A bungalow set in 3.5 acres inside an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in South Oxfordshire had been on the market for 5 months priced at £975,000. Albright Dene gained consents to develop 30 houses on the land. The property was then sold, with this consent, for £2.35m.
The Barton family had been trying to sell their five-bedroom bungalow in Blewbury, on and off, for two years. Set in 3.5 acres inside an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the South Oxfordshire property was home to Mr and Mrs Barton, their two children, pet dog and chickens. It was a charming family home in a fabulous location next to Blewbury’s famous riding stables but, with so many bedrooms and lots of land to manage, the Bartons were keen to downsize. They wanted to move to a smaller house with less land to worry about.
Valued at £975,000 by local agents Thomas Merrifield, the bungalow attracted lots of viewings but was proving hard to sell. It had been on the market for five months when Albright Dene approached Mrs Ange Barton with a proposal.
“They basically said that they felt our land could benefit from a planning consent to build more houses on it – potentially increasing the value of our property massively” Ange explained. “They offered us the option of paying fees for their services to pursue this and pay for the application or, instead, allow them to finance the whole thing and share in the gains delivered by the consent, if they were successful”.
The Bartons decided to take their house off the market and allow Albright Dene to finance and manage the planning application entirely – thereby removing any potential financial risk or stress from the family.
Ange said “It made a lot of sense to let the experts have a go at this new way of looking at our property. We didn’t want to risk our own money on a failed planning application and we certainly didn’t want the stress of managing it ourselves – so we handed it over to the team at Albright Dene. We had already been waiting so long to get our house sold and felt that a few more months to see what they could come up with was a good idea.”
Eight months later, Albright Dene delivered a successful planning consent to build 30 new houses on the Bartons’ land – increasing the sales value of the property from £975,000 to £2.35 million. It was sold with planning consent to developers Bellway in 2014 and the Bartons were finally able to move to a new house.
And where did they move? “Just down the road and nearer to the village pub” said Ange. “We love the village and we were very happy to stay here, just in a smaller more manageable place”.