Tommy Barker: The 50 Cork homes that sold for €1m+ in 2022

Over 50 Cork homes made over €1m in 2022, a near record year at the top end — while young Irish actor Paul Mescal bought at a more affordable level in Scull, West Cork

Kitchen confidential: massively upgraded Dripsey Castle Estate was the big and surprise Irish country homes seller of 2022, making almost double its €2.95m AMV but has yet to appear on the Price Register

FOR us Irish, property and housing has always been of quite exceptional and all-consuming interest.

Paul Mescal bought his first home in West Cork off-market near Schull, following in the footsteps of fellow thespian Saoirse Ronan who bought nearby in Ballydehob two years ago (see details below)

Now, it’s become even more divided and divisive, spanning the haves, the have loads, the have-nots, and the almost hopeless.

Period home at the Dripsey Castle Estate, likely to have made c €5.8m in a swift sale

Housing is the acknowledged battleground on which the next general election will be fought, pipping even minefields like health, and pressing issues from global pandemic recovery to cost-of-living crises, a war in Europe heading into a second year, refugee accommodation difficulties and — looming overall — climate change.

The planet isn’t healing, we know, and how we live, where we live and build, how we build (modular is still slow out of the stocks) plan development, use our homes, fuel them, fund them, and even justify them is an elusive, complex and moving series of targets and aspirations.

A c 7,000 sq ft modern home on a double site in  Maryborough Orchard, Douglas, Cork made €2.5m, the strongest price for a city home since 'the Crash.'

We know that turning a ship like housing around is a slow process, both in terms of policy and delivery, with long lead-ins, protracted planning and funding it all on a financial rollercoaster.

For once, though, the Government has cash aplenty, in contrast to the private sector where lending caution is just one of the brakes affecting this segment.

The headline figures of supply are pretty well-flagged and the various metrics are coalescing more than ever before. Supply in 2022 showed a rise to maybe 26,000 completions by year’s end, but on the broad front of demographics, housing formation and more we should be building perhaps double that amount (c 50,000-60,000 a year to balance the market demand/supply nexus) and to bring more energy-efficient homes to the fore.

Knockrea House,  Douglas Road, made €1.5m. The recently built 'lodge 'next door made even more, €1.8m in an off-market deal

We have c 1.9m inhabited homes currently, best guestimates are that that figure needs to rise to 3m-3.5m homes by  2050.

Worryingly, instead of ramping up from the 2022 year-end 26,000 unit outturn, from onsite commencements and pipeline, it looks like 2023 will see a dip instead of a hike, with approved housing bodies (AHBs) and the Land Development Agency continuing to take up a larger percentage of supply. 

It’s a long overdue correction, but the private market also sees the level of demand ahead of what they can currently afford to build, and what buyers can afford to fund.

Stone Hall,  Glandore made €3.4 million

That’s a worry for Government with an election looming for 2025 (new Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has rightly pinned the issue housing to the top of his political mast when taking up office) and the myriad initiatives introduced (Help to Buy, Croí Cónaithe, Tosaigh, changes to macroprudential lending rules, etc) in the year-old Housing For All programme under retained Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien is starting to pick up some momentum.

The First Home Scheme (shared equity/FHS) is going to get a determined push in the first half of 2023 and got media promotion over the holiday break by Government to raise its profile and underscore its potential. It’s also addressed in expert editorial contributions within this issue, in coming pages.

Despite headwinds of late — pandemic, war, cost-of-living crisis — Irish house prices are expected to grow even further in 2023, but at a lower pace (say, mid single digits) than the last year or two: Lack of supply is keeping them up.

The rental sector is a basket case, with rents higher than mortgages a damning indictment of dysfunction and with a flight of private landlords from the sector, despite sky-high rents (see p18). Broadly, house sale volumes nationally bounced back to pre-pandemic levels in 2022, heading to c 60,000 in the coming year, and the year just ending threw up some remarkable sales, with a record number of number of €1m+ transaction in Cork, Munster, and nationally, if that crude metric shows anything of wider substance.

Reagrove,  Minane Bridge home and lands made c €2.2m+, sold in lots

Of course it shows something: It shows the widening gap in wealth stakes and social disparity, the strength of the US dollar and buyers from across the Atlantic, and the presence of Irish buyers returning from overseas and either enriched by their stints away, or from selling property in hot spots like London (where, paradoxically, property prices are dipping). Among the big Irish buyers of 2022 were individuals who’d sold companies for multi-million euro dividends and were reinvesting in bricks, mortar, land, and family homes.

Each Munster county shows recovery at the high end since the The Crash, with a number of bulk sales still distorting Price Register records for €1m+ property sales.

In Cork, the register shows a whopping 73 €1m+ transactions for 2022 — it was a single-digits figure a decade ago.

Of the 73, about 20 are bulk sales, so a closer perusal suggests that 50-55 private houses/small estates were bought in the last year... and as well as quantity, there was significant quality too, with some extraordinary bidding frenzies.

It shows, too, a slight but perceptible shift in locations coming into favour, as well as the emergence of buyers prepared to pay top sums for new or newer properties, not just the old staple of period piles and homes in long-settled and favoured locations.

Top country/county Cork result of the year is likely to be Dripsey Castle, which just went ballistic with dollar-funded buyers not letting up: It had a €2.95m guide with Lisney Sotheby’s International Realty (SIR), and this prestigious Lee Valley listing signed just before Christmas for almost double its asking price, likely to be just a bit under the €5.9m sum speculated upon in some quarters.

That price paid for a c 18th-century mansion, and c 15th-century castle on a 70-acre estate which largely generates its own energy will show on the Register in coming months (minus the bulk of its acreage) while the buyer’s identity isn’t yet “out there” either. Speculation is that it’s someone who’s sold a business...

Constantia Farm, on top of Compass Hill  made c €5,5m, bought by an Irish purchaser

By sheer coincidence (bar the fact “money makes money”), the Dripsey record will just about eclipse the otherwise headline sale of 2022, the modern and energy-efficient Constantia Farm, on the top of Compass Hill in Kinsale, a 4,000 sq ft house on 27 acres built just five years ago. Constantia Farm’s family buyers were former owners of Dripsey Castle, having sold it in 2014 for a reported €2m to move to West Cork and who got a company sale windfall in 2022 themselves.

As regularly acknowledged, Kinsale is Munster’s premium property address reported, but not only was it trumped this year by Drispey Castle, its ripple effects seem to have spread not just west along the coast, but eastwards too.

The Price Register shows a modern 6,200 sq ft energy-efficient home at Reagrove, Minane Bridge fetching €1.9m, having been offered at €1.75m by joint agent Patricia Stokes and Michael Pigott. It had the option to be purchased on six or 22 acres. In the event, the buyer mix included one or two buying acreage at above-farm values, so the total sale figure at Reagrove/Nohoval is likely to be in excess of €2.2m.

Avalon, at Sandycove near  Kinsale made €2.35m.

And, just west of Kinsale, a contemporary home, Avalon, shows at €2.35m at Sandycove, sold by Sherry FitzGerald Country Homes/Christie’s, who also sold a sprawling modern waterfront home, Otterbank, at far-distant Castletownbere for €2.2m.

West Cork once more played to its international strengths: the Georgian Stone Hall in Glandore made €3.4m via Charles P McCarthy whose clutch of €1m+ sales included two at Clonakilty, while local Clon agents Hodnett Forde sold Ballycowen House, built by Flemings, close to Timoleague to TV’s health guru Karl Henry and family for a reported €1.14m.

Away from the coast, and rivers and landed estates, a top Cork City house price record since the financial crisis from 2008 was set in Douglas, again “off-market”. A couple with medical backgrounds paid €2.5m for Muirwood, an outsized (c 7,000 sq ft, perhaps?) c 200-year-old home on a double site at Maryborough Orchard, showing up on the Price Register at €2.42m.

Also making an appearance on the register at an even €2.5m is Windyridge on several acres on the Rochestown Road, owned by a medic who bought in 2014 for €1.558m, but well-placed sources suggest Windyridge/Windy Ridge was an asset transfer and not a proper sale to a third party.

Muirwood was sold by Cohalan Downing, who also got €1.5m for the luxury dormer rebuild, Clonard, at the foot of Muirwood Maryborough Hill and, outside of the city. Cohalan Downing scored €2.35m for the period River Blackwater home Ileclash, on 12 acres, jointly with Colliers after several years of the market.

Back inside the Maryborough Orchard enclave in the Douglas hotel grounds, DNG Creedon got its second resale of a detached at well over €1m, following on from the €1.275m it got for Carrigfoyle months beforehand.

Cork’s Douglas had a “good year” at the upper price echelons. Muirwood’s €2.5m vendor quickly snapped up the, eh, “trade-down” Knockrea Lodge on the Douglas Road, also off-market. The architect-designed property made a stonking €1.8m.

Apart from that, a quite remarkable €1.8m price for a compact site, it stands out because the “lodge” ended up making €300,000 more than the adjoining period Knockrea House which was sold in 2022 by IBEC, via Lisney SIR for a recorded €1.5m. However, while Knockrea Lodge was in walk-in order, the buyers of the period Knockrea House will have to spend more to turn it back to residential use once more.

Knockrea House, Blackrock Road, sold during 2022, for c €1.4m with the sale closing in 2023

Coincidentally, another period home also called Knockrea House on the city end of the Blackrock Road also sold in 2022 for c€1.4m, via Barry Auctioneers (who got a strong €1.25m for 21 Janeville, Ballintemple), but has yet to surface on the Price Register. No 25 Lindville sold in 2022, off market, via Frank V Murphy & Co for €1.3m, and the Blackrock vicinity is rife with rumours of a pending purchase by a leading Irish rugby name...

Nirvana Myrtleville made €1.275m

Meanwhile, back at the city end of the Blackrock Road, No 4 Ashton Place made €1.4m off-market via Sherry FitzGerald which notched up an impressive 10 €1m+ property sales in locations as diverse as Spur Hill, Fennells Bay (€1.275m for Nirvana), Blackrock, Cobh, and Model Farm Road, including a number of new builds at the niche scheme Vailima. A city period property c €2m deal was in the offering with same agents by this year’s end.

Greenbanks home made €1.5m

Savills got €1.5m for a new build at Greenbanks, off the Well Road, Douglas, as well as €1.26m for Inglenook, Sundays Well and outside of Cork has three exceptional Co Kerry result at Killorglin (€1.6m Robins Farm), Killegy House Killarney €1.6m and €2.3m+ at Caragh Lake.

Inglenook, Sunday's Well made €1.26m

On the celeb circuit, double Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel went ‘sale agreed’ on a coastal home near Clonakilty, but pulled out at the very last minute after its location was revealed, citing security fears after attacks from right-wing UK media and fanatics... shades of Meghan and Harry complaints about the tabloids, landing on Irish shores?.

Ms Mantel continued her West Cork home hunt up until her untimely death aged 70 in September.

Paul Mescal bought off-market in West Cork

A sale that did close out was to movieland’s flavour of the moment young Irish actor, Paul Mescal of Normal People, Aftersun, and The Lost Daughter among other titles fame.

Currently doing theatre (reprising Marlon Brando’s role in A Streetcar Named Desire) Kildare-born Mescal has bought his first home in Schull, off-market via agency James Lyons O’Keeffe who also sold to fellow thespian Saoirse Ronan two years earlier in nearby Ballydehob (Mescal and Ronan are to appear together in 2023 the sci-fi thriller Foe.... and possibly at the local Centra?!)

The Schull district “character” property was bought by Mescal while he was publicly romantically linked to singer Phoebe Bridgers: exact location and price paid, isn’t public knowledge.

Twenty-six-year-old Paul Mescal’s global public profile jumped up a notch or two though when he was the front-page image and 10 page black-and-white pictorial spread inside the prestigious Financial Times’ glossy magazine How to Spend It.

It ran under the banner ‘Paul Mescal on Movies, Mortgages and taking on Marlon Brando’ in which he quipped about doing the adult mortgage thing, admitting that taking on a mortgage was “slightly stressful. But exciting. You have to grow up at some point.”

To Schull through the rushes

Mescal — now an ambassador for watch brand Cartier — didn’t exactly locate his buy (the Irish Examiner correctly listed it as Schull pre-Christmas, and it was for well under the €1m sum being paid elsewhere around Cork) but said he’d bought “in a beautiful part of the world. It’s peaceful. And the people are kind.”

Like, Normal People so, when they learn How to Spend It.

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