Last month, Savills listed the Bowden Park estate for £35 million ($46.4 million). The property includes a 15,900-square-foot, 18th century mansion set amid 22 acres of manicured gardens and 1,400 acres of farmland in Wiltshire, which is about a two-hour drive from central London.
In any other year, the property would likely have sat on the market.
“We [hadn’t] been able to launch a property and say to the owner confidently, ‘We can sell this in three months,’ ” says Crispin Holborow, country director of Savills’s Private Office. Last year, for instance, just one country estate sold for more than £15 million, according to Savills data. The previous year, only five sold.
But, thanks in large part to Covid-19-related lockdowns, a staggering 19 country estates in the U.K. have sold or are under offer for over £15 million in 2020, according to Savills.
The Bowden Park estate, in other words, has suddenly entered a seller’s market. “They’re coming in thick and fast,” says Holborow.
‘Limping Along’
For years, the country house market was in what brokers euphemistically referred to as a “buyer’s market”—and in what everyone else referred to as a “rut.” High maintenance costs, increasingly high taxes, and uncertainty over Brexit diminished country homes’ allure.
“The marketplace for country houses last hit its highest in 2007, early 2008—and then, that summer and autumn, there was a crash,” says Holborow. “Ever since then, the country market has been limping along.”
It’s not just homes in the so-called “super-prime” market.
Country houses of the merely wealthy (the “prime” market generally encompasses houses from £2 million to £10 million) saw sluggish growth, too. By the end of 2019’s third quarter, the market had seen more than five straight quarters of price declines, according to a report by Knight Frank. Going into 2020, prices were fetching about 20% below their peak in 2008.
Priorities Shift
While “prime” prices remain comparatively stagnant (up 2.3% this year, according to a November report by Knight Frank), volumes have skyrocketed, says Edward Rook, head of the country department at Knight Frank. “I wouldn’t pay too much attention to values, because I don’t think they’re climbing dramatically,” he says. “It’s more about transaction levels, and a real shift in buyer requirements.” From May 13 to June 24, for instance, the number of accepted offers for country houses from £5 million and £10 million was 182% higher than the five-year average, according to a separate Knight Frank report; all price brackets in the period were 64% higher than the same five-year average.