Cut-price mansion
Or why store tycoon Vera’s luxury home seems NOT to be what everyone wants as she reduces it by £250,000
SHE has made her fortune knowing when to buy, when to sell and how to get the best price at the best time.
But now Scots shopping tycoon Vera Weisfeld is offering a cut-price deal that could see her potentially making a loss on her Italian-inspired mansion in a bid to find a buyer.
The What Everyone Wants founder’s luxurious property boasts features including its own bar with wine coolers, a Jacuzzi and a cinema decked out with leather chairs, as well as its own popcorn machine and ice-cream stall.
Mrs Weisfeld, 77, bought the house in the affluent village of Thorntonhall, Lanarkshire, four years ago for £1,525,000 and undertook a large-scale programme of refurbishments.
The house was originally put back on the market a year ago for offers over £1,650,000,
‘One of the most exclusive addresses’
when it was described by the selling agent as a ‘magnificent detached villa with superb entertaining space and exceptional specification’.
However, it failed to find a buyer – and the mansion’s price has now been slashed by more than £250,000 to offers over £1,395,000.
The retail entrepreneur named the property Veneto Villa after the Italian region. The interior design is said to have an Art Deco influence.
The five-bedroom house also features white marble flooring, a study, drawing room and triple garage.
It also has an entertainment room featuring photographs of Hollywood icons Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn. The sales brochure by estate agents Rettie reads: ‘Unsurpassed care, design flair and skilled execution has gone into every detail of this sumptuous home, making it without doubt one of the very best this agency has marketed.
‘This beautiful home sits proudly in one of the most exclusive addresses in Central Scotland.
‘Veneto Villa has been transformed by our clients with a standard of finish and specification seldom found in today’s market. It offers ultimate privacy and security screened by mature hedging and stone pillars into which are set electronically operated gates with a security speaker system to reveal an expanse of courtyard and parking provision.’
Mrs Weisfeld and her husband Gerald, who also have homes in Bridge of Weir, Renfrewshire, and Australia, founded What Every Woman Wants in 1971.
It later changed its branding to What Everyone Wants and was sold by the couple for £50million in 1990 before the name gradually faded from Britain’s high streets.
They had worked together to build it up, turning it into one of the country’s most recognisable store chains.
Believing the company should give something back to the communities that supported it, they created the What Everyone Wants Charitable Trusts.
Following the sale of the retail chain, the pair continued their charity work by setting up the Weisfeld Foundation.
Mrs Weisfeld, originally from Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, started out on her career as a shop girl in C&A.
She was awarded an OBE in 1997 for her services to the retail industry.
In 2010, she was listed in the top ten women to have a major impact on Scottish society at the Action for Children Scotland Woman of Influence Awards.