumed to rate prices and values with an extra-keen sense of curiosity (it is a Blackrock Road setting, after all!), the Victorian-style home is one of the larger detached ones in the well-known Lindville scheme. Only a handful of the very largest ‘A’ types on the main road approach in Ballintemple village are bigger than No 33.
No 33 Lindville’s one of 60+ houses built in the assuredly upmarket scheme in the late 1990s in the grounds of a former private hospital, with a leafy central avenue and a good mix of detached and semi-ds.
None of them were ever cheap, even if prices for brand new builds here in the later 1990s were, almost scandalously, in the mid to high Ir£200,000s, and considered to have been a price stretch at the time.
Ever since, Lindville is about as upwardly mobile and ’aspirational’ an estate address as a Cork home buyer might hope to get into, in a broader Blackrock suburban location with more €1m+ house sales than any other Cork suburb, beaten in volume terms in Munster only by Kinsale.
In terms of profile, one of the more recent media mentions of Lindville was a court case, in which a man was convicted of theft, for stealing a Burberry designer handbag from a Land Rover Discovery Sport parked at a Lindville home, as well as two bottles of Prosecco from the fridge in a neighbour's unlocked garage.
The court case might have smacked of parody, except for the very cold reality that the perpetrator was a homeless man in his 30s, with addiction issues, who was living in a van on the city quays. He got a two-year sentence, with the judge hoping the man would get help with rehabilitation for his addictions.
Meanwhile, back ina property obsessed world, there’s probably two dozen Blackrock homes that have made the 'magic' seven figure, €1m+ sum since 2010, and many are worth multiples of it ......if they were to come for sale.
When will a Lindville home enter this ‘exalted’ price echelon?
Might it be 2021, a pandemic year and a peculiar, rising property market time for sure?
Designed by architects Roderick Hogan Associates, with more than a doffing of the design cap to Victorian and Edwardian originals along the main Blackrock Road, these retro-style period homes were built to a high standard by a builder who memorably went to the wall before the scheme finished out due (it was said) to over detailing of finishes and flourishes, from roof finials to immense solid timber carved bargeboards.
All 60+, including some sold as serviced sites, are pretty much fully rooted, on mature if not overly large grounds, after 20-25 years standing, and it may not be too long before a few more resales come along as owners ‘downsize’ with families reared.
It’s likely only one Lindville resale ever/in the early, pre-Price Register days might have tipped into the €1m+ mark.
In the past 11 years, there have been just seven resales, and they’ve been climbing steadily up from the €500,000 mark, with the most recent being the resale of No 54, sold by international rugby star Dougie Howlett.
The Howlett family had bought No 54 in 2016 for a recorded €736,000. They put it up for sale in 2019 when the family returned ‘Down Under’ and their 208sq m (2,240sq ft) six-bed Lindville home sold at €835,000 after about a year, showing on the Price Register only in April of this year, at €30k under its initial €865,000 AMV.
What’s even more remarkable about the paucity of resales at Lindville is the fact that, of the seven listed sales, two of those seven houses appear twice on the register.
No 45 sold in 2013 for €625,000, but is also on the register in 2011, at market slump, at a high of €950,000. Huh?
That price is assumed to have been a non-market transaction, likely to have been an asset transfer for its then-owner, who went on to build a proper mansion on the Blackrock Road — a broad location frequently referred to by satirical social media sensation Reggie, of the Ask Audrey column fame, in his “€4.5m Blackrock Road mansion”.
Whatever about the final sum No 33 Lindville makes, and however close to the €1m mark it goes for, it does look certain to join the exalted few Lindville listings of sales showing on the Price Register for value watchers here, not once, but twice.
The owners of this 260sq m (2,780 sq ft) five-bed home had only bought here about five years ago, with the Price Register showing their purchase of No 33 at €735,000 in 2016.
They are now selling to trade up, likely to be staying in the Blackrock vicinity, according to their selling agent, Mark Gosling of Behan Irwin Gosling, who admits his €875,000 AMV might very well be exceeded given the dearth of really good stock in Cork’s trade-up market in the past six months, and especially in Blackrock.
However, he’s not going to over-egg the asking price either, sensibly deciding to let the market decide — as is its wont.
He knows there’s both money and demand out there, as his Behan Irwin Gosling sales board is currently up on a building site on the main Blackrock Road by Menloe Gardens, where two one-off homes are being built on the 0.4-acre grounds of a now-demolished 1980s 3,000sq ft bungalow called Modeligo near Menloe Gardens, bought for €1.13m and flattened.
Two replacement homes at the Modeligo site, designed by architects Coughlan De Keyser, will be over 370sq m (4,000 sq ft) each, over three floors.
Not yet available (one might now be reserved by Modeligo's buyer himself?), values are loosely €1.5m-€1.7m and a list of inquiries has already built up, with no online marketing or formal listings.
And, no, No 33’s vendors are not buying at Modeligo, it appears.
No 33 itself was built, as were its neighbours, in the former grounds of the Sullivan family-owned private Ballintemple Lindville hospital, which specialised in psychiatric support and closed in 1996, with the land bought for development.
The 1830s built hospital, much of it timber framed, was demolished, whilst the earlier c 1710s original house with Dutch gable was bought by a medical consultant and renovated after years lying empty.
No 33 Lindville is to the north and east/Blackrock side of the old tree-lined avenue, which fortunately was retained and is a much-loved featured by families and children in the development. No 33 faces west, with an enclosed and mature back garden, which is a modest size with a large patio.
The house is probably a bit wider and deeper, and consequently larger, than many of its peers, and at 2,780sq ft seems to punch in at about 500sq ft larger than the Howlett family’s six-bed that made the €835,00 price level in the last year — although maybe the neighbours didn’t square up too often size-wise to the 6ft+, 200lbs+ Kiwi professional rugby player and all-time top scorer for the All Blacks at his peak.
Mr Gosling is going to spend a good portion of the coming weeks doing physical viewings, now that Covid-19 restrictions have eased, reckoning each independent tour will take half an hour. It has a decent spread of rooms over three full floors, and is, Mr Gosling says, “finished to the highest standards throughout,” with off-street parking for up to four cars behind electric gates.
Internally, it’s entered on the left-hand side into a hall with a black-and-white tiled floor, and a neutral/pale decor with punches of colour, mirrors and some contemporary lighting and furniture setting it off. To the right, past glazed doors, is a front double-aspect reception room with bay window, walnut floor and a deep white marble fireplace with cast iron inset.
Double doors link it to a rear family room, with south-facing side wall windows to a side passage. Behind this again is a kitchen with tiled floor, white units with an undated look and lots of integrated appliances and display storage. To the side is a dining area with walnut floor.
A further set of double doors from the dining side leads down three steps to a sun room/family room, also walnut floored, with an integrated stove in a side wall, and garden access/patio access on the other side.
It is a good floor plan and overall layout for day-to-day family living.
Up a grey carpeted stairs are three first-floor carpeted bedrooms, two with en suites (one has a bath). One bedroom has a free-standing attractive antique wardrobe and chest of drawers instead of the near-obligatory built-ins.
The top floor has two more bedrooms, both carpeted and with built-in wardrobes. There’s also a distinctive main family bathroom, with large shower plus bath, and the fully tiled walls were given a bit of a free hand by the tiler, with a blue contrasting pattern tile running wave-like around the arched, top floor window as a visual feature.
Externally, the grounds are on a par with the level of internal maintenance and presentation. Apart from the landscaped private front with off-street parking, the rear has a cobblelock patio area, raised small lawn with enough space for a trampoline and more, a shed and outdoor lighting, with shrubbed side beds, borders and boundaries.
There’ll be many eyes on the eventual selling price of No 33, including those of the 60 or so neighbours, who all have vested interests, as Ballintemple/Blackrock home owners, in a ‘suitably strong’ sales result.
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