Comment: Is £5m the right price for 53 The Park?
53 The Park, St Albans - Credit: Archant
Not many properties can drop their asking price by £1m and still be the highest-priced house in town, but 53 The Park isn’t just any property.
The headline-grabbing home has been in the news again following the vendor’s decision to slash its price by more than 16 per cent to £5m.
So what do we make of this drastic drop? Canny marketing by the agent, designed to maximise publicity for the property? Or plain old unrealisitic expectations of what it was – and possibly still is – worth?
Many believe it was simply priced too high to begin with - and will need to drop still further before it will be sold.
As any estate agent will confirm, the trouble with marketing a unique property is that, with no similar homes to compare it to, it’s hard to know what it’s truly worth.
And with its cocktail bar, steam room, eight bathrooms and huge underground garage, 53 The Park is certainly a one-off.
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There’s one other property currently for sale on The Park and it has an asking price of just (ahem) £2.5m.
Marketed by Cassidy & Tate, the agent responsible for number 53, it’s being pushed as a project that can be transformed into a 10,000 sq ft dream home, not unlike its neighbour.
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Another property on the road is under offer, having been advertised for sale with a practically-free-by-comparison guide price of £1.6m.
But these cheaper homes come with a mere four bedrooms apiece and they’re all sorely lacking in the hydraulic car lift department. Apart from the street they’re on, is there any realistic comparison to be made?
The other issue with marketing such a pricey property is that there’s only ever going to be a small pool of buyers with the cash (or mega mortgage) to buy it.
Is the price now right for 53 The Park? We can but wait and see.
