When viewers of I Own Britain’s Best Home, on Five, were asked earlier this year to name their favourite property featured in the series, their choice was Woods End — a modern glass and wood affair, with an undulating curved roof, in the Norfolk village of Hargham.

Amanda Barrington, a former headhunter turned property developer, who spent eight years realising her dream, was delighted. “It was such a joy for me,” she says over a cup of coffee in her immaculate white kitchen. “It really reinforced my work.” Such has been the interest in the house since it was featured in the show, she even takes visitors around it, at £8 a pop.

Yet when it comes to voting with their wallets, people appear rather more reluctant. Barrington, who is in her fifties, has been trying to sell Woods End for the past 18 months, only taking it off the market for the duration of the programme. She dropped the price from an initial £2m to £1.5m before recently putting it back up to £2m again.

So far, despite several viewings, she has had no takers. “It hit the market at a really dreadful time, and unfortunately we’re still in those tricky times,” she says. Possibly not the moment to be increasing the price, then? “It’s not about the money,” Barrington insists. “I’m not entrenched in a figure — in this sort of market, you have to be prepared to take offers.”

So what’s the problem: location, price, or something else entirely? Woods End is certainly impressive. Rearing out of the ground, the property, arranged over three levels and with enormous glass windows, seems huge at first glance. Perched on stilts, it is set above a winding stream: to get to the front door, you must cross a wooden bridge. The view from the house, which has two acres of landscaped gardens, is of lawn and woodland; there is not another property in sight.

Inside, all is light and airy. That white kitchen is part of an open-plan living space that segues into a sitting area with a wood-burning stove that is mounted on a pole and rotates, so that it can also heat the decked area outside when the sliding glass doors are opened.

Set to one side are a second, smaller kitchen, study and cloakroom; upstairs are two more bedrooms, and at the very top is an enormous master bedroom with windows that span the whole of one wall. Everything is smooth, clean and calm — scented candles dot every surface. A pot plant even has an incense stick tucked among its stems. There are some clever touches, too, such as the two sets of fridge, freezer and cooker in the kitchen and the laundry chute that runs from the top of the house to the bottom.

There aren’t many personal effects: Barrington, who never really intended to live in the house, and has another home in Wales, has kept the look neutral. The result is a rather bland, even clinical atmosphere. And when she shows me pictures of the three period stone cottages she knocked down to build the house, maybe I stare a little too long. “You probably think I was mad to pull them down,” she says. “I started renovating them, but the build quality was poor and they weren’t in the right place to take advantage of the sun.”

Even she concedes, however, that many buyers would prefer something more conventional. “A building like this will appreciate more than your average traditional house,” she says confidently, “but English people are entrenched into their thought processes and are very into bricks and mortar. They’ve got this dream in their minds of this idyllic country cottage or castle that they’d like to live in.”

Woods End is not the only Grand Designs-style property struggling to find a buyer. Take the Underground House, in Cheltenham, hailed as “a triumph over adversity” when it featured on Kevin McCloud’s Channel 4 series. The innovative home went on sale in May last year for £845,000, but failed to sell, prompting its owners to make an abortive attempt to shift it by lottery. It is now back on the market in the conventional manner — but for £745,000, through Peter Ball & Co (01242 222422, peterball.co.uk).

Then there is Lime Kiln House, a six-bedroom behemoth in just under 35 acres of Dorset countryside on the site of a former quarry (which the owner bought and shut down to build the house). Despite being one of the few houses to be constructed under PPG7 — a provision in the planning rules allowing houses of outstanding architectural merit to be built in the countryside — it has yet to sell after more than a year on the market (£4m, through Savills; 01202 856800, savills.co.uk).

Then there is Cattlegate, near Lewes, in East Sussex: a starkly modern four-bed house with a swimming pool that comes right up to the front door. It went sale last year for £1.85m, but only sold after its asking price was cut to £1.65m.

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