Lisney go for new heights with Sotheby's International Realty - and Cork's Falcal Heights

New agency link-up brings premium global brand name to 90-year old all-Ireland estate agency Lisney

Thu, 19 May, 2022 - 16:50

Property Editor Tommy Barker reports Pictures Denis Minihane

Clogheen, Cork
€1 million
Size	560 sq m (6,000 sq ft)
Bedrooms	6
Bathrooms	4
BER	C3

A LOT has changed since Falcal Heights was last put on the market with a €1m price tag — about the only thing that hasn’t changed is the house itself.

Built in the 1980s as the family home of former Cork City lord mayor Tim Falvey and his wife Bina, the 6,000sq ft property with large grounds went up for sale in 2017 with that €1m price tag. The selling agent was the couple’s grandson, Pat Falvey, son of the famed Irish mountaineer of the same name.

Since then, the Irish property market has picked up even more pace and reached a new peak, and the €1m price tag became more common again; there’s a war in Europe, and the planet is emerging from a two-year global pandemic.

And, the vendors of Falcal Heights, Tim Falvey (well known as a major house builder, Fianna Fáil city councillor, and Cork’s lord mayor in 1994) and his wife Bina, have both passed away during Covid times, Bina in 2020 and Tim in 2021.

Falcal Heights’ arrival back on the market is an executor/family estate sale, five years after it was actively bid to €950,000, just shy of the magic six-figure sum it had floated at when listed with Pat Falvey’s former agency, Coldwell Banker Carlton Estates.

That was a bit of a mouthful to say (or type, or recite if answering the office phone); now there’s a new moniker to rollout and it’s just as lengthy. It is now known as Lisney Sotheby’s International Realty, following the conclusion this week of a property business alignment.

No Blarney. Pictured are Edward Hanafin, Laura Pratt, Margaret Kelleher, Caroline Roberts, Trevor O’Sullivan and Pat Falvey, as Lisney becomes the exclusive affiliate for Sotheby’s International Realty in Ireland (castle not for sale!)

The nearly 90-year-old all-Ireland Lisney agency’s residential wing has become an exclusive affiliate of Sotheby’s and has just opened a second South Mall Lisney office, taking over the Cork Coldwell Banker operation at 55 South Mall/Princes Street.

It is the first time an estate agency in Cork has had two offices on South Mall, historically the main street for Cork’s commercial operations spanning banks, auctioneers, insurance companies, and the like.

Lisney’s commercial property and advisory arm will remain at 1 South Mall, under its traditional red sign livery, while the ‘ressie’ side will trade in blue livery with the longer Lisney Sotheby’s International Realty name spelled out across the facade of No 55.

Residential specialist Laura Pratt (who got c €1.5m for Knockrea House, the former home of Ibec, on the Douglas Road in recent months) has already made the move from No 1 to 55 South Mall: she joins Pat Falvey, Trevor O’Sullivan, and Caroline Roberts as the national agency invests strongly in its new growth strategy under managing director David Byrne and Cork-based chair Margaret Kelleher, who said the link with global brand Sotheby’s had been an almost two-year process during the pandemic disruptions.

One upshot is that the Sotheby ‘for sale’ banner will be attached to Falcal Heights — where it’s €1m price tag might well look like small beer given Sotheby’s Irish sales of late (under director David Ashmore) have included the Guinness family’s Luggala Estate on c 5,000 acres in Wicklow for over €20m, and the Abbeyleix Estate (jointly with Colliers) on c 1,100 acres in Laois for €20m to Stripe co-founder John Collison.

Welcoming Lisney (and by extension Coldwell Banker’s Cork business) to the Sotheby’s International Realty stable of 1,000 offices in 78 countries/territories as its sole Irish affiliate, president and CEO Philip White said Ireland was “attracting international attention and interest from major companies due to its quality of life and I look forward to supporting their firm as they service this growing market”.

Enter Falcal Heights on c 1.5 acres, 5km from Cork City on a height at Cloghroe and a bit less than that from the likes of Apple’s European headquarters at Hollyhill, where further extensions are planned/envisaged for that c 6,000-employee strong tech company.

The six-bed two-storey home, which got its name from an amalgamation of the surnames Falvey and O’Callaghan, is also within easy reach of Blarney and Ballincollig’s booming tech sector.

At close to 6,000sq ft, it will fit any size of family, and was built on an elevated site, originally planned to have an indoor swimming pool. In the event, the pool was covered over and used as a formal dining area (handily during the Falvey mayoral year in office). Access to the pool section is via a trap door and could be used as a huge capacity storage option.

With a large single-storey wing and main two-storey portion, the house was updated about a decade ago and is in excellent order inside and out, says agent Pat Falvey, describing it as spacious and impressive.

He knows every inch of his grandparents pride and joy, adding it’s rare to have so much space and ground so close to the city.

VERDICT: Plenty of space and close to the city.

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