Zoe and Tim Bawtree’s Cheltenham eco bunker update article – as featured on television’s Grand Designs
I think it’s this one if you want to watch it again
The same house they tried to sell via a competition a few years ago
Category: Property on TV
Grand Design house in Bath for sale
The Daily Mail has a story : about them wanting to sell this one so they can do another.
Cecil House first went on the market for £2.85million, soon after it featured on Grand Designs.
The Woods took it off, however, when the building plot they were hoping to buy was sold. They tried again, last autumn, at £2.15million.
And as you can see on rightmove it’s now on for sale at £2,250,000
Fancy watching the Grand Design Episode again?
Series 6 Episode 6 Grand Designs (48 mins)
First Broadcast: Wednesday 20 Feb 2008 Channel 4
Bath may be famous for its Georgian architecture, but Tiffany Wood and her husband Jonny have chosen it as the location to build themselves a striking Modernist home.
Property programs on TV
If you’re not yet sick of the daily diet of house programs on TV, then always watch for the dates when they’re actually recorded. Some being shown are from 2007 and this was at the height of the housing bubble.
It does make me worry watching Kirsty and Phil “negotiate” a £440k deal on a property on at £450k for two years though. Is that really negotiating? In the end the couple didn’t buy the property even when their offer was accepted. I’d love to have the time of doing a review of all of the programs to show how many houses they bought, what % they negotiated off and how many times the people on the show went off and bought another house.
I’d also like to do a tally on how many of the couples end up having a baby during the course of the show! Perhaps they used to watch Sarah Beeney’s Property Ladder program (Possible the least repeated program of them all) as she always seemed to be mid-pregnancy during the filming of the shows.
Grand Design for sale
Brock House, Sheepdrove, Lambourn, Berkshire Guide Price of £1,400,000
It’s an oak framed building with an octagonal kitchen at the centre!
You can see more about it at the Grand Design site here
Former Gardener’s World Garden for sale
Clacks Farm was featured regularly on Gardener’s World. It was Arthur Billitt’s home in Ombersley in Worcestershire. It featured from 1976 to 1979.
If you’re after buying a property in the Worcester area and have £1.5M to spend then it could just what you’re looking for!
Brookside close for sale
If you ever watched Brookside back in the dim distant past you might be interested to know its for sale!
It’s being sold off and they want in the region of £2 million for it.
The catalogue (pdf file) is available
Want to rent a place at Brookside instead?
Now available are three places!
Relocation, Relocation
Relocation, Relocation is another show I still enjoy watching.
Season 9 Episode 5 of 7 – Channel 4 8:00pm-9:00pm (1 hour ) Thu 10 Feb
Phil Spencer revisits a man who was looking for a London property to share with his girlfriend, as well as a home on the Kent coast for his parents, who were planning to move to England from South Africa. Two years on, the property expert finds out whether they actually managed to relocate to Britain.
I do like the update programs. I like watching the repeats over on More4 too.
Secret Shopper – Estate Agents
Tonight on Channel 4 at 9pm there’s an episode of Mary Portas’s secret shopper. This week it’s focusing on estate agents so it’ll be fascinating for anyone with any interest in the UK’s housing market.
A must watch program!
“Mary is granted access to the sales team of a north London agency where she tries to improve relations with customers, but soon she is clashing with the boss, who seems to have a very different opinion on what good service is”
You can watch the previous episodes of Secret Shopper here on 4onD – they’ll put this episode up sometime after it’s shown.
Update:
Well I watched this and was intrigued to hear some of the comments. I still don’t know what prestigious turning means. Do estate agents work for the seller or the buyer? They work for the seller but they can only do that by finding a buyer. No mention of pricing was included in this program at all which I thought was interesting.
It did seem to focus on the need for good details and information.
I tried to add up how many times I’d been shown round a property by an estate agent compared to a seller. It’s about even – and once I was shown round by a relative of the seller as they were abroad. I found the estate agents often don’t know the information about the property, or can’t answer every question you might have. However in the case of some properties I’ve viewed it’s been because it’s a probate or repossession property so they just won’t know.
The idea of adding the positives and the negatives to the property detail is one I approve of. One property I viewed once had a major damp problem and needed a damp proof course. The owner new this and wanted the estate agent to tell viewers before they arrived. They weren’t though, and viewer after viewer pitched up and found the most amazing mess of a damp problem on display. A little honesty – requested by the seller – had been ignored. Why? I don’t know – those serious about buying a property that needed work wouldn’t be that put off, and the ones that would be put off would just be having a wasted trip anyway.
I agree with Mary that honesty and openness is needed – but how many sellers would want to advertise the fact their house lacked a feature, or even be upfront about having been burgled.
Worth a watch if only for some of the silly estate agent speak they use, and the amazing hair of “gel-boy”.
Relocation Relocation
Last night’s Relocation Relocation had Phil and Kirstie helping Sunee and Will Goring, who wanted to bring their young family back to London. Watch again on 4onD
They wanted a big family house and an investment property too.
However their search uncovered a proeprty just across the road from Sunee’s brother’s house that wasn’t on the market but the owner was interested in selling. The couple loved the house – although it did have some eclectic decorating – the black on the stairs was a bit dark. But it was an amazing size house – although they paid £640k for it and they needed to do some work on it.
They declined to buy an investment as they’d spent more on their main home – this was probably very sensible. Phil showed them three flats which got a return of between 5-6%.
The house they bought didn’t involve any estate agents and they offerdd 660 on an asking price of 675. The owners had discussed the fact they wouldn’t be paying any estate agent fees and in light of work needing doing on the guttering they accepted this offer. Kirsty was speechless almost!
This was Series 7 Episode 7
Relocation Relocation Review
Last night’s episode – a couple looking to buy a Scottish hotel.
They looked at several nice hotels, one was too small and another was mostly pub with the ratio of income being 50% of income from bar drinks, 35% from food and only 15% from rooms ! Luckily Phil pointed out they’d wanted to be hoteliers not landlords!
They should have bought the one that made 60k a year profit a year and was closed 5 months of it too! That sounded like a cushy deal!
Whilst I watched it last night I thought the finance aspect wasn’t touched on very much – where repayment of the loan came into it who knows… if you have to pay your mortgage out of the profit then you have no money to fritter on nice stuff.
I thought buying a “bust” property and keeping on the staff was a stupid idea. Surely it can’t provide for 5 full time wages? I’d have thought the only way of doing it would be to have both working like loonies and trying to get some cheap help. Having a “hotel manager” who’d managed it into the ground sounded like a really awful idea.
He didn’t want to do front of house – so is he a trained chef – one would hope he had some experience! Who knows though – but it certainly made interesting TV for an hour and I learnt a few things too! That Scotland has 2000 hotels! That there’s a less touristy side of Loch Ness and that there’s some pretty nice looking hotels up there!
If you’d like to watch it yourself you can by clicking here and guess what? If you’d like to see their hotel then visit The Royal on Lochan run by Keith and Christine Bettis.