€925k Cork city home could be just what doctor ordered

Medics are driving Model Farm Road home values into the millions in many cases: here's one for a bit less

Fri, 28 Nov, 2025 - 00:00

Property Editor Tommy Barker reports Pictures: MediaPro Cork

Model Farm Road, Carrigrohane, Cork
€925,000
Size	182 sq m (1,960 sq ft)
Bedrooms	4
Bathrooms	4
BER	A2

IT’S been true for decades — proximity to Cork University Hospital (CUH) has underpinned home values and housing demand in the city’s western suburbs, heck, ever since the late 1970s when the Regional Hospital, aka the ‘Wilton Hilton’, opened its swing doors.

Today, coming close to the CUH’s 50th anniversary (2028), the sprawling campus employs 5,300 people across all grades, with the top-tier medical consultants among the best paid — on salaries from €230,000 to €350,000 — in public practice, going far higher again for those with an element of private practice.

On top of that number are staff levels at the private hospital the Bon Secours, with about 1,600 employees across all grades, and feeding into demand for the western suburbs too is the likes of the Mercy University Hospital (1,400 employees) and Marymount hospice.

Exterior of 9 Reldare, by the Poulevone roundabout on the Model Farm Road

And that’s not even mentioning the impact of high-tech wages in the likes of Apple in Hollyhill (5,000+ employees in Cork) and Dell/Emc in Ovens, with up to 2,000 employed.

This sort of concentration of well-heeled working families has driven and maintained house values west of the city centre: witness the Price Register showing about two-dozen €1m+ sales with a Model Farm Rd address, and there’s more if you push the boundaries back to College Rd, Sunday’s Well, and Waterfall, with a number of housing schemes now having passed the €1m barrier for new-builds.

One, No 3 Ecklinville, the former showhouse on the Orchard Rd near UCC, hit the Price Register in 2025 at €1.642m, with all nine others in the scheme over €1.25m.

There’s more to come?

Seasoned developers Ruden Homes, who did the Model Farm Rd’s upmarket scheme Hayfield back in 2002, have two more Model Farm Rd schemes advancing in construction. Hermitage Farm and Dromvane Farm, at 33 and 22 units respectively, to include a mix of semi-detached homes and detacheds, with some of the largest at up to 2,500 sq ft.

It’s expected that Hermitage Farm will launch early in the new year, with the bigger of those detached houses expected to come in the €1m+ league, possibly €1.25m fro some, but no details are yet confirmed.

With talk of Ruden’s launch swirling in the ether, it’s in the minds of 2025 and 2026 home-hunters and it’s impacting other resales in the Model Farm Rd/western suburbs/Ballincollig ether too. Into this comes the launch of No 9 Reldare, a showhome-standard, four-bed, detached, 1,960 sq ft, five-year-old home, built in the 48-unit Reldare scheme, by the Poulevone Roundabout/Carrigrohane, by O’Callaghan Properties.

First viewings started at No9 this week with agent Fiona Waldron, of DNA Finn O’Connor, and she launched at €925,000 for relocating owners who put their own assured décor stamp on it in their short period here.

With twins in tow (she’s a medical specialist, he’s a teacher,) their travels are over for now bar a move to another Munster location to be closer to family generations in a more rural setting.

They say they’ll miss both the friends they made here among Reldare neighbours and the comfort of an A2-rated home.

“It’s like living in a hotel — the house is always at the same temperature and there’s always hot water,” they chime, quipping that when they first met, the living accommodation of the time was “like an ice box”. So not the case here.

The couple’s purchase of No 9 came about in 2021 when they came for a look with an open mind at the scheme in progress, reckoning that in No 9, which is by the front of the cul-de-sac mix of three and four-bed homes, they got one of the last of the four-bed detacheds.

They paid €596,000 (the Price Register has it down at €584,000) and, as it was to be a showhouse for the type for O’Callaghan Properties, it already had a kitchen being fitted. Luckily, they liked the look and layout of the dark-grey units and pale quartz tops with antique brass T-handles but, elsewhere, they made some very personal and successful adaptations.

Chief among these was the decision to line an entire internal wall in the kitchen/diner with salvaged red bricks, dating back to the 19th or even 18th century, sourced from Deco Stones, Ballincollig. Its website shows similar reclaimed brick slips retailing at about €60 per square metre, and here they are skilfully set with pale mortar around a side window, and the same brick is used across the kitchen as a full-height splashback behind a slick hob.

Of the mix of contemporary and traditional, “I like a modern rustic look,” admits one of the couple, suggesting a dream still might be an old farmhouse in West Cork… if they ever get a yearning for a return to more ice-box days.

There’s more brick — white by way of contrast to the vintage stock — used in No 9’s front living room for the chimney breast/home hearth, with its LED-lit, app-controlled D steam flame-effect electric fire (Faber E-Matrix, via Flame by Design). It’s framed in a bespoke, bevelled white-painted timber surround done by makers Brogeen Crafts, Kanturk, and Brogeen also did the rustic solid-wood bookshelves flanking either side of the fireplace.

Other upmarket touches include the dado/wainscoting wall panelling done by Tipperary firm Wallpanels in the hall, stairs with pale runner carpet, top-floor en suite bedrooms, a large dual-aspect space currently used as a ‘man cave’, a gym, and, a study with lots of accessible eaves storage.

Like many parents in now very common three-storey builds, the couple chose to sleep on the mid-level to be near their young charges — moving up to the more palatial and private top-floor suite can be considered a ‘trade-up/move for future years’ in these ‘homes for life’. Buying No 9 was meant to be for the longer term too for these vendors but the draw of family and cousins and clan further afield has proven too strong.

The house is on a wedge-shaped site with early landscaping already taking hold, with scope for more climbers up a rear boundary wall, and the south-east aspect behind is good and bright, with off-street parking in front for several cars.

No 9 presents as new, and comes in the same month as the 121 sq m (1,300 sq ft) three-bed semi-d No5 Reldare, which featured in these pages Saturday last with a €525,000AMV with agent Jeremy Murphy, who was pushing a dozen viewings at No 5 by this weekend.

VERDICT: Residents reckon that over a dozen homes in 48-unit Reldare have “a medic in the house” and quip that most healthcare specialisms are represented. Who will find these offers are just what the doctors ordered?