Savills raised £45.5m at its 28 October auction at the Marriot hotel on Duke Street, W1, with a success rate of 88%.
The sale – which attracted an estimated 500 attendees, mostly UK-based – also saw controversy as Southwark council sold a pair of homes, billed as the most expensive council houses in Britain, for £2.9m off a £2.2m guide price. The property has since been occupied by squatters protesting the sale of council stock.
Southwark said it would use the proceeds of the sale to build up to 20 more houses.
The two five-storey semi-detached blocks dating from 1820 were built as homes for Anchor Brewery staff, before coming under the ownership of the Courage Brewery – which emblazoned the slogan “Take Courage” on the side of the building. The plot was the most expensive at the auction, with the winners – understood to be owner-occupiers – fending off bids from developers and investors.
In Notting Hill, W11, a block of vacant self-contained unmodernised flats at 27 Sirdar Road was sold by a housing association for £2.2m to a developer.
And Savills almost scored a hat-trick of £2m-plus sales, with a six-flat block at York Mansions in Cricklewood, NW2, receiving a highest bid of £2.6m against a reserve price of £2.7m.
Land sales were also popular, with three redundant Thames Water plots all selling to different buyers with interests in holding the land speculatively for between £75,000 and £130,000.
Central London properties and ground rents sold predictably well, though stock in satellite regions such as St Albans, Hertfordshire, also went “ballistic”, according to Savills auctioneer Christopher Coleman-Smith.
Coleman-Smith added that regulated tenancies were starting to attract interest outside of the larger portfolio-holders: “It is nice to see them bidding because it has usually been the domain of the professional, bigger companies, but now some individuals are clued up and starting to buy them.”
Savills also saw its first sale through internet bidding, with a long lease on the first floor of a house in Middlesex sold for £251,000 above a guide price of £135,000.
chris.berkin@estatesgazette.com
