Ready when you are: this €730k Cork semi-d needs nothing but new owners

Already extended and fully refurbished, this turnkey family home near Douglas Road combines smart space with top-tier finishes

Sat, 07 Jun, 2025 - 12:00

Property Editor Tommy Barker reports

Browningstown, Douglas, Cork
€730,000
Size	190 sqm (2,035 sq ft)
Bedrooms	3 - 4
Bathrooms	3
BER	B3

There is a huge peace of mind, on two fronts, with the chance to buy a family home such as this suburban semi-d, 57 Browningstown West.

One — and key— is it’s a walk-in condition home, needing absolutely nothing, bar a change of furniture and any personal décor tweaks.

Two, the home belongs to a seasoned chartered quantity surveyor and family, who knows his onions, knows his costs, and knows what makes a house work. Reassuring too, the work was done by his brother, who is a carpenter/builder with as much experience as the QS here who was paying the bills.

If you had the choice, you would rather not be paying broad build costs today for a job such as this, or almost realistically for any job of extension or upgrade right now, given the sharp rise in both labour and material costs over the past five years, post covid, supply chain challenges and skilled labour shortages.

The man of the house here says as a quantity surveyor he is generally citing a cost of €3,000 per square metre for clients now looking to do even a single-storey extension to an existing home.

This chimes with the sort of quotes small builders are giving for garage conversions and linkages/extensions to typical suburban homes, detached or semis: expect wrap-around and two-storey builds to go up in costs, and what if you then want to update all other elements of a decades’ old and low-BER assumed house?

Ouch.

At a crude level, adding 80 sq metres of single-storey extension/conversion will come in at c €250,000 and that’s a pretty typical sort of sum many families now face just to get a bit of future-proofed breathing space for their brood.

Go bigger and bolder, and quotes of €500,000 for extensions/upgrades aren’t uncommon at all, and that’s on top of purchase prices which also are at an all-time high today.

Of late, Irish Examiner Property & Home is coming across resale offers where recent buyers have bought, got planning for extensions and have since with some horror when receiving quotes realised they can’t afford to do what their hearts wanted.... They face options of staying put, doing smaller scale work, doing retrofits using grants primarily, kicking the can down the road, or biggest wrench, offering for resale, heavy-hearted, and going back to the drawing board.

No such worries here at 57 Browning

stown West, already extended (twice), between the main Douglas Road and the Ballinlough Road in Cork city’s long-settled and superbly well-serviced southside suburbs.

No 57’s a 190 sq m/2,035 sq ft three-four bed semi-d, extended to the side, over two levels, with an attic conversion, all in immaculate condition and with a pleasing aesthetic, clean and calm from top to bottom, with an X BER, drylined internally, and with alu-clad glazing and on-trend bifold doors to the rear for patio access It’s just listed with estate agent Brian Olden of Cohalan Downing with a €730,000 AMV: it’s very likely to make that, and possibly a good deal more once viewings kick off proper.

Homes in and around No 57 show a variety of sizes, states and designs. Some are still original to the mid to late 1940s origins, others have gone large, others are bold and contemporary and wrapped to side and back.

No 57 treads a mid-way path in terms of extension, neither too big, too bold or too brash.

The family here bought back in 1998, when its underpinning and drains work was certified (by the then well-regarded HMC), and subsequently converted the attached garage to living space.

Next, by 2010, they added to the side at first-floor level and up to the attic level too, in timber frame, so that now it’s quite a wide house, looking nicely tied together and ‘homogenous’ with matching dash and glazing to the front.

It has a west-facing back garden, a favoured aspect for outdoor family life, with off-street parking on a brick paved drive in front, and now with double height bay windows both on the original façade and on the two-storey side extension also, with a Velux barely visible on the ‘new’ tiled side roof.

The internal layout works very well, with three external steps up to the front door to a wide-plank oak floored hall, with guest WC off.

Left of this is a compact home office, with a bay window, and an external door to the side passage: handy for callers, and with another door to a large, deep and double-aspect rear lounge which goes left of the kitchen.

To the right of the hall is a quite standard-sized reception room, with a corniced ceiling, bay window and wide, contemporary-style integrated solid fuel stove in a plain chimney breast with granite hearth.

Behind, effectively full-width but with a plan ‘broken’ by a partial split level is the kitchen, family dining (with smart vertical rad, gas hob, and unfussy painted Shaker style units with Silestone tops on units and peninsula) and, down three steps is the 20’ by 13’ lounge, part-screened by a plain glass baluster, with bifold doors to the patio (also part split level outside) and with a glazed door back to the home office up front.

The first floor has an excellent floor plan too, with a top main bedroom suite on the left with a bay window, and has a walk-through dressing room/robes to a private bathroom with shower.

Across on the ‘original’ side are two double bedrooms, one front, one to the rear, with a laundry room in the mid-rear leading to a family bathroom with another shower.

A second, full-access staircase leads from the landing to the attic level, with sloping ceilings fore and aft, and set into several connected sections on either side of the stairs, over 25’ from end to end and over 12’ wide but with restricted headroom on the outside: used as an occasional bedrooms, and further home office/study, it has two Velux widow to the west/rear and one on the end/south.

Condition and décor are excellent, and Cohalan Downing’s Brian Olden says No 57 has good space, bright rooms, nice sized bedrooms/bedroom options, west aspect behind in a neat landscaped garden with raised old rail sleeper shrub beds and “has many of the necessary attributes any family would want; secluded rear garden, tastefully presented accommodation and all within striking distance of numerous schools, bus route and shopping in nearby Douglas village: it’s a top class location.”

VERDICT: A real box ticker, with all the necessary work done. The only question is just how strong bidding might go, with the recent top price being €770,000 for St Bronach, a 1,250 sq ft pristine three-bed/one bath semi with home office, which vastly exceeded its initial €585,00 AMV when launched in May 2024...