Living like a lord, without all the upkeep

Posted on by Listify Me

By
Duncan Farmer


PUBLISHED:

14:49 GMT, 16 April 2012

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UPDATED:

14:49 GMT, 16 April 2012

When Stephanie and Neil Carney first set foot in the converted coach house at Balls Park, a 17th Century stately home near Hertford, they were impressed by the grandeur of the building, its 63 acres of landscaped grounds and the scale of the new apartment.

Within a fortnight they had moved in, following a trend among househunters who crave the history and space of country-house conversions, a phenomenon fuelled by a shortage of this type of property.

Since the credit crunch, banks have been reluctant to lend against such projects and developers withdrew from them, but buyers’ appetites for historic homes remain strong.

Stately: Balls Park, a 17th Century stately home near Hertford, boasts 63 acres of landscaped grounds

‘We plan to finish 60 this year and 90 next year,’ says Helen Moore, of City and Country, which has been transforming historic homes for 25 years.

For the Carneys, the appeal was the space and the splendour. They loved the idea of being in a Grade I listed building and living somewhere they could never afford to own.

Neil, 43, a printer, says: ‘We paid £450,000 for our two-bedroom flat after selling a four-bedroom townhouse in Epping for £445,000. We have the same floor area, just fewer and bigger rooms.’

Lavish: An ornate panelled room in one of the converted flats at historic Balls Park

Stephanie, 39, a housewife, says the grounds have inspired her to start painting. ‘We look out on to formal gardens and a courtyard but we don’t have to maintain them,’ she adds.

Balls Park, which has featured in the TV series Bleak House and Foyle’s War, was built in 1640 and the flats retain ornate plaster ceilings, fireplaces, some of the earliest sash windows in England and huge oak doors. The scale of the rooms, with their high ceilings, dark wood panelling and elaborate friezes, adds to their appeal.

Grand life: Neil and Stephanie Carney

The house is being transformed into 40 flats and houses, with prices from £199,950 for a one-bedroom flat in the stables to £1.3million for a grand two-bedroom ground-floor apartment in the west wing of the main house.

Without developers to breathe new life into them, these grand old houses face an uncertain future, says Chris Buck of Savills, which is selling a mixture of flats and houses at Moor Park in Farnham, Surrey.

It is a Grade II* listed house dating from 1630 and has been split into three flats. In the courtyard there are seven restored houses and 13 newbuild flats in the former walled garden. According to Buck, there are few wealthy foreign buyers who can afford such large houses.

He says the advantage for developers is that these properties often come with ancillary buildings that can be turned into homes and flats, so there is something to suit all budgets. The two mansion apartments in the main house have sold and the penthouse is on the market for £1.35million.

Another specialist developer, PJ Livesey, which is transforming a former psychiatric hospital in Dartford, Kent, into houses and flats from £135,000, has all but sold out.

Sales have been equally brisk at the Manor House, Summers Place, near Horsham, West Sussex, where Berkeley Homes transformed the historic house, built in 1880, into flats and built townhouses in the grounds.

The townhouses have been popular with families moving from London attracted by the 13 acres of grounds, according to Jo Knight, of Knight Frank.

Such luxury living does come at a price, and residents pay a service charge to maintain buildings and their surroundings. In some conversions this can be high. At Balls Park, the Carneys pay £2,000 a year for the upkeep of the grounds, communal areas, buildings insurance and window cleaning.

The new owners at the Moor Park penthouse will pay £5,500, which includes maintaining a private lift and cleaning the entrance hall, where residents can entertain guests.

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