UK PROPERTY PRICES RISING

As confidence in the housing market comes back in London,
the home counties are also beginning to feel the benefit.

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They’ve long been among the most expensive places to buy property in Britain — and now the home counties are leading the recovery of the country-house market as wealth and confidence ripple out from London.

Hampshire has seen the swiftest recovery, with prices rising by 9.7% from their lows in March, according to exclusive research for The Sunday Times by Savills estate agency — even though they are still 12.7% off the peak hit in September 2007.

The market in Berkshire, Essex, West Sussex, Cambridgeshire and Kent is also recovering strongly, although there, too, prices are below their previous highs.

Lucian Cook, the agency’s director of research, says much of the bounce can be directly linked to the upturn in London (prices of prime property prices in the southwest of the capital are 15.3% above their lows, while those in the centre are up 8.5%).

“Traditionally, what starts in central London is seen two or three months down the line in the southeast, then in East Anglia and progressively up north,” he says. “In this upturn, we’ve just seen a slightly quicker ripple effect into southeast England.”

The appeal of the top 10 counties is not hard to spot.

Hampshire has long been a favourite with commuters, thanks to its beautiful countryside, excellent state and private schools, and good transport links into the capital. “We’re the first good area of countryside out of London — it’s a place people want to live,” says George Burnand, a partner based in the Winchester office of Strutt & Parker estate agency.

Shaun Ascough, Group Managing Director of upmarket property-search agency, Sands Home Search agrees. “The moment there was a slight increase in the confidence of City buyers, it started to pick up,” he says.

A shortage of large period homes in pretty rural locations means anything that comes onto the market is snapped up almost immediately.

That’s why Max Rollitt acted fast when he spotted the house of his dreams — “an absolute jewel”. He and his wife, Jane, 44, a lecturer, and sons Edward, 10, Alfie, 9 and Will, 6, were living in a four-bedroom townhouse in Winchester, but wanted more space.

So, when Yavington Farm, a four-bedroom property a few miles outside the city, came on sale earlier this year for £1.325m, they pounced. “I’ve gone from a courtyard garden in a townhouse to 10 acres of land — it’s the most beautiful place,” says Rollitt, 44, an interior designer. Their previous home has had three offers after two weeks on the market (£865,000, through Savills).

Elsewhere in the county, Strutt & Parker’s Odiham office sold five houses in two months on one road in Upton Grey, near Basingstoke. Martin and Suzanne Horne were among the buyers: the couple, who have a one-year-old son, Charlie, paid just over £700,000 for a five-bedroom 1970s property in June, beating five other bidders.

“The prospects for having a larger family and higher quality of life are better here,” says Martin, 36, who was in private equity before losing his job this year. “And, bizarrely, it’s a quicker commute from Basingstoke [for Suzanne, 40, a barrister] than from where we lived in Kew.”

Berkshire, Essex, Kent, West Sussex — even, to an extent, Gloucestershire and Cambridgeshire — all have similar appeal for those who work in the capital. All are within a two-hour commute, with pretty countryside and good schools. Kent, in particular, has benefited from the new high-speed rail link connecting London and Ashford.

Posh holiday spots make the grade, too. As soon as a sniff of a bonus appears on the horizon, a second home in Devon or Cornwall suddenly seems necessary again. “Our market turned around almost the same week as the prime London one, back in early May,” says Jonathan Cunliffe, an associate director based in Savills’ Truro office. “July and August are usually quiet; this year, they were two of our busiest months.”

Cunliffe cites two properties: one in Fowey, which went for “many hundreds of thousands” above the guide price of £950,000, with eight bidders; and another in Daymer Bay, near Rock, which sold for more than its £1.25m guide. Contracts exchanged in days after stiff competition between buyers.

There are anomalies on the list: Surrey and Buckinghamshire, are absent, for example, despite being prime commuter locations. Somerset and Northamptonshire do make the grade, even though they are not obvious locations for London money, which tends to stick closer to the capital.

“Somerset was always pretty much the poor relation of the southwest counties,” Cook says. “In the past five to 10 years, however, there’s been a shift in the way people look at it. It’s no longer just about Bath being this uber-town — they’ve discovered that the country around it is exceptional, and it hasn’t yet been turned into Surrey.”

Northamptonshire, where prices are still 11.8% off their peak, is “a bit undiscovered and possibly undervalued”, Cook says. Robert Godfrey, partner and head of country homes in the Northampton office of Bidwells estate agency, is more cautious. “The last quarter of this year has seen a small positive growth in value,” he says, “but the issues are with supply and demand. We must be careful not to misinterpret an uplift in values as an uplift in confidence.”

Overall, the statistics show that the north/south divide is still firmly in place, and that Britain as a whole is moving ever further towards “two nations”. Those who have the money — and the equity — and are free to move around tend to be based in London and the south; those who struggle to get a mortgage, and have to stay put, are overrepresented in the Midlands and the north. As a result, the slowest rebound has been in counties such as Lincolnshire and Warwickshire, where prices for prime country houses have risen by less than 1% in the past six months, as well as Scotland, where they have increased by less than 0.5%.

Source: Country Life / Sands Home Search


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