You can see the problem: you have several television series and a host of
cookery books to your name, and an estimated fortune of £40m. You want a
mega-mansion that reflects your new-found wealth. But you love your house
and are reluctant to leave your exclusive corner of north London. What do
you do? If you’re Jamie Oliver, naked chef and school-food campaigner,
the answer is simple — you buy the pukka house next door.
Oliver, 32, who has a four-storey terraced house in trendy Primrose Hill, has
just acquired next door, too. He has applied to planners for permission to
knock them into a 19-room superhouse — providing plenty of room for the
chef, his wife, Jools, and their daughters, Poppy, 6, and Daisy, 5. Oh, and
the couple also want to built a large extension at the back.
Camden borough council is due to rule on the application in the next few
weeks. If approved, it will not only provide them with lots more space, but
could add substantially to the value of their properties, too. While
individual houses on the street sell for £2.5m or so, local agents estimate
such a super-house would be worth more than £7m.
Oliver is just the latest in a line of celebrities who have outgrown their
homes and sought to buy next door. Chelsea FC’s owner, Roman Abramovich, has
done it; Michael Palin, the former Python turned professional traveller, has
done it; so have Alastair Campbell, the former spin doctor, and the actress
Helena Bonham Carter. If you’ve already bought your prestige townhouse with
basement conversion, but need extra space for your staff, a pool and a
cinema room, sometimes the only option is to expand sideways.
“A person’s house needs to grow with their wealth,” says Jonathan Hewlett,
head of London sales at the estate agent Savills. “In London, it is often
difficult to find one house that gives the volume of space and number of
bedrooms required. People see it as easier than moving house. If it’s a
prime location and they really like that street, they’ll buy next door
instead.”
Robert Bailey, founder of the buying agency Robert Bailey Property, agrees.
“Generally, the super-rich would spend every weekend in their main house in
the country,” he says. “Nowadays, due to pressure of work and longer hours,
they are tending to downsize in the country or sell up and live most of the
year in London, perhaps taking longer holidays abroad.” Typically, his
clients are looking for 7,000-8,000 sq ft of space, with housing for four
children, nannies and any extra staff.
Such conversions, although relatively rare, are most often found in the
priciest parts of prime central London, such as Kensington and Chelsea, or
further north in Belgravia and St John’s Wood. The scale of work varies
enormously: sometimes it is just a matter of knocking through a few
adjoining doors, but more ambitious projects can involve removing the party
wall or even rebuilding the inside completely, so little more than the
facade remains.
Whatever the work, you must obtain consent from planners, who are not always
happy to see two normal-sized houses turned into one super-sized one — as
Madonna found last year, when she was refused permission by Westminster city
council to knock through her two houses in Marylebone.
The conversion process may also be far from straightforward, depending on the
layout of the two properties. You may think buying the house next door will
double your floor space to 8,000 sq ft, but if you are required to keep all
existing hallways, you may end up with only 6,000 sq ft that is usable.
There are more potential problems if the house is listed or you own only the
leasehold. If the Crown Estate has the freehold, as can be the case in the
area near Regent’s Park, that can cause problems.
“Some houses feel like two separate properties with interconnecting doors,”
Hewlett says, “and others flow well. Often, you can’t take down a party
wall, chimney or staircase due to planning laws. It is seldom possible to
create one spectacular room across one floor.”
Despite such problems, the marriage value created by joining two properties
can be considerable. The estate agent Knight Frank, for example, sold
adjoining houses on Walton Street, in Knightsbridge, for £11.5m last year —
a single house on the same road would have gone for about £4m.
In other cases, the whole may not be worth more than the two parts. A
laterally converted property on Upper Cheyne Row, an exclusive pocket of
Chelsea, is a case in point.
With 5,319 sq ft of space over four storeys, it has two double drawing rooms,
five bedrooms, a staff flat, a sauna and a wine cellar, and is on the market
for £7.9m. It is Grade II-listed, however, meaning the original floor plans
of the houses had to remain.
Howard Elston of the estate agent Aylesford, which is selling the properties
jointly with Savills, acknowledges that a single house on the same street
could cost almost £4m — meaning there may be little or no marriage value.
“Because both these homes are Grade II-listed, the ground, first and second
floors must remain intact,” Elston says. “They are joined only on the
landing levels, with a connecting door. It is tricky to sell because you
need to find a buyer who wants that particular layout.”
Robin Ellis, one of London’s most upmarket builders, specialises in upgrading
the homes of the super-rich. To ensure you create a house that maximises
floor space and realises the potential of your investment, he says, you need
to do your research.
Some houses in areas such as Notting Hill and Primrose Hill — which used to be
considered “inner city” — had been modified before the gentrification of the
1980s. “If a property was butchered in the 1960s and 1970s, when planning
laws were more relaxed, then alterations can be more flexible,” Ellis
explains.
The trick, he says, is to seek out houses where the roof level may have been
changed or where the basements have, at some point, been turned into
separate flats, accessible only from the street. “A lot depends on the
condition of the property and how many period features remain,” he advises.
“If the property was at some stage converted into an office and all
the features were knocked out, there’s a good chance you can do some serious
renovations.”
An alternative approach, favoured by some who live in Kensington or Belgravia,
is to buy the mews cottage behind their house. This follows the example of
Tony Blair, who in 2004 paid £3.65m for a Grade II-listed Georgian townhouse
on Connaught Square, in Westminster, then last year bought the mews house
behind it on Archery Close for an estimated £800,000.
“The ideal scenario for a London house would be, as with Tony Blair, to buy
the neighbouring mews,” says Rupert des Forges, a partner at Knight Frank.
“They are usually separated only by a garden or terrace, are more feasible
in terms of cost and give garaging, ancillary guest rooms above — and, of
course, security at the back of your property.”
Lateral thinkers
What works for multimillionaires in the most expensive parts of central London
will probably not be worth it for the rest of us out in the suburbs or
elsewhere in the country, where property values are substantially lower. In
other words, think again before making that offer on the semi next door.
Bailey says there is a danger of “overcapitalising” if property values are not
high enough in your street. “You might be better moving to a better road
than buying two houses next to each other in a secondary location,” he says.
Ellis agrees: “In the middle market, it might not be worth the expense,” he
says. “But at the high end — global prime London — the marriage
value may be huge. People really will pay for an exceptional house in the
right area.”
n 28 and 28a Upper Cheyne Row is for sale for £7.9m through Aylesford (020
7349 2628, www.aylesford.com ) and
Savills (020 7730 0822, www.savills.com )
