Have you heard the one about the motivational speaker who can’t motivate anybody to buy his house? This man isn’t just keen to sell, it’s his mission in life, practically his only waking thought. He’s offered a £100,000 reward, designed a promotional website and written to 2,500 heads of industry in an effort to offload his 200-year-old riverside home in Devon.

Jonathan Blain even arranged a late-night shopping stall dedicated to the property in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, where he has his main home — although his wife put a stop to that, pleading embarrassment. He admits there’s not much else he wouldn’t do — provided it’s legal and moral.

Now he’s promising a brand-new Range Rover and an inflatable boat, together worth £90,000, as a sweetener to anyone ready to exchange contracts within four weeks. And he has dropped the asking price by 32.5%, from £2m to £1.35m. (Right at the outset, and briefly, it was on at £3m.) Blain is not just a desperate house-seller — this self-styled explorer, innovator and adventurer in life and business appears to be thriving on the challenge.

To be fair, he has fallen victim to the sharp deterioration in the market. The Old Bakehouse, a six-bedroom property in Tuckenhay, a village near Totnes, had belonged to his grandparents, but after inheriting a part share, he bought the rest from relatives in 2007 and set about remodelling it for the luxury market.

Right on the edge of a tributary of the River Dart, it has the kind of location that wealthy buyers used to fight over back in those heady days: at high tide, water laps below the windows; at low tide, herons, egrets and cormorants wade picturesquely by.

After spending almost £800,000 on renovating the property, Blain was encouraged in March last year when Knight Frank estate agency valued it at £2.5m. That July, Marchand Petit, a Devon agency, proposed a guide price of £2.9m; Savills suggested £2.5m-£3m.

So Blain put it on the market himself and waited for the buyers to come — but they didn’t. Where once he could have expected gazumping and sealed bids, he wasn’t even getting look-sees. An open-house viewing attracted curious locals, but no prospective buyers. Then Lehman Brothers collapsed — another blow to market confidence. So, in October, Blain decided to put it in the hands of agents — who put it on sale at £2m.

Blain, however, was determined not to rely on them. In short order, he created a large, if somewhat overelaborate, website, produced an online book and documentary about the Old Bakehouse, and sent letters to all those CEOs on the off chance that one of them might bite. Sainsbury’s chief executive, Justin King, took time to reply, saying: “The house looks fantastic.”

Blain has been tireless in his quest for publicity, getting the Old Bakehouse featured in local and national papers (including The Sunday Times, when he offered the reward — subsequently cut to £10,000 — for an introduction leading to purchase), nautical publications and BBC local news. He advertised at the Earls Court and Docklands boat shows, and will happily give a guided tour of his home to anyone who is interested.

So what is it about this house that calls for such desperate measures, and how did the agents get the price so wrong?

Rick Marchand, a director of Marchand Petit, blames economic conditions. “Unfortunately, his timing could not have been worse,” he says. “The exuberance of the market has faded, shall we say. It dropped dead in its tracks. But now we have our feet firmly on the ground as to pricing. We would expect quite a lot of interest.”

Martin Lamb, head of Savills’ Exeter office, agrees. “We valued the house before Lehman Brothers went down — when the kind of people who bought houses like that left the market,” he says. “Even then, before the renovation, we advised him to sell it on and let someone with experience take the risk.”

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