Property market
Sensible pricing really pays and extraordinary country houses new to the market are seeing in the new year with style
With leading agents all preaching the gospel of patience and sensible pricing at the upper end of the country-house market, the strategy of sitting tight and waiting for the right house at the right price paid off for the buyers of some very special houses in 2018.
One example that immediately springs to mind is the exquisite Chailey Moat at Chailey Green, near Lewes, East Sussex, a beautifully restored historic house set on an island at the heart of its 44 acres of land. it came to the market in September 2016 and eventually found a buyer through Savills, at about £4 million, in May 2018.
Another is the Manor house at Fyfield, near Oxford, an impeccably renovated medieval manor house in six acres of gardens and grounds next to the 13th-century village church of St Nicholas, which launched in April 2016 and sold for £4.25m through Knight Frank and Savills in August 2018.
Down at the ‘business end’ of the country property scene—the market for family houses priced between £1.5m and £3m—one area that bucked the trend for buyers to sit on their wallets was east Kent, where dynamic duo Ed Church and Simon Backhouse of Strutt & Parker’s Canterbury office saw a quick-fire turnover of good houses priced between £1.75m and £2.25m.
timeless Poulton Manor at Ash, near Canterbury, described as ‘one of east Kent’s finest country houses and the most expensive house sold in the area in 2018’, was swiftly acquired by a London buyer at a guide price of £1.895m; launched in autumn 2017 at a guide price of £2.35m, historic Solton Manor at East Langdon, between Canterbury and the coast, sold in 2018 to an international buyer, at a revised guide price of £2.25m; and romantic the Granary at Little Chart Forstal, near Ashford, the enchanting former home of the writer h. E. Bates, sold for £1.077m to a buyer moving to the UK from overseas within a week of its launch onto the market in June 2018.
‘The trick is to price sensibly and competition will follow,’ explains Mr Church. ‘We’ve seen this work well for a good number of houses this year and, as a result, have had a busy year at the top end of the market locally, even in this challenging market. In addition, Kent continues to attract buyers from overseas, thanks to the value, good communications and excellent education it offers.’ This softly-softly approach is also likely to pay dividends in 2019.
Over in west Kent, the completion of a fouryear-long road-widening project on the A21 between Tonbridge and Pembury—first mooted in the 1970s and finally approved in 2007, with work starting in 2015—has dramatically improved communications between Tonbridge, Tunbridge Wells and areas further south, with a journey that used to take 25–30 minutes now taking only three or four minutes, reports Ross Davies of Knight Frank’s Tunbridge Wells office.
‘Consequently, a market that had stagnated locally in terms of price has seen property values shoot up, especially in the case of two pretty villages, Matfield and Goudhurst, which were previously difficult to reach, but are now extremely accessible,’ he says.
‘The sale in May 2018, at a guide price of £3.5m, of Georgian Lees Court at Matfield to a London family who have children at Tonbridge School was the catalyst that started the ball rolling. Since then, Knight Frank have sold almost everything on Matfield village green, as well as two of the biggest houses in Goudhurst.’
Despite a handful of chart-topping sales in 2018, patience and perseverance were the watchwords for country-house agents in Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire and Essex, which fall within the remit of Mark Rimell of Strutt & Parker. He believes that it will still be ‘hard graft’ for the first six months of 2019.
‘The market in these counties is very much tied to what’s happening in London, where, for the moment, everything is on hold, waiting for the Brexit drama to play itself out,’ he says.
An interesting subtext to the Brexit script, highlighted by Dawn Carritt of JacksonStops, is the current strength of the London rentals market, which she expects to stay buoyant, with potential purchasers preferring to sit on the fence for a while longer.
‘Overseas residents are still keen to remain living in the capital, a typical example being a family who recently committed to renewing their tenancy of a flat in Holland Park and paid their weekly rental of £3,200 up front for the entire year,’ Miss Carritt reveals.
Out in the country, where house prices lagged behind the FTSE 100 throughout 2018, Jackson-stops expect to see investors again looking to bricks and mortar for capital growth post-brexit. Particularly so in the case of properties with potential for improvement, either by extending or renovating the main house or converting outbuildings, although location still remains key.
Currently on the market with the Cirencester office of Jackson-stops (01285 653334) at a guide price of £2.25m is the delightful six-bedroom Lower Moor Manor, which has barns, stabling and 36 acres of land near Malmesbury, Wiltshire (5½ miles from Kemble station).
The owners have maintained an ongoing programme of improvements, but have left scope for an incoming purchaser to make their own mark. The pretty Clock House has planning consent for conversion to a twobedroom dwelling and an ongoing planning application is in place for a separate stable block, groom’s accommodation and manège some distance from the house.
Back in the Home Counties, where swift, reliable access to London is a crucial requirement, Strutt & Parker (020–7629 7282) are handling the sale of The Old Vicarage at Barkway, near Royston, Hertfordshire, at a guide price of £3m.
The handsome Victorian former vicarage, set in some 13 acres of gardens, grounds, stabling and paddocks, a mere 37-minute train ride from London Kings Cross, comes with planning consent in place for a basement extension, ground-floor extension, first-floor rear and side extension, a roof extension with three rear dormer windows and a new front porch—enough to keep the most enthusiastic doer-upper busy for the foreseeable future.
Still in Hertfordshire, the Amersham office of Savills (01494 725636) kicks off the New Year with the launch onto the market, at a guide price of £2.975m, of hugely impressive Felden Orchard at Felden, near Hemel Hempstead, a delightful hamlet surrounded by rolling greenbelt countryside on the edge of the Chiltern Hills.
For sale for the first time in more than 40 years, the classic Arts-and-crafts house— built in 1922 and featured in Country Life, August 25, 1923—combines ease of access to the metropolis by road and rail (London Euston in 26 minutes) with proximity to the high-achieving Berkhamstead School nearby.
Felden Orchard stands in more than three acres of lovely private gardens, including a walled garden with a covered barbecue area, a summer house and an additional barbecue area that could be divided into paddocks for grazing if ‘room for a pony’ is required.
The immaculate principal house, which comes with an annexe and separate barn, offers 4,500sq ft of accommodation, including two fine reception rooms, a kitchen/ breakfast room, master suite, five further bedrooms and two bath/shower rooms.
Brexit or no Brexit, the demand for good houses close to good schools has been the saviour of the country-house market in recent years. Nowhere more so than in Buckinghamshire, where Knight Frank have launched, at £2.9m, charming The Old Rectory at Akeley, 2½ miles north of Buckingham in the picturesque Aylesbury Vale, which falls within the catchment area for Buckingham’s Royal Latin Grammar School.
Nearby preps include Beachborough, Winchester House, Akeley Wood and Swanbourne, with senior public schools including Stowe, Thornton College and Bloxham School also within easy reach.
Built in the mid 1800s in the Victorian Gothic style by Sir Gilbert Scott, the beautifully restored and extended former rectory has some 5,000sq ft of living space on three floors, including entrance and inner halls, three reception rooms, a superb kitchen/ dining room, three first-floor bedroom suites, a further two bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms on the second floor, plus a home cinema on the lower-ground floor. It comes with a converted two-bedroom coach house and 4½ acres of gardens and paddocks.
Finally, as proof that the spirit of free enterprise is still very much alive, James Mckillop of Knight Frank expects to confirm, in short order, the sale of Grade Ilisted Parnham House, near Beaminster on the Dorset/somerset border—the magnificent, 38,000sq ft Elizabethan mansion was gutted by fire in April 2017 and is now in need of total restoration (Property Market,
October 17, 2018)—to a buyer working in tandem with Historic England.
‘Parnham House captured the imagination, resulting in dozens of enquiries from around the world following its appearance in Country Life—a major coup considering the investment required and a sign that unique opportunities in the country-house market are still sought after,’ explains Mr Mckillop happily.