There’s a lot of money tied up in Kinsale, and not just on the water

Property websites Myhome and Daft currently have over a dozen active listings at ‘excess €1m' in Kinsale

The view from an apartment at Ardbrack Heights, one of the most prized locations in Kinsale.

You don’t have to be a local, or a jaded property-watching cynic, to feel that Kinsale is a property market operating in a league, if not a balloon, all of its own.

By just about every metric, it’s a standout location, and not just for its prices, which are widely reported and often eye-watering, just about the strongest anywhere outside of the Dublin/Bray area according to Eircode price comparisons.

Leaving price aside for a short while, let’s look at the basics for Brand Kinsale.

It’s a very long-established settlement or community with very deep historical roots, maybe 14 centuries since its first monastic arrivals and over 1,000 years since the Vikings came.

And, what the Vikings started has continued ever since; arrivals rocking up from overseas, from near and far, with waves of attack and defence ships from France and Spain and from further over the oceans as the history books tell up, with fishermen, sea anglers, sailors, surfers and property speculators all also in thrall to Kinsale’s myriad attractions and harvests, many of whom go on to drop anchor here, extend their stays, and very often to invest in bricks and mortar.

They’ve also flown in by air, whizzed in by jet to the nearby international airport on the ‘right side’ of Cork city, and even more conveniently dropping in by helicopter, to private estates like Ballinacurra, and on a daily basis, to the Old Head of Kinsale Golf Course.

This €80m superyacht called Scout tied up for a few days this June at Castlepark marina, dwarfing its floating neighbours, while houses in the background along Kinsale’s Compass Hill can sell for €1m upwards, with one on the crown of the hill, Constantia Farm, making c €5 million last year with its Munster buyer spending up to €10m all-in on his hilltop property holding and family homestead.

These breezy blow-ins or blow-throughs, during their visits, spill over into wine bars, cafes, Michelin and Michelin-equivalent restaurants, book and craft shops, and checking out the local property market, whether by old-fashioned window gazing at estate agents’ local offices, by contacting the national agencies who compete strongly here for prestigious listings, or via deep online trawls, or listening to whispers about who’s selling what, and to whom.

From the air and from the water, undeniably Kinsale is a physically beautiful place, blessed by nature, geography and topography, hills, harbour. The waters wax and wane on the tides and the flow down from the River Bandon in its last break to the seas, changing over the centuries as valuable land was reclaimed and quays created for commerce.

There are trips up the River Bandon, visual backdrops like James and Charles Forts with 500 years’ sense of place, and a charming, winsome town in its cocoon.

In a country obsessed with road-frontage, Kinsale of course goes one step further: it is blessed with lots and lot of waterfrontage.

Like many a vain individual, Kinsale likes to look at itself. It likes to reflect on its glories, and preen a little in the sunshine glinting off the waters in its harbour embrace. So, it’s little surprise that two of the most valuable locations in which to have a Kinsale home are Arbrack, which looks over the water and town to Compass Hill and up the River Bandon, and then, reflexively in return, Compass Hill, which looks back out over the town, down the river to, yes, you guessed it, toward Ardbrack and Summercove.

Bizarrely, Kinsale barely remembers to trade on the fact it is one of the start/end points of that marketing wheeze which is the envy of more than half the rest of the country, the Wild Atlantic Way and a point of note that lesser towns along the west coast trade upon as a vital life source and tourism income support. 

It’s almost as if Kinsale says: “Wild Atlantic Way? But sure why would you want to move from here?" 

There’s a wide variety of buildings, from fishermens’ cottages of old, to elegant terraces, little cul de sacs with Council houses, guesthouses and almshouses, new estates on the fringes helping to match supply to insatiable demand, slate-hung period Victorian and Georgian homes, apartments in brutal blocks or in more considered convent conversions, and many, many extravagant architectural one-offs. Lots of glass boxes, too, with not a traditional slate in sight.

Not everything old and new is pretty or close to perfect, but there’s a rich array, strong visual stimulation, a wide array of essential services, shops, sports facilities and the like all close to hand.

There’s a higgledy-piggledy town street plan town only adding to its appeal, more pedestrian-friendly now than one given over to the convenience of car owners, and the harbour is thronged with boats of all sizes, near-year around, with several marinas where many dozens of craft are worth up to and well over the average house price, yet spend most of their days tethered up, seemingly less buoyant than the area’s humming property market.

Notably, Kinsale harbour hosted two superyachts this month in the €80m to €100m price league, Kaos and Scout (see pic) a reminder if needed that while Kinsale property values are high, there are people out there in the ether and ocean waves for whom a €5m Kinsle property price tag is, for them, a drop in the ocean.

Compact Kinsale (pop c 5,000, and swelling the summers) is home to more €1m+ homes than any other Irish location outside of The Pale, punching well above its weight. By this year’s end it will have chalked up over 50 private house sales over the €1m price since the Price Register started showing firm sale figures from 2010.

Property websites like Myhome and Daft currently show well over a dozen active listings at ‘excess €1m,’ and in fact there are probably 20 or so which get the local ‘halo’ effect but don’t all pop up under a ‘Kinsale’ search. There’s an ever-stretching Cork coastal market rising on a Kinsale district and post-pandemic tide, west down along the rugged peninsulas of West Cork and east towards Nohoval, where a €2m sale occurred in the past year, as ripples of affluence spread and as spots like Fountainstown get ‘Kinsale prices’ remarked upon.