The Hills Are Alive

Prime properties in the Surrey Hills AONB are worth waiting for

- Penny Churchill

WE’RE still seeing UK money in the countryside around here,’ reports Clive Moon of Savills in Guildford, who has seen contracts exchanged on one of Surrey’s most enviable village houses: the elegant, Grade II-listed Glebe House, with five acres of land at Chiddingfold, in the Surrey Hills AONB. The house sold in competitive bidding for more than its revised guide price of £5.85 million, although less than the original asking price of ‘excess £6.5 million’ quoted at its launch in 2018 (COUNTRY LIFE, May 9, 2018). The buyers were a young family with children destined for one of the area’s many outstanding schools.

‘Although price is clearly a major issue in these uncertain times, buyers—especially families with children of school age —can’t wait forever,’ Mr Moon says, adding, ‘given that they may only live there for about 10 years while the children are at school, such buyers don’t want to waste time renting.’

That said, vendors of even the finest country houses face the prospect of a long wait to find a buyer, unless their pricing reflects the reality of life in today’s slow lane. Brexit isn’t the only spanner in the works; today’s buyers are easily spooked and local issues, such as planning, can also give cause for concern.

Savills (01483 796800) and The Grantley Group (01483 407628) are joint agents in the sale of one of Surrey’s most charming small estates, Barnfield at Dunsfold, near Cranleigh, 12 miles from Guildford, which is currently on the market for £5m—a price that reflects the uncertainty caused by a planning application for new housing on a former wartime airfield on the other side of Dunsfold.