A Compass Hill woman has set up a page to sell her stunning harbour view home, and it’s proving to be a big hit, she tells Siobhán Cronin
THE value of social media for advertising has not gone unnoticed by one Kinsale homeowner who has set up a Twitter account to sell her gorgeous house.
Gwenn Clayton has created the page ‘KinsaleHouseforSale’ (@KinsaleHouse) in a bid to get more attention for her stunning €1.25m home Ard na Greine, which overlooks the harbour.
‘We are on Compass Hill, the opposite side of the harbour from Ardbrack, but the homes over there seem to get an awful lot more attention, for some reason,’ she explained to The Southern Star. ‘I wanted to set up an account that would show what a beautiful area this really is,’
she said.
With this in mind, she hired a photographer to take a video and aerial shots of her largely glass home built by German firm DaVinci Haus, showing the property’s wonderful elevated location in this stunning part of West Cork.
Gwenn realises it was a bit of a bold move, to set up an account just to sell her home, but she truly believes in thinking outside the box if you want to make an impact.
‘Sometimes you need a bit of a paradigm shift,’ said Gwenn, who has already generated a huge amount of interest in the property, just a few weeks after her innovative plan was launched. ‘We’ve only just started and already we have had 300 views of the video,’ she explained.
‘People can see the great craftsmanship in the house,’ she said, ‘and what a special place it is. If you were to drive past on the road, you would never realise the views we have here.’
The house itself is a two-storey glass home which is an homage to Bauhaus design, using posts and beams. It boasts 180 degree views of the harbour from the south-facing living rooms and bedrooms.
Built in 2008, the house was also designed as an environmentally ‘green’ home, incorporating high insulation levels and using solar heating. The home is very similar to a German Huf Haus design which featured on a popular Grand Designs TV show some years ago – which inspired Gwenn to build her own version, but with rival brand DaVinci.
At the time of the show, presenter Kevin McCloud said he was impressed by the ‘most efficient [building] process’ he’d ever seen and the ‘beautiful engineering’ of the finished product.
‘Our house was up in three days – despite the first day being very windy – and it was completed in twelve weeks. It was funny getting a text saying “your house has arrived” when the trucks came,’ recalled Gwenn.
Now with her family grown, Gwenn is planning to downsize but is very keen to stay in Kinsale, as the family adore the area.
‘I wanted people to see, too, what a wonderful place it is to live,’ she said, adding that she regularly tweets new pictures of the home, along with photographs of the town and harbour. She was particularly thrilled recently when the superyacht Galileo G anchored in the middle of the harbour – right across from her house – and she posted photos of it on the page.
The 2,960sq ft house has been equipped with Krypton gas-filled glass walls, a high efficiency Viessmann gas heating system, with underfloor heating on both the upstairs and downstairs levels, separate thermostat controls in each room, as well as external thermostats. This high energy efficiency equates to a very good BER of B2 and therefore low energy consumption and low energy bills.
The ‘upside down’ layout features bedrooms on the ground floor, and the living areas upstairs, to maximise the great views.
The house is entered at the top floor through the main door at the rear, which is linked to the parking areas by a ‘bridge’. The south-facing living area includes a fully equipped modern German kitchen, with a large island unit and great storage space, a dining area, as well as the living room with a south-facing balcony.
The ground floor is home to four bedrooms, three of which are south-facing. All have direct access to the gardens. The bedrooms also incorporate large floor-to-ceiling windows and two bedrooms are en-suite, while the two remaining share a bathroom. The bathrooms have been finished to an amazing standard and incorporate Italian tiles, Philippe Stark sinks, toilets and taps, Kaldewei baths and Breuer showers. The home is particularly magical at night-time as the lights of the homes and boats on the Castlepark Marina twinkle and shimmer on the sea’s reflection.
The property sits on about 0.5 acres of grounds, providing plenty of space for a family, entertaining guests or gardening. The site is enclosed by fields and is a casual 15-minute walk from Kinsale town centre. There is plenty of parking available.
The agents for the sale are Engel & Volkers, 71 Main Street in Kinsale (021 4773200) or follow @KinsaleHouse on Twitter.