According to auctioneer Dominic Daly, "houses that can fetch top prices of £1 million or more are like hens' teeth in Cork - few and far between". Those that achieve seven-figure prices - such as the home of businessman Clayton Love on the Blackrock road which was sold for £2.8 million - are rare, and only an exceptional house sitting on several acres with development potential can hope to touch that figure.
Take for example Merton, the picture-perfect 19th-century birthplace of the writer Francis Orpen Morris in French's Walk, Cobh - a 20-minute drive from the city centre - which sold recently for "over £600,000". The website of the agent, Michael H Daniels, described Merton as "an impressive Regency house tucked away amongst delightful gardens enjoying a magnificent elevated and south-facing situation with panoramic views over Cork harbour." Merton also has eight bedrooms, a linen room, a two-storey coach-house, an orchard and Victorian Italianate gardens. It sits on over two acres.
The guide price for Merton was £450,000. The agent had had "very good interest" and expected it to fetch at least £550,000. You wouldn't get a comparable property in Dublin for less than £1 million, but then Cork is a very different market.
House prices have shot up an average of 16 per cent per annum in Cork over the past four years, bringing it more into line with Dublin and other European cities, but, according to Peter Cave of Hamilton Osborne King, Cork is unlikely to catch up with Dublin in terms of house prices:
"Obviously Dublin is a bigger city with a bigger population [the population of the greater Cork area is a quarter of a million]. Like in the case of Manchester and London, Cork is the second city and therefore will probably always lag behind Dublin."
While Cork has experienced many of the benefits of the so-called Celtic Tiger economy, it has been described by one auctioneer as a quieter, more conservative prosperity which has probably suffered from the fact that Cork has no equivalent to the Irish Financial Services Centre.
But Cork is a compact city with many attractions. "You can have a good quality of life here," says Joseph McCarthy of Irish and European auctioneers. "The improved road infrastructure around the city and the Jack Lynch Lee Tunnel has meant most places are easily accessible and it has greatly eased the traffic problem. Promotion to Dublin, where the traffic is chaotic and it can take hours to get home, is no longer necessarily seen as a promotion."
The new ring road system has transformed the fortunes of areas on the outskirts of the city which were regarded as the sleepy towns of the 1980s. Places like Carrigaline, Ballincollig and Carrigtwohill - once satellite towns but now regarded as suburbia - have become increasingly popular, particularly with first-time buyers, and have been targeted by developers for further growth. A trawl through Cork estate agents' websites will unearth houses in Ballincollig from £115,000 - the asking price for a three-bed semi-detached in West Mews estate. A four-bed semi in the Westgrove estate has an asking price of £160,000. In Carrigaline, a four-bed semi-detached in Rockboro Heights will cost about £130,000 and a four-bed detached in Bridgemount is for sale for £157,000. A three-bed semi in Rocklands, Carrigtwohill, will fetch about £115,000.
However, trends indicate a greater movement of people out to towns as far as Mallow, Midleton, Bandon and Macroom. "Some of these places once took up to an hour to reach but now only take 20 minutes," says Joseph McCarthy. "There was a time when you would take your life in your hands travelling the Cork-Mallow road on the narrow with bad bends but now there's a dual carriageway." Part of the attraction of moving to these towns is that houses tend to be from 12.5 to 15 per cent cheaper than the city on average. Also they are generally well serviced with schools, banks and shops and have a greater amount of land zoned for residential development. The coastal areas are also experiencing a resurgence and there has been increasing interest in areas such as Passage West and Crosshaven.
Recently, Denis Guerin, of Frank V Murphy and Co, sold a four-bedroom detached 2,300 sq ft house in Highlands, Passage West, for £250,000. Three years ago, when it was a less desirable location, it would have cost £100,000. Cohalan Downing Associates are joint agents in Pembroke Wood, a new development of duplex apartments, bungalows, three and four-bed semis and four-bed detacheds in the area, which range in price from £130,000 to £300,000. The area is earmarked for a £70 million waterfront residential and commercial development to include a 72-bed hotel, 270 apartments and 22,000 sq ft of office space. In Cork city and its environs, the scarcity of zoned land for residential development has become an issue. Many are awaiting the next County Development plan, due out next year, with bated breath. Almost three-quarters of the land zoned in the greater Cork area in the 1996 development plan was sold or accounted for before publication of the plan.
It is expected that this anomaly will be addressed in the forthcoming plan. Forecasts estimate that there will be a 10 to 12 per cent rise in house prices this year, a lower rise than previous years - prices went up 20 per cent in 1998 and 17.5 per cent in 1999. The first-time buyers market in Cork is currently "active and buoyant", according to Joseph McCarthy. People are not only moving outwards - there is also greater movement between the north and the south sides of the city. Cork isn't the only Irish city with a great northside/southside divide but there have been signs there in recent years that "the barrier has been lowered", according to McCarthy
"The northside/southside barrier is not as evident as it was five or six years ago. Your basic three bedroom semi-detached house can be up to 10 per cent cheaper on the north side so there is a trend now where people who grew up on the south side are moving over to the north side because they are first-time buyers and want to get their leg on the first rung of the ladder." On the north side, areas popular with first-time buyers include Glanmire and Ballyvolane. You can buy a three-bedroom semi-detached bungalow in Oakfield, Glanmire, for about £125,000. A four-bed semi-detached in Meadow Park Lawn, Ballyvolane, costs £105,000 and the asking price for a house in Mervue, Ballyvolane, would be about £125,00 plus.
There are also bargains to be had in the north side inner city, many parts of which are very hilly, but have a certain crumbling grandeur. Some of the former local authority houses on the north side inner city have been upgraded and renovated and sell well. It is rare to find anything for under £90,000 - the asking price for a renovated two-bed terraced house in Barrack View off Roman Street - but a browse through the property web pages came up with a one-bed renovated house with "a Mediterranean feel" for £70,000 which comes with the warning from agents Irish and European, "the internal condition is deceiving the front facade". A four-bed detached house on Sidney Park, Wellington Road, regarded as the most fashionable part of north side inner city, has an asking price of £350,000.
On the south side of the city centre it is difficult to find anything for less than £100,000 and those houses near UCC are often bought by investors. The asking price for a pretty four-bedroom house in Maria Villas off College Road within walking distance of UCC is £110,000.
On the north side, Montenotte and Sundays Well, once Cork's most fashionable areas, have now given way somewhat to the leafy suburbs of Douglas, Rochestown and Blackrock on the south side, which have better facilities and are more easily accessible thanks to the south link road. But while demand for houses is high in these areas, there is a poor supply of good-quality houses. There have been housing developments in the Rochestown/Douglas area over the last four or five years and the area is expected to be targeted for substantial growth by Cork County Council.
According to Malcolm Tyrell of Cohalan, Downing & Associates, the reason there is a scarcity of good-quality houses is that there is a tendency "not to move unless trading up from a starter home." A four-bed detached house in Oakview, Douglas will set you back £170,000, a mature three-bed semi-detached in Browningstown Park, Douglas will cost about £165,000. A house on a new development of six four-bed detached homes overlooking the River Lee estuary, Sandy Lawn on Castle Road in Blackrock, costs £290,000. The asking price for a substantial 5 to 6 bedroom period residence standing on a half acre on the Blackrock road is £350,000.
Unlike most of the other Irish cities, the docklands area in Cork city is an area full of relatively untapped potential. Horgans Quay and Railway Street have been targeted for substantial residential and commercial development currently at the pre-planning stage.
Apartment life has become very popular in Cork over last three to five years. Rutland Court is a new apartment development on South Terrace, one of the last available development sites in Cork's City centre. The two-beds are priced from £145,000.
River Towers, another new apartment development, a mile from the city centre on the Lee Road in a converted listed building, is selling from £135,000 for a two-bed unit.
The Grand Hotel Apartments in Crosshaven which range from 799 sq ft to 1,449 sq ft cost from £225,000 to £425,000.
"Five to 10 years ago, apartments were mostly targeted for investor market near the colleges - UCC, CIT, College of Commerce - but that has changed now and there is a big owner-occupier market," says Joseph McCarthy. "Then you wouldn't dream of putting apartments into place like Carrigaline or Ballincollig, now they are common place."
