Earlier this summer Savills launched The Grove onto the market in Cambridge. A good 6 bed 2 bath house with about an acre of garden including planning consent for a new five bed house. Not a typical Cambridge property but in the right part of town and available in two lots or as a whole. What do you think they were asking? The guide price in fact was quoted as £1.35m.
To cut a long story short(er) there was lots of interest. The old ‘Best & Final Offers’ routine was employed and 29+ bids were received. I bid over £2.1m for a client but it went for …..over £2.8m.
Ok, this could sound like sour grapes but it’s not that I didn’t get it. It was that it went for SO much more than the guide price. How could the agent get it so wrong or was this clever marketing?
Now the central Cambridge market is like London and looks like a poorly poured pint there is so much froth on it. We are used to hearing these kind of stories but my question is this. Was the property marketed deliberately too low – to generate interest and competition as some of the unsuccessful bidders have suggested or is this the final fizz of a market before it pops? Savills are not known as ‘under valuers’ and my instinct is that the lucky buyers of this property will find that a few years into their ownership, that they will need to live there for a generation to get back the amount they have overpaid. But then of course, they may be taking that kind of long term view but it’s scary if they are and clearly makes valuing a popular property impossible.