Hello old stocks: Blackrock Rd bank branch for petty cash or €830k detached house around the corner

Put €830k family home around the corner on Cork's main Blackrock Road, and there'd be a €1m+ price sticker on it, says its selling agent. Or you can buy an ex-AIB bank branch on the road for €350,000

Fri, 01 Apr, 2022 - 12:00

Property Editor Tommy Barker reports

Beaumont Drive/Blackrock, Cork
€830,000 house/€350,000 ex-bank
Size	125 sq m/1,335 sq ft (house)
Bedrooms	4
Bathrooms	2
BER	F

CORK City’s Blackrock Road, and its multi-million euro mansions, is about to get a barely-needed satirical blast of exposure in coming days and nights: the southern city’s ace Ask Audrey podcaster and parody-meister Pat Fitzpatrick starts a run in the Everyman Theatre with his ‘some man for one-man show’, An Evening with Reggie.

If he ever needed ammunition for his personification of Cork’s most venal property and location snob, the detail that the Blackrock suburb — reputedly home to his €5.2m mansion — has a proven two dozen-plus €1m property sales should add extra padding to Reggie’s chaise longue posture.

It’s almost appropriate that Reggie’s creator Fitzpatrick is going to make money while sitting down and sounding off: but, in the real world, even a sell-out run at the c400-seat venue mightn’t be enough to enrich the man behind the mask to afford an actual house on the Blackrock Road.

Sitting pretty: Pat Fitzpatrick dresses down for An Evening With Reggie:"I have to say, it's a joy working with theatre people. They all have cut-glass Blackrock Road accents, but none of them will ever have the money to live there. Hilarious."

Petty cash: 31 The Cottages Blackrock Road ex AIB bank branch Lisney selling agents guide €350,000, the price of a do-er up three-bed townhouse locally

As An Evening with Reggie kicks off, there are two, fresh-to-market arrivals that might whet the property appetites of Blackrock Road home hunters: one’s a banker, the other’s an actual bank.

Just launched with a €350,000 AMV - less than the price of a three-bed semi-d locally - is the former AIB bank branch right on the Blackrock Road, in the heart of Ballintemple, carrying the modest-soundig address No 31 The Cottages. It’s for sale for the bank with agents Lisney, who expect it to go back to residential usage: with a back garden that’s 50m long, it might even have development potential?

Living room at Joievilla

Another banker, and an easier domestic proposition for families looking to put down roots locally and to, eh, boast of a Blackrock pad, is Joievilla, a fine four-bedroomed, detached family home, a stone’s throw off the Blackrock Road, just beyond Longboats pub, on Beaumont Drive. It’s listed by Ann O’Mahony of Sherry FitzGerald for relocating owners who reared a family here, and it carries an AMV of €830,000.

“Put this house, with its huge back garden, around the corner on the main Blackrock Road, and you’d be starting it off with a €1m-plus figure in the price guide,” Ms O’Mahony notes practically.

Joievilla is on the stretch on the right hand side closest to the Blackrock Road where a run of similar vintage homes have exceptionally long back gardens. In this house’s case, it’s about 60m in length, and has mature trees lining its side boundaries, like a mature colonnade.

Beaumont area homes have been selling strongly in the past two years: this stretch alone has seen semis going for €500k-plus, with one or two tipping past €600k, as in the case of 37 Beaumont Drive, also called La Reine as a 2021 sale at €640,000, well vastly above a €495,000 AMV.

No 37 had been the long-time home of the Bowles family (and Meyler grandchildren), known locally and nationally across swimming and soccer sports codes, and it featured in these pages back in July 2021, and after a 1970s extension that semi-d was c 1,400 sq ft.

Fully detached and L-shaped, Joievilla is dated to 1946, and has itself been home to a family for several decades, and has moved a bit with the times, with its kitchen and bathroom upgraded some years back, and windows have been replaced, with sash style frames in a number of instances.

It has two good reception rooms, and lots of original-era features too such as fireplaces, but these probably help pin a disappointing F Ber to the standalone two-storey detached property, with a mature (and currently shedding) magnolia in the front garden.

It’s in good overall condition, though, and Joievilla’s buyers could move in and make changes incrementally, reckons Ms O’Mahony, with no immediate need to extend.

Yet, given the address and location, with west-aspected super-long back garden, others with sufficient sums to splash about will be itching to buy, wrap with cosying insulation, and go larger with a build-on, creating a sheltering embrace to the sunny rear as some of the neighbours have already done to good effect.

A new-build, the 2,400 sq ft 1A Upper Beaumont Drive and one of two built on the old Spar shop site, made a recorded €811,00 back in 2020, while a handful of other A-BER rated new builds are currently wrapping up construction at Beaumont Crescent, at prices yet to be revealed.

VERDICT: Readies? Steady, go for the next best thing to the actual Blackrock Road, old stocks.