All is Well in Douglas penthouse for €490,000

Apartments in this development don't often come to the market

11 Douglas Wells Well Road Douglas Cork

Douglas Village, Cork
€490,000
Size	104 sq m (1,120 sq ft)
Bedrooms	2
Bathrooms	2
BER	B3

THE development sounds like a square-jawed, American actor from Hollywood’s golden age and, similarly, Cork’s Douglas Wells seems to have enduring regular good looks, and stands the screening scrutiny test of time.

Now coming up on its 20th birthday, this apartment scheme comprised 33 units when first built by the well-regarded developer Tim Lawton, in a setting just beside the Well Road, in suburban Douglas.

Douglas? Well(s)? Geddit?

Access for most though, by car at least, is off the Well Road roundabout through the Douglas Hall Lawn estate and Douglas Tennis Club, by the Douglas/Mahon estuary in the super-serviced and well-shopped suburban village — while, for those on foot, a handier pedestrian lane will bring you from Douglas Wells to the village end of the Well Road.

It’s both a very secure and a strong residential location, with decent-sized apartments to boot, all of them 1,100 sq ft or more, and they’ve always had a broad appeal, from full-time owner-occupiers to those who have second homes elsewhere in Ireland or abroad, as well as with investors.

No 11, a top floor/penthouse example comes to market this week, guided at €490,000 by Stuart O’Grady and Ann O’Mahony of Sherry FitzGerald, perfect for a swathe of buyers still.

When first built, apartments here were launched in the €380,000-€400,000 price range, and on the rare early resales values were pitched at up to and just over €500,000 around market peak, say 2008.

After the downturn, they fell, like everything else, by 40% give or take and, by the time the Price Register came along in 2011, it showed resales typically in the €290 to €300k league at the lowest point, climbing back steadily ever since.

Nine transactions show since on the Register — one in 2015 at €150,000 is an oddity, and may have been an asset transfer rather than a genuine independent third-party sale — and, up until now, the strongest recovery was of No 7, which achieved €400,000 in 2017, having previously sold in 2015 for €335,000.

Coincidentally, it’s second time around for No 11 on the resale market, as the Register shows it transacting earlier on, back at the end of 2014, when it got a recorded €292,000.

Launching it, Sherry FitzGerald say “apartments in this highly-acclaimed gated development rarely come to the market, and this penthouse apartment really is a joy, in one of Cork’s most affluent and convenient addresses, with a south-facing aspect.”

No 11 has a highly respectable B3 BER, and gas central heating with gas insert fireplace.

Internal doors are walnut, there’s a very good fitted kitchen in cherrywood, and a utility space — plus, as it’s a penthouse unit, there’s access to an attic with further storage potential.

One of its two bedrooms has an en suite, and both bathrooms are extensively tiled.

No 11 has one designated car parking space at basement level, lift access too, and the gated development Douglas Wells has its units in three brick-faced blocks (design day one was by Jack Coughlan Architects) is secure, with video intercom access etc.

It’s one of a few niche schemes on and off the Well Road in the past two decades, with a handful of high-end large detacheds at Greenbanks, and five three-storey townhouses are currently under advancing construction at the upper end of the Well Road, in the grounds of Ballinlough House, the former Lovetts Restaurant, with no sale/rental plans for those as yet revealed.

VERDICT: Douglas Wells is ageing well, well, well.