Bricks
& Mortar6 Friday April 8 2022
the times
Left: a Staffordshire home available for £1.
Frank. Above: a Norfolk pile for sale for £3
Right: Drovers in Surrey is for sale for £4.5Spring for a
country house
The blossoms are out, and so too are
buyers looking for the best rural
retreats. By Victoria Brzezinski
The country property market has been
buoyed by the imbalance between
supply and demand. The good news is
there will finally be more homes to
choose from, with the number of new
instructions coming to market this
Easter the highest in a calendar month
since June last year. Knight Frank’s
numbers show that, while new
instructions outside London were below
the five-year average in March,
the gap has closed to its
narrowest since April- Nonetheless,
competition for the
best properties is
fierce.
“Demand for
country homes
still outstrips
supply,” says
Simon English of
Simon English
Property Search, a
buying agency. “For
every home that
comes to the market
there is interest from
multiple buyers, and prices
being achieved continue to exceed
the asking prices. Spring should see the
largest volume of properties coming to
the market, but most selling agents
report a significant decrease in volume
compared with the same time last year,”
he says.
B
enjamin Disraeli aptly
summed up the ineffable
pull of a rural pile, writing
of a “soul-subduing
sentiment, harshly called
flirtation, which is the
spell of a country house”.
It’s not just the Victorian
prime minister who was enchanted. As a
nation we are in love with these
mansions, as demonstrated by
our National Trust
memberships, the
swooning over Ionic
columns and palatial
residences in the
latest season of
Netflix’s
Bridgerton.
Over the past
year country
houses priced at
£2 million and
above have
increased in price
by an average of
10.3 per cent, according
to the estate agency
Savills. Damian Gray, head of
the central region at Knight Frank,
says: “While demand has ebbed and
flowed in recent months relative to last
year, the village market remains hot. The
reaction to well-priced properties
launched in the past few weeks has, at
times, been berserk.”There is definitely more stock out there,
and while only a limited amount of it is
being seen on the open market, there are
still plenty of buyers, so plenty of deals
are being agreed.”Price growth
Per cent change in country
houses with £2m+ valueQuarter 2.001 year 10.302 year 20.10
5 year 16.40Change since
2007 peak-5.80Source: Savills ResearchLindsay Cuthill, the head of prime
residential and head of Savills’ country
department, says: “It feels like we’re still
a bit short [of stock], but not that short.
We’re still playing catch-up.”
There are hotspots all over the
country, but agents say that the counties
closest to London have experienced the
biggest increases in demand so far this
year. In the Cotswolds stock is “definitely
tight”, Cuthill says. Although he notes
that at top end of the country market,
£10 million to £20 million, sales rarely
reach the property portals. “What is
slightly frustrating is that there’s quite a
lot of people out there, particularly at
the top end, who want to do it off the
market, privately. So the metaphoric
shop window, the internet, maybe looks
a bit emptier than it really is.”
Edward Heaton, managing partner of
the buying agency Heaton & Partners,
adds: “This is a sophisticated market, and
buyers aren’t stupid. They simply won’t
pay and don’t need to pay crazy figures
right now. [Sellers] being rewarded with
the best outcomes are those who price
competitively to generate lots of interest,
with the eventual selling price often
significantly above the initial guide.Inside an eight-bedroom Edwardian home near Goring-on-
Thames in Oxfordshire, on sale for £8.5 million via SavillsCover: a pile on the Berkshire/
Wiltshire border is for sale for £6.75
million via Strutt & Parker. Above: this
grade II* listed home in Suffolk is on
the market for £1.75 million via SavillsView our pick of
30 country
houses for sale at
thetimes
online.co.ukCOVER STORY