When the comedian Lee Evans turned down the chance of buying Harry Redknapp’s £3.25m harbourside house in Poole, Dorset, the Portsmouth football manager tried to understand why. Sitting on the deck terrace overlooking his sunken garden, he says: “Perhaps Lee Evans wanted more land, which is a shame, but you don’t get big gardens in Poole. Here, access to the water and the views mean everything. I honestly think this house has one of the best locations in the world — just look at these views.”

Sitting on the verandah that shelters him from the sharpest spring breezes, Redknapp can see millionaires’ yachts bobbing in the marina to his right and the sparkling blue seascape to Brownsea Island ahead. A luminous milky haze hangs over the afternoon and it’s all very tranquil. But if you aren’t visibly moved, you soon find yourself on the receiving end of a half-time pull-your-socks-up talk from the Pompey manager, formerly in charge at West Ham United. “I have been all around the world and you can’t find anything that compares to this,” he says. “That’s why the area is so popular now — particularly with footballers.

“Darren Anderton has a place here and my son Jamie (Anderton’s Tottenham teammate) loves it too. So does his wife, Louise (the pop star, formerly with Eternal). I think there’s a good chance he’ll buy here in the future.”

Is all this fuss about Poole necessary? After all, isn’t Poole just a suburb of Bournemouth? Not according to Thomas M Doyle, the chairman and managing director of Lloyds estate agents and a man who has done more than anybody to send property prices in Poole into a tailspin. “Go into Bournemouth at 2am and you won’t be able to move on the pavement for clubbers,” he says.

“This is Sandbanks, Poole, and a different place altogether.”

Doyle’s insistence on geographical accuracy is understandable. The subtle dividing line is similar to that between, say, Mayfair and Victoria in London. “This is one of the most select neighbourhoods in the country,” says Doyle as he points from his Mercedes window at local celebrity landmarks.

“It’s a byword for good taste. That’s why Ian McGlynn, who bought Body Shop, has a house here. The area has always had its rich people, but now it’s in a different league.”

The way in which Doyle stoked up the interest of the mega-rich in Sandbanks amounted to an ingenious PR heist. Doyle’s company is affiliated to the New York estate agent Corcoran Realty, which, in 2000, thought it would be fun to draw up a list of the world’s most expensive places to buy a home. Doyle worked out that a particularly small property in a particularly good location would show an extraordinarily high price when measured by square footage. So he contacted Corcoran with details of the unremarkable-sounding Upper Ground Floor Flat, The Buoys, Banks Road, Sandbanks. The property amounted to 1,400sq ft of space at just over £1m, working out at £689 per sq ft and placing Sandbanks just behind Tokyo, Hong Kong and London’s Eaton Square in terms of property prices. It also put Doyle on the property pages of every major newspaper in the world. “Millionaires across the world learnt about us and the market went mad,” he says.

Many buyers bought perfectly good homes, typically dating from the 1930s and worth about £1m, knocked them down and started again. And price appreciation has added extra fortunes to the fortunes of local homeowners. Take two properties currently on the market. Siesta Key, 5 Shore Road, Sandbanks, was bought for £900,000 in 1998. Today it is for sale for £2m. Sea Orchard cost £1.8m four years ago. Now it is priced at £4m.

This is the Sandbanks into which Harry Redknapp and his wife, Sandra, moved in 1998. How did he become aware of the resort? “It was around the time that Jamie and Louise got married,” he says. “We had holidayed in Bermuda and taken photographs of some of the houses there — to give us ideas.

“Then the chairman at Portsmouth, Milan Mandaric, showed me this area and I was knocked out by it. It’s perfect. We knocked down the house that was here and hired the architect David Lester to come up with designs based on the Bermuda pictures. He did a great job.”

You approach the Redknapp property through a hacienda-style arch. Inside, the decor is largely the province of Sandra Redknapp, who approved the marbled entrance hall. “I knew what I had in mind would take a large part of the house but I think a hall is a very important space because it creates an immediate impression,” she says.

“The balconies and chandeliers are quite imposing, and you also have the view straight through the house to the sea, which I like. In the living room I started with the black and gold sofa and arranged the colour scheme around that. There are lots of creams and golds. Again, I tried to pick out colours from the bay outside.”

The double staircase from the hall leads to the first floor, where there are five bedrooms and a spiral staircase leading to another lounge.

Redknapp’s Portsmouth team are on the verge of promotion to the Barclaycard Premiership and a job change is unlikely, so why does Harry want to leave a house in which he is so happy? “Only because I want to buy a house very close by which has a separate gatehouse,” he says. “We’d love my father to come and live there, but he won’t be persuaded. He’s so attached to life in the East End of London that he won’t move yet — despite all these fantastic views.”

Redknapp’s house is for sale with Knight Frank (020 7629 8171, www.knightfrank.com) and Lloyds (01202 708 044, www.lloydspropertygroup.com) at offers above £3.25m

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