€1.2m Ballincollig boomtime home was builder's choice 

BACK in the glory days, when house hunters were splashing the cash on super-size Celtic Tiger homes, a Ballincollig farmer decided the time was ripe to pivot from the hard toil of cultivating fruit to delivering sites for housing.

Having secured planning permission for more than 30 homes on his c 10 acres at Carriganarra, in Ballincollig, Denis O’Driscoll sold off fully serviced sites for detached homes to eager buyers in the early noughties, at a rumoured €200,000 a pop.

A few developers bit too and acquired some of those sites on which to build and sell. As it was pre-Price Register days, what the Limeworth houses originally sold for is rumoured rather than proven, but what can be said is that auctioneers were guiding at prices in the region of €1.2m by early 2007.

Since those heady days, and with the Price Register now in play, Limeworth homes have not breached €1m. Two have sold for more than €800,000, mostly recently No 1, in 2021. It seems fitting, then, that the man who kickstarted the development is ready to test the upper end of the market by placing the Limeworth home that he has owned for 20-odd years up for sale. If Denis O’Driscoll achieves the €1.2m that No 7 Limeworth is guiding at, the Register will finally prove what was once only rumoured: That buyers are prepared to pony up more than €1m for a luxury Limeworth home.

“No 7 is one of the best houses in the estate; it’s the one that he [Mr O’Donovan] chose to hold onto,” says selling agent Norma Healy, of Sherry FitzGerald.

For sure, it’s a well-proportioned, muscular property set in tastefully landscaped gardens. The high standard to which it was finished is borne out in the laudable, B2 energy rating, outperforming some of its neighbours. While a lot of these Limeworth houses are physically similar, not all are as energy efficient as 20-year-old No 7. Nos 1 and 16, which featured in these pages in recent years, both had a C1 rating.

No 7, a roomy, detached, brightly-lit, six-bedroom house, has been a lifelong rental, but just two families occupied it in all of that time, and treated it as tenderly as if it was their own home. In very good trim internally and externally, much of the ground-floor accommodation is open plan: A large kitchen/dining room is flanked on one side by a family room and on the other by a generous sunroom, with scope to open up the entire space.

 Double doors open from the sunroom to a large rear patio and lawn, all neatly planted, landscaped, and totally enclosed. 

Outfront is nicely landscaped too, with a good mix of mature trees and shrubbery around the periphery of a cobble-locked driveway, with ample carparking space. A garage is to the rear.

No 7 has as many bathrooms as bedrooms: half a dozen of each, including three en suites. A guest WC on the ground floor, a family bathroom on the first floor, and a bathroom off the floored loft room complete the tally. The loft room, with velux windows, is a good candidate for a home office.

Ms Healy says No 7 is generating “good local interest” among families looking to trade up. She describes Limeworth as “a nice, exclusive development” on the rim of the N40 Ballincollig bypass “just a five minute drive to Cork University Hospital, UCC and MTU”.

It’s also next door to Gaelscoil Uí Riordáin, a newish,purpose-built primary school. Children are well represented in Limeworth and it’s near the Heathfield new homes development, were houses have been selling like hot cakes.

VERDICT: Roomy trade-up in handy-to-bypass location. Ideal for family.