Many a housebuyer chooses a property because of its proximity to a good
school. But the offer Fiona and Max Goulden are making to potential buyers
of the modern house they have just finished developing in Putney, southwest
London, should have those with young children slavering.
The Gouldens, part-time private developers who are selling the six-bedroom
house for £2.75m (through Savills: 020 8780 9900, www.savills.com),
are also offering a place at Hurlingham, the private prep school just around
the corner from the property, which they also own and run. Fees at
Hurlingham are about £3,200 a term, but, should the new owner of 84 Deodar
Road be prepared to pay them, their offspring are guaranteed to get in –
bypassing waiting lists that have already filled up as far as 2011.
“Our priority is to give places to people within 1.2km of the school anyway,”
explains Fiona, 38, whose two children, Hugo, 9 and Georgia, 7, also attend
Hurlingham. “Registration is on a first come, first served basis, but we
have the ability to select according to locality – and the house is on the
doorstep.”
Will other parents patiently waiting for a spot for little Charlotte or Cosmo
mind that a new resident in the area is able to jump to the top of the
queue? “I don’t think so,” Fiona says. “We did it before for a guy who
bought a mews house we developed. His son is starting in September this
year.”
The Gouldens are not the only sellers to try to lure buyers in with an
incentive. While big developers have been doing it for years – offering to
pay part of the mortgage or throwing in white goods – private sellers are
starting to cotton on to the concept, particularly now the market has
slowed, and are coming up with some fairly wacky ideas in the process.
Take John Bradley, who is selling his three-bedroom house near Lymington, in
Hampshire, for £1.275m (through Caldwells: 01590 675875, www.caldwells.uk.com).
High on the clifftops of Milford on Sea, the home already offers sensational
views across Christchurch Bay and out to the Isle of Wight. But now, if you
buy it, you’re guaranteed a nice set of wheels – for Bradley, 53, an
orthopaedic engineer, is also throwing in his 2003 Porsche Boxster, valued
at £20,000 and with only 12,000 miles on the clock.
“It’s not the best time of year to sell a clifftop property, so offering the
Porsche is something to raise interest,” he says.
Or how about a spot of winter sunshine? Michael Decker, 49, an internet
entrepreneur, and his wife, Selma, are offering a four-week break in their
brand-new three-bedroom holiday home on St Lucia to anyone who buys their
two-bedroom penthouse on London’s South Bank, which is for sale for £1.25m
(through Frank Harris & Co: 020 7620 3400, www.frankharris.co.uk).
The couple have been trying to sell since September, and decided to add the
Caribbean holiday as a post-Christmas extra. The successful buyers will have
to pay for their own flights, but then get a whole month in which to relax,
Michael says.
“We thought we’d throw in something that would give people a little treat
after the trauma of the purchase,” he explains. The holiday home is so new
that he and his wife haven’t even been there yet.
Less glamorous, perhaps, but infinitely more practical is the first-class
season train ticket from Grantham, in Lincolnshire, to King’s Cross, London
that Brian and Linda Richards are offering to anyone who buys their Grade
II-listed four-bedroom house in Stathern (£765,000, through Humberts: 01664
410100, www.humberts.co.uk), a
10-minute drive from Grantham station. The couple have been trying to sell
since spring, and, although they haven’t lowered the price, the property
also comes with planning approval for another four-bedroom home in the
half-acre grounds. After months without an offer, they have now decided to
throw in the ticket: although it will set them back nearly £11,000, they are
happy to pay. “If we can get people through the door, that’s fine with me,”
says Brian.
Tom Donnelly, the agent who suggested the idea, claims that such incentives do
work. “We had a similar house on the market for £695,000, which we couldn’t
sell,” he says. “We ran a Sunday Times ad – ‘Grantham to King’s Cross, one
hour, six minutes, first-class season ticket included, escape the rat run’ –
with a picture of the house. It sold the following weekend for the full
asking price. The Richardses were more than happy to give it a go.”
The incentives that some sellers – and their agents – dream up certainly sound
ingenious, at least on paper. Last year, John D Wood, a London and country
agency, sold the Chelsea home of Chloe Lonsdale, who owns the Made in Heaven
jeans company. With her flat came the offer of cost-price women’s jeans for
as long as the buyer lived in the flat (or the company kept its offices
directly across the road). In the end, however, a male buyer bought the
property – and didn’t take up the offer. The sellers of a property in
Heathfield, East Sussex, meanwhile, offered to stump up 2% of the stamp duty
in return for early exchange of contracts. And the lucky buyer of a flat
above Tryst, a nightclub on the Fulham Road, in west London, received free
membership there for a year (an offer designed, perhaps, to make them loath
to complain about late-night noise from fellow patrons).
But what are such incentives really worth to a buyer? After all, aren’t you
looking for somewhere to live, not a new pair of jeans, a holiday or a car?
One agent tells the story of a flat in Chelsea that had once belonged to
Sean Connery. It was on the market for “a fairly optimistic £5.5m” and the
vendor had thrown in an Aston Martin DB5, worth about £50,000. But the flat
failed to sell – and was last seen on the market with another agent at a
reduced price. The car wasn’t included.
“I would generally advise against incentives,” says Lindsay Cuthill, a
director in Savills’s Fulham office. “It’s not the right sort of approach to
selling a property.”
Cuthill says he is willing to make an exception: he considers the school place
offered by the Gouldens in Putney a tasty carrot to dangle before a
prospective buyer. Mention the others, though, and he gets a little more
sniffy: “A Porsche or something is a bit obvious.” Andrew Scott, a director
in Strutt & Parker Lane Fox’s Chelsea office, is even more blunt,
saying: “The worst way to sell anything is to make yourself look desperate.”
Those who offer incentives, he adds, are naive or misguided, and should take
a good honest look at why their home is not selling in the first place. “The
property is wrongly priced, or there is something wrong with it,” he says.
“This is not the strategy of the well-informed or clear-headed person. It’s
like offering someone a case of champagne to have supper with you. You will
always be eating alone.”
Indeed, Peter Young, managing director of the John D Wood estate agency, tells
a story about a property in Kensington where the mention of champagne
provided a salutary lesson for one prospective buyer. Competition for the
property was fierce, and ended up going to best bids. The day before they
closed, one purchaser sent the sellers a luxurious, champagne-filled hamper
and a personal note.
“I do hope you’ll accept our bid,” it read. Unfortunately, they did anything
but, Young says. “It cost them the house. My client, being very English, was
extremely embarrassed.”
