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Knight Frank, the top-end estate agency, said that the average price of prime rural property, which ranges from large cottages to manor houses with a typical £2.5 million price, rose for the first time in two years during the last three months of this year. High demand pushed average prices up by 2.3 per cent between October and December. In Home Counties commuter-belt villages, average prices were up by 3.1 per cent, compared with 2.9 per cent in the South West, 2.3 per cent in central England, and 0.5 per cent in the North and Scotland. So short is the supply of grand
country homes that estate agents who specialise in them said they
no longer feared the impact of lower bonus earnings. Rupert Sweeting,
head of Knight Frank’s country department, said: “There
is speculation that the Government’s new bank bonus tax will
have an impact on prime property prices but this has probably
been overstated and, regardless, there is a large pool of buyers
not reliant on bonuses.” Sales of rural property began to pick up in May and were driven by interest from foreign buyers, Mr Sweeting said. Evidence that the UK housing market had hit a low, together with the weak pound, attracted overseas money, particularly from Russians, who spied an opportunity to live like an English lord and make a sound property investment at the same time. However, in the past three months, Knight Frank said that the balance has shifted back to British buyers, who now make up more than 50 per cent of demand. The seven-bedroom Firby Hall, near Bedale, North Yorkshire — on the market with two agencies, Knight Frank and Strutt & Parker — sold to “a Northern businessman” for well above its £2.25 million price. Five and six-bedroom farmhouses,
with an average value of £1.1 million, have enjoyed the
greatest price rise in the past three months, up by 2.6 per cent.
Prices of three or four-bedroom cottages are up by 2.5 per cent,
with manor houses up by 1.8 per cent. The group, which trades from more than 1,200 branches in Britain under brand names including Wickes, said like-for-like turnover in October and November was down by just 5.5 per cent on last year. This compares with a 14.3 per cent drop for the 11 months to December. Travis expects earnings to be
at the upper end of analysts’ expectations, helped by improving
sales and a continued cost-cutting drive. It said that although
sales were now “a little ahead of expectations”, its
outlook for next year would remain cautious. |
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