In particulars

There’s nothing like getting your hands on a country estate – even if it is just on glossy paper, says Rupert Bates

WHEN I first started writing these property pages, I was renting a cottage from a grumpy farmer – he had his uses, such as lifts to the pub – but most doorstep chats involved the village postman. He joked about his bad back and my delusions of grandeur as he delivered mountains of glorious property particulars almost on a daily basis. I’m not sure when I left if I ever cleared out the shed – sorry grumpy farmer – in which case it would make for a fascinating snapshot of the great country houses and sporting estates.

Yes, there are rainforests to think about, cost of print and the postman’s chiropractor bills, but clicking on property particulars from a website doesn’t really do it for me. You cannot dare to dream with a digital download, however quick and efficient. Perhaps it is just a desire to be ‘closer to the action’. That compact sporting estate with pasture and paddocks, a stretch of fishing, woodland and a shoot is, albeit fleetingly, in my hands. I tend to gloss over the guide price.

Our greatest estates and country houses are being hidden from view in another way, too, with the rise of the buying agent and the private sale.

Charlie Evans of CKD Property Advisers says a feature of last year, amid the turmoil of the pandemic, was ‘the strength in demand for best-in-class properties’.

“These mostly transact privately, away from the glare of publicity. So much of the activity which took place is not widely known about,” says Evans.

Spoilsports. But is discretion really the better part of valuation? An agent with a little black book of eager investors waiting to marry an immaculately presented small country estate in the Cotswolds, or a grouse moor in Northumberland, may be convenient and on paper the perfect match found. But will you, be you seller or buyer, ever know if you got the best price? ’Twas ever thus.

A private sale might save on marketing costs and keep out the carpet-treaders – or, God forbid, glossy brochure collectors – just wanting a peek through the gilded curtains and prevent Raffles eyeing a rather rare painting in the drawing room. But is an arm wrestle in the back bar of Ye Olde Negotiator tavern between a buying agent and a selling agent the best way to transact?

Thousands of acres of off-market transactions take place every year. “Twenty-twenty saw a bumper year for estate sales at the very top end of the market; the vast majority selling and selling well,” says Evans, a year that apparently saw the highest-ever price paid for a country estate, whatever that matrix is.

“Last year more than 65% of the country estates offered for sale at £15m or more were transacted off market. Part of the reason why is the wish to avoid publicity and avoid details of a property being available on the internet,” adds Evans. “The second reason is that 90% of these deals were conducted with buying and selling agents involved. This means that often there is no need to openly market a property.”

I might not have gazumped the purchaser of the highest-ever priced country estate had I known, but there are voyeurs and then there are chroniclers of social history. Will we lose significant chapters even if we are not at least allowed a right to roam the particulars?