Swimming pool, check. Tennis court, check. Staff quarters, check. Helipad? “Er, I’ll have to get back to you, sir.”
Estate agents in the picturesque South Hams area of Devon have long been used to selling smart country houses at sky-high prices, but they are finding that the usual demands are being supplanted by a new one — homes with room to land a helicopter.
Such a requirement is the latest must-have for the country-househunter, be it a spot in the back garden or a helipad, and as an increasing number of businessmen use personal helicopters like cars, buyers have to be prepared to pay a premium.
The boom in helicopter travel has opened up the western tip of Cornwall, north Wales, the Lake District, even Scotland and the Channel Islands, as well as the Cotswolds, to the wealthy, forcing up prices for grand country houses. Six Isle of Man residents commute daily to London and there are rumours that one little girl commutes to her exclusive day school via daddy’s helicopter.
The helicopter brings the South Hams to within 70 minutes of London or Birmingham, even on a Friday evening in the summer when the city’s weekend country-dwellers take to the road in a paralysing 4x4 convoy.
The growing demand for helicopter-friendly properties has forced Peter Gardner, director of Marchand Petit’s Dartmouth office, to swot up on types of helicopter and their capabilities. The estate agency is hunting for three helicopter-friendly homes on behalf of clients who are looking to spend more than £2m. One has specified a waterfront property, a second wants a helicopter “hangarage” (somewhere to park the thing — always a tall order), while the third is happy inland.
“There is significant growth in the number of people owning or chartering helicopters,” says Gardner, who is selling the Manor at Strete on the south Devon coast, where you can land a two-seater on the front lawn, or a larger four-seater in the grounds, for £1.75m.
“With the M4 and the M5, South Hams is nowhere near as remote as it used to be from London, but the helicopter means it’s as reachable now as the Chilterns or the Sussex coast.”
However, Gardner admits that it is difficult to put a precise value on helicopter access. “It depends on matching the right buyer to the property,” he says. “It’s not outrageous to say that it can increase the price of a £1m-plus home by about the price of a small helicopter — say £250,000.”
Although Prince Charles may be planning to cut down on his helicopter travel to lessen his carbon footprint — last year he spent £1.1m on private planes and helicopters, on official engagements and travelling between Highgrove, Clarence House and the Balmoral estate — many more wealthy Britons are joining the helicopter set and want a house to match. David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, John Caudwell of Phones 4U and JCB’s Anthony Bamford all own private helicopters, and Jamiroquai frontman Jay Kay is taking flying lessons.
The Helicopter Club of Great Britain, has more than 400 members, and is expanding at “an unprecedented rate”. The number of helicopters registered in the UK has risen by nearly 30% in the past five years, according to the Civil Aviation Authority, from 1,021 helicopters to 1,314, and a report by the London Assembly last autumn revealed that the number of helicopter flights using the Battersea heliport — the only place you can land in central London — had increased by almost a fifth in four years.
Helicopter sales have exploded over the past decade. Heli Air, the UK’s largest flight school and a helicopter distributor, based in Wellesbourne near Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, sold 30 helicopters in 2002, and last year sold 70. David Lewis, of Oxford-based McAlpine Helicopters, is also enjoying the boom: “We sell about half of our top-spec helicopters to private individuals, most of whom want to keep their helicopters at home.”
When it came to buying a second home, helicopter access was a prerequisite for Dave Richards, the chairman and chief executive of Prodrive, a motorsports consultancy. He bought a five-bed holiday home near Falmouth in southeast Cornwall in 2005, and shuttles between there and his family home set in 30 acres in Warwickshire in just 75 minutes in his Eurocopter EC135.
“I wouldn’t have bought somewhere I couldn’t reach by helicopter,” says Richards, 54, a former rally driver who has a £68m fortune according to The Sunday Times Rich List. He installed a hangar for his helicopter at his main home.
“In Cornwall, I have made an arrangement with the farmer next door to use his field. It’s impossible to put a value on helicopter access — quite simply, if I couldn’t get there by helicopter, I wouldn’t have bought the house.”
Phil Spencer, co-presenter of Location, Location, Location and chief executive of Garrington, a property search consultancy, has noticed a threefold increase in the number of his clients requesting helicopter access. “The lack of supply of good country houses is forcing homeowners to search further afield for their trophy house,” says Spencer. But, he warns, “you can’t fly in the dark or in inclement weather, so you need to make sure you have a decent alternative. You need a plan B”.
The ability to commute around the UK quickly inspired Jeremy Paxton, the founder and man behind the Lower Mill Estate, the exclusive, ecofriendly, second-home village in Gloucestershire, to build a £50,000 helipad in the grounds of his home in Caversham, Berkshire.
“I use the helicopter in the way others use their cars,” says Paxton, 46. “I hop here, there and everywhere in it.”
Paxton did not need planning consent to build the teak and stainless steel helipad, but he did have to get permission from the Civil Aviation Authority to fly in and out, and is allowed to take off and land 14 times a week; which is one round trip a day. He offsets his travel by donating to a tree planting scheme.
The developer Lomond Homes is enticing buyers for its 25 new homes priced from £500,000 to £1m with exactly this kind of helicopter taxi service. A Bell Longranger helicopter will whisk residents from their front door in the former mining village of Solsgirth in Clackmannanshire, to Glasgow or Edinburgh airport in minutes.
“Five years ago helicopters were a rarity,” says Alex Lawson, a director in the country house department of Savills estate agency, which has a number of properties with helipads on its books, including Mergate Hall, a Grade II*-listed house, six miles from Norwich, for sale for £1.95m. “We’re seeing more and more people using a helicopter to go househunting. They are busy people, and it means that they can see six or seven houses in a day rather than two or three, and of course London-based buyers can travel further afield.”
The growing necessity of a helipad or a nearby landing strip led John Bray, now retired director of the eponymous estate agency in Rock, Cornwall, to put up a windsock on a field by his house for the use of the village. Bray, who has sold scores of properties in Rock, summer haunt of celebrities including Hugh Grant and Jemima Khan. He says: “I recognised many years ago that some buyers found it useful to come and go by helicopter, and had visitors who wanted to do so. Rather than have every home build its own helipad, I thought we should have one at my house — I’ve had three helicopters in at one time — and I run them home in my car. My helipad adds value to the entire village, if such a thing were necessary.”
The communal helipad also helps to keep local neighbours happy. Gardner says: “Our helicopter clients are all wary of environmental disturbance and want properties where they don’t have to fly over neighbours’ houses to get in. Those who specify hangars for helicopters are the most difficult clients to find homes for: local planning authorities react poorly to requests for helicopter hangars, and houses that already have them carry a serious premium.”
It took years for John Matchett, whose Matchett Group provides online learning, to gain planning permission for a hangar on his property in Oxfordshire. “I bought a derelict mill and did it up, then started thinking about a hangar for the helicopter,” he says. “I had the planning people from Cherwell district council down, and at first they said no, but I persisted. They suggested that I bury it in the ground, but that’s hardly practical, so we settled on a screen of trees that make it virtually invisible.
Suddenly flying low over your village Apocalypse Now style, however, is not a good idea. Falling out with the neighbours will put paid to a jet-set lifestyle, however much money you have.
One self-confessed expert in helicopter etiquette, who wishes to remain anonymous, says: “Offer to take the person most likely to object out for a ride in your chopper, or donate vast sums to restore the church spire, but whatever you do, don’t be arrogant.”
Ready for takeoff
To join the helicopter set, you will need a Private Pilot’s Licence (Helicopters), which takes a minimum of 45 hours’ flying (but more usually about 70) for which you should set aside £11,000-£16,000.
You can pay anything from about £30,000 for a second-hand two-seat Robinson R22 up to £4m-plus for a Sikorsky S76. The world’s most popular helicopter is the four-seat Robinson R44, which has a range of about 375 miles, costs just over £150,000 if bought new.
Maintenance on an R44 will cost about £4,500 a year, insurance £5,000, and fuel is almost £6 a gallon — it uses about 16 gallons an hour, which works out at 80p a mile.
You will need a sizeable shed to keep it in — a R44 is 22ft long and 11ft tall. Any piece of flat ground about the size of a tennis court will serve as a helipad, provided it doesn’t have any tall obstacles nearby — buildings, trees, and especially telegraph poles and wires.
For lessons and sales, try Heli Air, 01895 835 899, www.heliair.com, or London Helicopter Centres, 01737 823 514, www.london-helicopters.co.uk
Marchand Petit, 01803 839 190, www.marchandpetit.co.uk; Savills, 020 7499 8644, www.savills.co.uk; Lomond Homes, 0870 062 7766, www.lomondhomes.com; Lower Mill Estate, www.lowermillestate.com; John Bray, 01208 862 601, www.johnbray.co.uk
