€475,000 House of the Week is in well-located Browningstown where homes tend to grow

Browningstown Park, aka Extension Central, has arguably more houses with add-ons than not, and a stroll around the neighbourhood will demonstrate wildly divergent approaches to bigging them up. While some have stayed faithful to the original 1940s look in their extended wings, others threw caution to the wind and added modernist, cedar-clad boxes.

It’s quite the pick-and-mix and there’s much for wanna-be extenders to mull over/be inspired by.

The reassurance that as your family grows, so can your home, is one of the attractions of Browningstown Park, but the greatest is its location, off the Douglas Road. This is an amenity-rich neighbourhood with an inordinate number of good schools, green spaces, retail (nearby Douglas village) and all manner of sporting facilities including a tennis club, swimming pool, a pitch & putt course, rugby pitches, soccer pitches, GAA pitches etc. It’s why families love the area, but also downsizers, who value the convenience.

Whenever a home from either of Browningstown Park’s two parallel legs – East and West – comes on the market, auctioneers report keen interest. Such is the case currently at Laragh, the christian name of No 71 Browningstown Park West. While its €475,000 guide might sound a little pricey for first time buyers, it doesn’t appear to bea deterrent.

Selling agent Stuart O’Grady of Sherry FitzGerald says there are lots of first-timers booking in to view it.

“First time buyers in the main, but also people looking to trade up from two-bed apartments or townhouses,” Mr O’Grady says.

House hunters like the potential to extend he says - the other half of this semi-d pairing has been extended to the rear and to the side – and they also like the fact that it is “perfectly liveable” in, which gives breathing space for buyers to decide if an extension is a) necessary and b) affordable.

As was the case for its neighbour, there’s scope at No 71 to push out to the side or to the rear, or to do a wraparound, or a two-storey extension. In the meantime, the 102 sq m house has the following to offer: two reception rooms and a narrow kitchen on the ground floor, and three bedrooms (two doubles) and a bathroom overhead. 

The utility is out in the detached garage which is tucked away in a corner of the rear garden, where there’s a nice bit of lawn, enclosed by hedging and trees, and a deck and some patio off the kitchen. There’s more lawn out front and off-street parking.

Mr O’Grady says Laragh is finished “to a very high standard, having undergone recent cosmetic and energy upgrades”. Those upgrades include new windows, a new front door and a new combi boiler – although the energy rating is still fairly low, at E1.

The owners are downsizing and there’ll be lots of neighbourly interest in how their home fares, especially after the performance of No 16, the most recent sale in the park, which featured in these pages, and appeared last month on the Property Price Register as having sold for a whopping €770,000.

 On a corner site and a bit bigger than Laragh (it had an attic conversion and a modest, architect-designed rear extension) the sale price set a new record for Browningstown and set neighbourhood tongues wagging.

The omens are good then for the vendors of Laragh as we move towards a New Year, but not so pleasant for potential buyers, as prices show no sign of dampening.

VERDICT: Expect competitive bidding and a swift re-sale at this conveniently located, extendable home, within walking distance of both Douglas village and Cork city centre.