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The St Tropez Of the South
West of England
By Michael
O'Flynn
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| It's
one of the most expensive places on the planet to buy a plot of land. What
would you choose to build on it? Here are a few suggestions
from Michael Flynn of Findaproperty.com ...... |
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The
Sandbanks in Poole, Dorset used to be a quintessentially English seaside
resort … donkey rides, candy floss, long damp summers spent trying to bury
your little brother on the beach.
Now it's a
blinging millionaires' playground with house prices so high you'd have
to jet off to central Tokyo, New York or Hong Kong to find anything as
extravagantly priced.
Just last month
a run-down three-bed bungalow hit the headlines when it was sold for £2.75
million. The garage next door, bought by the same buyer, fetched £200,000
In another
recent bidding war, developers stared each other down until one blinked
and the other handed over a cheque for £5 million for a modest house
on half an acre. Substantial houses can change hands for £10 million. |
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| Not bad going for what
amounts to a spit of sand in the middle of Poole Harbour. But what's the
attraction?
Why are Rolex-wearing developers
driving around Poole in Bentleys? And why are buyers willing to fight gold-plated
tooth and well-manicured nail for a bog standard seaside bungalow?
In truth, they're not. What they're
after is the land, the plots in prime positions with breath-taking views
over the sea - Poole Harbour, one of the largest in the world, is a thing
of great beauty and celebrities and tycoons will happily part with seven
figure sums for an uninterrupted vista.
So it's simple economics. The value
of the land here has effortlessly out-paced the value of the current housing
stock. And that £2.75 million bungalow - many were built in the 60s
by the developer Saunders - will be bulldozed in double-quick time and
replaced with something bigger, more beautiful, and far, far more expensive. |
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If the developer Eddie
Mitchell of Seven Developments is involved, the new kid on the block is
sure to be an eye-catching futuristic extravaganza crackling with high-tech
gadgetry and bearing a name like Moonraker, Thunderbird, or Dream Catcher.
Mitchell is the man credited with
transforming sleepy Poole into Britain's answer to St Tropez, and he's
done it by building outrageous one-off homes with white walls, sinuous
elevations, swooping copper roofs and coloured floor-to-ceiling glass panels.
Some of the locals are a bit sniffy
about Seven's creations and would be a lot happier if Mitchell simply added
to Poole's stock of neo-Georgian and mock-Tudor mansions. |
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But Seven's houses have won a clutch
of prestigious awards, acquired some serious cachet and set a new benchmark
for property development in Sandbanks and the surrounding hot-spots - Lilliput,
Branksome Chine and Canford Cliffs.
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| Mitchell is reluctant
to define his style, but back in 2002, when Seven's Inspiration House was
named Best Luxury Home, the judges of the What House awards detected a
hint of 1930s Art Deco and applauded him for achieving the "brutal minimalism
of a five star boutique hotel".
It was, however, the quality of the
bespoke finishing and the technological wizardry on display inside that
really had them drooling.
"Floors tiled with tumbled marble
absorb the sound of footsteps, while embellishing the sounds of the hidden
DVD/Hi-Fi surround sound system. Several rooms have plasma TV screens and
there is an attractive basement cinema," they enthused. |
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"The atmosphere of the house is supremely
tranquil and minimal maintenance will be required both for buildings and
surrounding grounds … a sumptuous and formidably modern home."
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Since then Seven has
won thirteen awards and they can hardly keep up with the demand for their
properties - many are bought off-plan, but if you have £4 million
to spare you can still purchase the 6,000 square foot Thunderbird in Branksome
Park, Poole.
If that's a smidgen more than you're
willing to spend, £2.2 million will buy you the keys to a 4,000 square
foot apartment in the Bowie Building on Sandbanks - an imperious creation
that looks like a stately liner with its prow pointing purposefully towards
the sea. |
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Both buildings are unusually shaped
and represent a departure from the cubic modernism of Seven's earlier efforts:
"A lot of modern houses being built around here are square," Eddie Mitchell
explains, "so I thought it was time to move away from that.
"The properties I'm designing now
are curved and have distinctive copper roofs - they have lots of glass
and are open-plan like the earlier work, but they're quite distinctive
looking and set us apart."
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| So too does Mitchell's
decision to sell all his new homes as a complete life-style proposition.
The properties come fully furnished with Rolf Benz leather suites, Ronald
Schmitt glass dining tables and Hulsta bedroom suites.
If brand names float your boat, Seven's
houses will have you in ecstasies: vast Panasonic plasma TVs, 'rational'
fitted kitchens, Lutron lighting, Gaggeneau appliances, Porcelanosa wall
and floor tiles, Villeroy & Boch sanitaryware with chrome fittings,
state of the art Bang & Olufsen music systems ... the list goes on
and on.
The properties have under-floor heating,
electrically operated blinds and louvers, sliding glass doors which open
automatically as you approach, custom-made steel and glass staircases,
home cinemas, and wall-mounted LCD televisions in the gym. |
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With all of this technology
you'd half expect Thunderbird, whose dipping semi-circular roof resembles
out-stretched wings, to take off at the press of a button, but the ability
to fly is not something Seven have thus far managed to build into their
homes.
However, Eddie Mitchell is well aware
that the seriously wealthy no longer like to travel by road and rail -
Michael Owen, he notes, gets from Cheshire to Newcastle by private helicopter.
So the next Seven property will feature that essential celebrity accessory:
a helipad for your designer chopper. |
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| This article
first appeared on Findaproperty.com and has been reproduced with their
permission |
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