A new record was set in the auction room yesterday, when an unbroken residential estate sold under the hammer for £20.4m at the Barnett Ross sale.
Okehampton Close, comprising 65 flats in North Finchley, N12, was guided at £16m-plus and is the largest lot to sell at auction to date.
The current record was set in 2014 when Barnett Ross sold Gwalior House, in Southgate, N14, for £13.8m.
Yesterday, the auction room at the Radisson Blue Portman hotel was packed with up to 300 people as veteran auctioneer John Barnett introduced Okehampton Court. Five pre-registered bidders competed for the lot over a 20-minute period. When the hammer finally fell at £20,425,000 – a new UK auction record – the room burst into applause. The purchaser is a UK-based family-owned property company, while the under bidders were all UK property companies or families.
Barnett said the sale was further proof that the auction room was an effective method of sale for larger investments, while pre-registering bidders gave the auctioneer and vendor greater confidence for an investment of this size.
“It makes potential purchasers aware that they are special and concentrates their minds. It’s like being let in to the Royal encloure at Ascot,” he said. Each of the five pre-registered parties bid over the reserve and a total of 60 bids above reserve were placed.
Asked how it felt when he finally brought the hammer down, Barnett said: “It was a bit like a penalty shoot out.”
Both Okehampton Close and Gwalior House were offered on behalf of charity the Foyle Foundation, which has awarded grants to UK charities totalling more than £90m since 2001
The Okehampton Close estate produces £729,365 pa from 52 flats let on ASTs, three assured tenancies and seven regulated tenancies. The remaining three are vacant. This was the first time that the 1930s estate – built in the style of the Garden City movement – had gone on the market since 1946.
It offers potential to increase density on the 2.63-acre site, which includes 30 garages as well as communal gardens, and to sell off the individual homes. The vendor had drawn up a scheme to add 46 flats, but had not applied for planning consent.
Yesterday’s sale raised a total of £34.8m from 48 lots sold, a 94% success rate.
Other highlights included:
Lot 4 – 137 Milne Park East, New Addington, Croydon – This freehold shop with a flat above all let to Martin McColl producing £11,250 per annum sold for £290,000 – over double the reserve, and a yield of 3.8%.
Lot 11 – 22 Fortess Road, Kentish Town, NW5 – This freehold four-storey building comprising a ground-floor shop with three self-contained flats above, producing £55,400 per annum was offered with a reserve below £1,200,000 and sold for £1.67m, generating a yield of 3.3%.
Lot 31 – 146-148 Burnt Oak Broadway, Burnt Oak, Middlesex – This freehold double Costa Coffee unit with four flats above, producing £69,300 per annum, had failed to sell in March at another London auction but sold at £1.495m, reflecting a yield of 4.6%.
Lot 10 – 126 Boundary Road, St John’s Wood, NW – This vacant freehold former language school, in the same family ownership for 70 years, was offered with a reserve below £800,000 and sold for £1,305,000.
Barnett said: “Thirteen lots were sold on behalf of executors in yesterday’s auction. We are very pleased to have been entrusted with so many executor lots, which all sold above their guides. Some of the high prices achieved yet again prove that open competition in the Auction room achieves prices well above what any valuer would estimate.”
Only three lots remain available.
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