€1.5m Cork City home is going to set a price record for Botanika

No 3 is the first detached house to come up for sale in this upmarket estate of 31 homes

No 3 Botanika, Blackrock, Cork. Pictures: Ryan Lynch

Ballintemple, Cork City
€1.5m
Size	226 sq m (2,430 sq ft)
Bedrooms	4
Bathrooms	4
BER	A3

The 31 houses in Botanika, built in 2017, are each in the €1m+ price league. Half of them are detached, the other half semis.

The first detached for resale is the immaculate, interior-designed family home No 3, on the market this weekend for €1.5m, up 80% on the €840,000 its owners paid.

Back when Botanika was built by developers Citidwell, it was expected that the houses would sell for €1m, given the Ballintemple location, just off the city end of the Blackrock Rd, on a prized site, inside Cleve Hill.

In the event, all the detacheds sold smartly in the mid-€800,000s, with one of the developers keeping the largest site for his own family home.

The semi-ds in Botanika have risen by 50% since their launch in November 2017, evidenced by the sales in 2025 of No 26, at €920,000, and of No 14, at €900,000, having initially sold new at €628,000 (No 26) and €595,000 (No 14).

Estate agent Michael Downey, of ERA Downey McCarthy, knows Botanika well, and was the selling agent for No 14, whose owners traded up to a detached within Botanika: Now, he’s got the first detached resale, and it’s a cracker.

The €1.5m four-bed has 2,430 sq ft of accommodation, finished to a high standard, with interior design by Gráinne O’Connor, of Crayon Creative.

One of the more individual touches is the dripping, crystal-look chandelier hanging over the stairwell: It’s on an electric pulley system for ease of cleaning, a 21st century take on this ‘statement’ lighting feature, with the lights-on-pulleys concept going back to medieval times.

That’s about the only ‘old world’ feature at this A3 BER home, which has air-to-water heating delivered underfloor at ground level, with herringbone-style Amtico flooring in the hall, and other Amtico floor patterns in the rest of the ground-floor rooms, and in the bathrooms, while all four bedroom are carpeted. Restrained design is by Hogan Architecture, who also did upmarket Cork schemes, like Court Cairn, Lindville, and The Paddocks.

Botanika’s external finishes are a mix of brick by the front door and creamy wet dash elsewhere, so maintenance is kept to a minimum, and No 3 also goes far down the low-maintenance line, with a brick/cobble lock paved front drive (enough paring for up to three cars, and there’s an EV charger), while around the back there’s a paved patio, with a second, longer, raised garden section with play area, steel storage shed, and finished with artificial ‘premium’ grass, as are a number of other Botanika homes.

Accommodation within No 3 sees a front reception room with bay window, multi-fuel stove, with built-in cabinetry to the left of the hall and with part glazed double doors; mid-section is a study and furthest back is an L-shaped kitchen, with dining/living area alongside, with electric fire.

Sage-green cabinetry in the kitchen goes full height, floor to ceiling, on one wall, with two electric ovens.

Other integrated appliances are in floor-level cabinets, and worktops are in pale, premium, Dekton sintered stone, in slender sections, and the same finish is also on the island, with feature overhead light.

Rounding out the ground floor are a guest WC and a utility, with a carpet runner up the stairs with panel-effect walls in the hall, stairwell, and first-floor landing.

Up here are three double bedrooms and a single. Two of the four bedrooms are en suite, and the front main bedroom has a railed balcony outside, over the living room, and the family bathroom has an oval, standalone bath and a separate shower.

No 3 is immaculate and given that it’s coming to market early in the year, it will get keen viewing interest and bidding, says ERA agent Michael Downey. Other selling points include being walking distance to the city centre, and proximity to Ballintemple (just on the other side of Lindville) and to the new Marina Park, enhanced Atlantic Pond, play areas, as well as padel courts, urban sauna centre, and food courts down off Monahan Rd, such as the Black Market and the Marina Market.

Botanika’s six-acre site was first identified by Howard Holdings, who’d paid more than €10m — at peak boom time, when they had their own major plans for Cork’s south docks — to the Murphy family (architect Frank Murphy had developed Cleve Hill 50 years earlier).

The wooded site was later sold by a receiver to Leinster-based Oaktree Capital/Bridgetree Homes for €3m, who got Botanika’s planning grant and then ‘flipped’ it to Citidwell for about €6m.

VERDICT: No 3 is going to set a price record for Botanika, at, or over, its €1.5m AMV. Since it was built, a number of niche new Cork homes schemes, such as Ecklinville on Orchard Rd, and on the Model Farm Rd, have kicked off with €1m+ guides, and more are to come.

Might something even more upmarket be in the wings for the Blackrock Rd’s Feltrim, sold near to Botanika, on three acres for €6m?