EARLIER LISTINGS…

Earlier Unique Property Bulletin Items –  21st January 2018

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Island War Tunnels For Sale

Guide £150,000

WW2 Tunnels For Sale – Underneath A Guernsey Church 

This is a first for us. First property for sale on the island of Guernsey and first tunnel network. Not sure if there is any “listed” status – you will need to do some digging to find that out! Recently we’ve feature several cave dwellings for sale and these have been quite popular.

Given the high price of houses on Guernsey, there may be someone who will bring a little imagination to these dank places and transform them into a remarkable home.

WW2 Tunnels – Small Entrance But A Lot of Space In There 

Though truth be told, from the torment of the labourers press-ganged into building these now redundant and creepy places, some things are better just filled in with rubble and soil, then left in peace.

WW2 Tunnels – Maybe Not The Island Paradise You Had In Mind

But we bet this will suit one of our readers

Photo courtesy of GuernseyPress/BNPS.

If you do have a notion to buy a former WW2 tunnel on the island of Guernsey, please contact the local estate agent…

Click Here For Tunnel Sale Details

Sale page archived: click here.

Location: Situated beneath St Saviours Church, Guernsey.

Price Guide: £150,000.

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Quiet Here & Busy There!

Unique Property Bulletin – 18 January 18

Just a quick note to let new visitors to this website, plus our regular readers know we are very busy sorting out the new Unique Property Bulletin HQ…

Unique Property Bulletin Is Soon To Have New Premises 

Working there to guarantee the publication here can cope with the future. 

The new offices at the Noss Head Lighthouse Station, along with the new income stream we are sorting out is aimed at making this publication self-financing and secure in perpetuity. Not least, but our readership numbers are increasing at a staggering rate.

Just 4 part-time volunteers are running something here that occasionally has the readership circulation numbers of a national newspaper!

The New Premises: An Old Engine House, Ironically For A New Internet Search Engine

By securing an annuity (rental income) along with our new premises, this will mean we can employ some staff. The final result, towards the second part of this year will mean that we can return to the fuller, more regular Unique Property Bulletin that has been the helper in realising property dreams for countless folk over the past 25 years.

The Old Engine House Is In A Beautiful Lighthouse Compound

A far more suitable place to publish a Unique Property Bulletin than an old flat in Montrose!

However, it is quite a big ask to secure premises and an annuity (to pay staff).

Our small group of volunteers have been working very hard. It just happens to be offsite, and not that apparent to our dedicated, or casual reader.

Please rest assured that we have completed the hard part and are now getting the final elements of phase 1 in place.

The Old Engine House – By Noss Head Lighthouse Tower. Just Sublime.

All this means we will be able to assist you in a more effective and efficient way. Our aim as always is best described by the strap line on our Manual…

In order to achieve the goals of new premises, new employed staff for this publication, and a guaranteed way to pay them, all our volunteers and helpers have been very busy offsite: which is why we are…

Quiet Here & Busy There!

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Unique Property Bulletin – Earlier Listing: 7th January 2018

Tower In Distress?

Look closely at the photographs, this appears to be an unhappy tower house conversion.

As a consequence of studying the pictures, we reckon that the price is very negotiable.

In fact it has already come down with a thump.

Tower House, Evedon, Sleaford, Lincolnshire, NG34 9PB

Kitchen cupboards broken and falling to bits…

Tower House, Evedon, Sleaford, Lincolnshire, NG34 9PB

The place looks like an abandoned mess…

Tower House, Evedon, Sleaford, Lincolnshire, NG34 9PB

There is a detached garage building onsite…

Tower House – The Garage 

The Tower ticks many of our “like” boxes – it is indeed an unusual looking structure…

Tower House, Evedon, Sleaford, Lincolnshire, NG34 9PB

However, without being too unsubtle, this has all the hallmarks of a bargain sale.

Currently the estate agents are looking for £319,000.

We think there may be a lot to be chopped off at the tower…

…off of the price that is – not Henry the 8th wives’ heads department!

From a little research, the value has come down with a bump bigger than Anne Boleyn’s poor old noggin might have managed…

From £550,000 in 2004 to £319,000 in 2018.

How much more might be sliced off the tower price?

The Tower House for sale is at Evedon and located here…

Tower House – Location. Courtesy of Google Maps

Full address…

Tower House, Evedon, Sleaford, Lincolnshire, NG34 9PB

Click Here For The Full Tower House Details

Archive Brochure for future reference: here.

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Unique Property Bulletin – Earlier Listing: 4th January 2018

Water Tower Wonder

The Water Tower, 2 Cop Lane Penwortham Preston PR1 0SR 

Have you ever wondered what it would b like to live in a water tower? Here are some pictures of what can be achieved with these vertical homes…

The Water Tower, 2 Cop Lane Penwortham Preston PR1 0SR 

This might look like an ordinary place to live, but catch a look at the stairmaster 5,000 inbuilt exercise system… 

The Water Tower, 2 Cop Lane Penwortham Preston PR1 0SR 

The hike is worth it as the kitchen, bathroom, amenity and other areas are beautifully presented…

The Water Tower, 2 Cop Lane Penwortham Preston PR1 0SR

Price Guided At: £300,000 

Click Here For Further Details & Photos of The Water Tower

Old archived reference: here

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Really Aggravating

Many Auction Houses Might Be Wildly Useless At Valuing Property…

Clive Emson Auctioneers Valued This Martello Tower At £75,000

Is this inept assessment by an auctioneer, or undervaluation-buyer-baiting?

For years our not-for-profit Unique Property Bulletin has given free publicity to a diverse range of UK auction houses. Some, such as Roy Pugh Auctioneers even send the occasional thank you note.

The primary reason we feature many auction properties is they are unique in some way and of interest to our readers. In case any auction house doubts whether we have readers in numbers of use to them, we would provide an example of how 186,399 folk were reached with just one of our postings…

Unique Property Bulletin Back-Screen Excerpt…

Unique Property Bulletin Regularly Reaches 70,000 Property Buyers A Month

The example above reached 186,399 of our readers

Our point? We and many of the 186,399 folk above have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds buying buildings from you.

However, an increasing number of us are getting wise to some of the more questionable ways that auctioneers employ to fill their halls on the big day.

We are becoming more and more aggravated when supposedly reputable auction houses persist in recklessly undervaluing properties that are worth a huge amount more than various auction house mislead their customers into believing.

Why does this matter?

Hundreds of buyers each year spend their time, money and effort going to these auctions on a what is a de facto false prospectus.

Our readers, and on occasion ourselves waste valuable time and money travelling hundreds of miles to attend an auction house when the local auctioneer knows – or should know – the values of their local properties. Yet get their valuation guide so utterly wrong. Time, after time, after time.

What is the purpose of an expensive valuation person such as an RICS surveyor which the majority of reputable auction houses employ, if not to do their job with a reasonable amount of accuracy?

We are braced for lawyers letters from one of several auction houses we are calling out on this disreputable practice. A well known auctioneer in the midlands  (not Clive Emson & Co) already issued his own hard-man warning of dire consequences against us if we reported this issue.

Auctioneers and estate agents threatening us doesn’t really work as we have old retired cops here at Unique Property Bulletin, who, in a previous career have arrested and taken murderers to Barlinnie jail.

In fact the blue collar miscreants at some auction houses might care to think this through? Instead of threatening an otherwise mild mannered website such as Unique Property Bulletin with a dungeon of unpleasant things, perhaps many auctioneers should look in a mirror?

All we are asking for is that auction houses STOP getting their valuations so utterly wrong.

The main culprits have their auction staff payroll stuffed full of RICS surveyors and property professionals who should know better. It is the cornerstone of their job to get a valuation within a reasonable distance of what a building is worth. Would you agree with that? Yes? No? Are we being unreasonable about this?

Instead of competent/accurate auction house property guides, we keep getting things like this ridiculous exhibit of the undervaluation-buyer-baiting problem from Clive Emson and company. Their professional opinion is that Martello Tower 25 at Drymchurch was worth £70,000 to £75,000 as a guide price.

Our readers can form their own view about the corporate competence of Clive Emson auctioneers when they put the guide on this property of…

£75,000 and it actually sold for £145,000.

 

Clive Emson Auctioneers Valued This Martello Tower At £75,000

So we restate our rhetorical question…

Is this inept assessment by an auctioneer, or undervaluation-buyer-baiting?

On several occasions during 2017 we have mentioned this defective-prospectus-guide-price problem. We now have sufficient cases of this dubious practice to merit a Moorov Doctrine type case for HM Courts, civil division…

Our hope is that the reputable auction houses will cease and desist this practice of undervaluation-buyer-baiting as a ruse to pack out their auction halls.

Each time an auction house undervalues a building guide price so vastly out of line with it’s true worth, many people take time and spend money attending these places. Or rather they waste their days and money. Okay, an auction house is trying to pack their hall to solicit more bids and push the price up…

But there is a materially important difference between fair dealing, where an auctioneer nudges folk into his or her hall, and the outright “Lovejoy” style of effort that some of the UK’s highest profile auction houses currently employ.

If Lovejoy (here) Ran A Property Auction We Might Expect This Problem

Rather than persist in these questionable money making ways, just get the guide price valuations nearer to the actual worth!

Or if one of these auction houses takes exception to us raising the complaint of alleged undervaluation-buyer-baiting, then hit us with a writ. We are used to collating and submitting proof to court at the higher standard (of beyond-reasonable-doubt) as required by criminal hearings. We certainly have sufficient evidence to counter-claim against an auction house on the civil court burden of evidence (in-the-balance-of-probabilities).

Crucially there is a case to prove in that we and others have lost money – several hundred pounds each, taking days off and sorting out property purchase finance – to attend one of these defective prospectus auctions where the incompetent guide price valuation by a local property auctioneer draws prospective buyers in from hundreds of miles away, only to waste the time and money of dozens of people in their auction hall who have attended the auction based on what may fairly be described as a property misdescription.

There has already been precedent set against Auction House (UK) Ltd regarding misleading the public (here). It is our hope that the reputable auction houses – and the ones whom we have given free publicity over the past 25 years – get their house in order well before this issue has to be tested at the ASA or HM Court. 

If you have lost time and/or money because you attended an auction where the guide price was almost 100% wrong, then please get in touch with us here at Unique Property Bulletin…

Text/Tel: 0793 557 2803

One last element for this auction house grumble. As a Glaswegian at a lighthouse here is my message – I hope and trust that those responsible for keeping high standards at auction houses take this point in good natured way. To those who do end up undervaluing their properties for sale…

“Gonnay no dae that – please!”

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Unique Property Bulletin – Earlier Listing: 1st January 2018

New Year Sales & Sails…

Firstly a Happy New Year to all of our readers.

Now straight to some fun with unusual homes. Here is our first offering of the year…

Patcham Windmill – A Wonderful Conversion

Patcham Windmill – Packed Full of Character & Features

Patcham Windmill – The Old Meets The NewPatcham Windmill – The New Parts Are Exemplary In Quality & Style

Location of This Windmill

Patcham Windmill, Windmill Drive, Brighton, East Sussex, BN1 5HH.

All Round – A Beautiful Home With Many Unique Features.

Click Here For The Full Windmill Details

Archive Brochure for future reference: here.

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Unique Property Bulletin – Earlier Listing: 22-12-17

Church + Hall For Sale At Bishop

Main Church: Offers Over £295,000

Adjacent Hall: Offers Over £110,000

In total, around 11,964 square feet of temporal space to transform.


St Peters Church, Princes Street, Bishop Auckland, DL14 7BB

Planning permission has been given to convert this magnificent Grade II former church building into a 6 bedroom home.

St Peters Church Interior, Bishop Auckland, DL14 7BB

One of our regular readers is in the process of selling his church building. It is located in Bishop Aukland.

This is a little unusual as there is the main church for sale at offers over £295,000 and the option to purchase the adjacent church hall for offers over £110,000.

The main church building contains a wonderfully large space for you to let your creative talents run with full enthusiasm. This Grade II listed building has some mighty fine character about it.

St Peters Church Interior, Bishop Auckland, DL14 7BB

The painstaking planning permission process has been progressed and is now stamped with that all important “approved” ink mark upon upon it.

APPROVED – Planning Permission Given For Conversion To Residential Use.

Further Details: Click Here

This allows the new owner of St Peter’s Church to convert this handsome building into a 6 bedroom home. This church is for sale with a £295,000 guide.

Main Church – Permission For A 6 Bedroom Home Conversion

Meanwhile, the hall building next door has plans approved for two x 3 bedroom apartments.

The Hall Building Next Door To St Peter’s Church

Interior Rooms As Currently Laid Out – Within The Hall Building

The Hall Building Adjacent To St Peter’s Church, Bishop Aukland

Not only is this an unusual building to convert, but the style and character of the plans are fairly unique too. We particularly like the angled bedroom layout as can be seen on the floorplan drawings. All in all, this project is a breath of fresh air. The architects and owners have put a lot of thought into how best to sympathetically convert this distinguished and much loved building into a new use. Without which, it might, like many listed buildings, just fall into disrepair.

Bishop Aukland Map Location. Courtesy of Google

Someone, somewhere is going to have a fabulous home when this project is completed. Actually there are three people/families who will benefit as we have 2 x 3 bed and 1 x 6 bed potential with the plans as currently passed by the local council.

Proposed Conversion Plan Drawing: Ground Floor. St Peters, Bishop Auckland

Plan drawings excerpts courtesy of architects: Progressive Design & Build (here)

Proposed Conversion Plan Drawing: First Floor. St Peters, Bishop Auckland

Plan drawings excerpts courtesy of architects: Progressive Design & Build (here)

A little piece of stardust from the century before last is the fact that Stan Laurel of the “Laurel & Hardy comedy duet (here) was baptised in St Peter’s Church…

St Peter’s Church – More Than Just A Little History Within These Walls

It is strange to think for those of us at a certain age, who grew up in the 1960s and had much Laurel & Hardy on the old black and white television, that Stan Laurel emigrated to America 100 years ago in 1917 where is film career took off.  But, in a way, it all started here in this local church.

St Peters Church: Offers over £295,000 …

Click Here For Full Details of Bishop Aukland CHURCH For Sale

And/Or…

Adjacent Church Hall: Offers over £110,000

Click Here For The Church HALL Details

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Unique Property Bulletin – Earlier Listing: 17-12-17

Serendipity

Price reductions so far: £325,000.

Stede Hill Water Tower, Kent.

This listing has attracted huge price savings with possibly more  to come.

We feature this here, all because of serendipity – in the form of a power cut at Bulletin HQ!

The Old Tower, Stede Hill, Harrietsham, Maidstone, Kent, ME17 1NR

Our new Lighthouse Engine House HQ is currently undergoing a major refurbishment – picture of our UPB building and location: click here and here. After Hurricane Caroline, we had a major power cut. So all electrical systems have been off – especially the internet. Incommunicado.

The genuinely heroic national grid linesmen and women went out into a truly ferocious blizzards and reconnected several hundred houses from nearby towns.

Here at our new HQ we recorded winds of over 90 miles per hour.

Unique Property Bulletin Crew Member At The lighthouse Cliff Edge

Checking the wind outside our offices (currently being refurbished between power cuts)

Odd to think that a 702 mile drive away from Stede Hill Water Tower in the far south (here), sits a water tower conversion for sale – with these words being written at a former lighthouse station in the far north. With a chance, albeit slim, that we can locate the buyer and introduce them to the owner of the unique property for sale in Harrietsham, Kent!

The wind up here at the top end of the UK is off of the scale.

That wind could bring you a windfall of savings – in Kent!

Mr Beaufort Says Gusts Are Exceeding 12 (here

All of you soft Londoners, Mancunians, Cardiffians and Edinburgers please be thankful you have tons of cold-weather infrastructure. And candles! At the very top of the UK, we only had 50 tea-lights and they’ve all gone. Brrrr.

So the novelty of our being reconnected to the National Grid ended up with some serendipity that may bode well for folk looking to buy a bargain water tower conversion in the South East of England, over several hundred miles away.

How so, you might ask?

Normally, the daytime television is never on here at Bulletin HQ, but such was the novelty of having electricity reconnected, that the goggle-box was switched on in the background. Enjoying a session tapping at the Unique Property Bulletin computer keyboard for a completely different listing, something on the tv caught my attention.

Stede Hill Water Tower – Conversion To A Fabulous Home – Kent

The television programme in question was Homes Under The Hammer and the irrepressible Martin Roberts was chirping happily away about an old watermill conversion for sale. That got the rusty old brain cells thinking here. It also brought about some serious déjà vu. The reason being, we had featured this very water tower in an old issue of Unique Property Bulletin. Curiosity as to whether this old mill was still for sale got the better. Here is an excerpt from our full Bulletin of 26th January 2016, almost 2 years ago…

Stede Hill Water Tower: Unique Property Bulletin of 24/1/16 – Click Here

Simply put…

Because of a power cut last week, serendipity brought Stede Water Tower back onto our radar; and we can now present it to you for your review. There is someone in the UK who would like a unique property in Kent. Our job is to help find that person and introduce them to the owner of Stede  Hill Water Tower.

So serendipity is the watchword for this listing. The only problem at this end, is I have confused the word “Stede” (watermill) with “Steed” (from The Avengers). As a result, the catchy tune from that stylish 1960s classic television series has been rattling around in my head for hours…

Anyways, the nostalgia of being young and parked in front of the wonders of our black and white television with the grown ups’ programme featuring Patrick MacNee and Diana Rigg aside, we have a Kent watermill for sale that has come down £325,000 from the original £1,195,000 to a remarkable £870,000…

Excerpt From This Week’s Active & Live Listing (17-12-17): £870,000.

We believe it might be possible to negotiate this water mill down to a price beginning with the number “£7??,???”. If interested, please keep reading.

Anyone watching the “Homes Under The Hammer” programme would be able to work out the bottom line for this property: what the owner might accept in December 2017/January 2018. It may well be less than £870,000. If you wish to find out more, perhaps watch the catchup version of that episode. Also do some research. Here is a bit to help you decide if Stede Hill Watermill is something you would like to bid on…

2004 Auction Guide of £200,000

A clearer photograph of the “before” renovation condition can be seen here…

Stede Water Tower Prior To Rebuild

Photo attribution: Penny Mayes.

In actual fact, the final bid/sale price appears as somewhat less at £120,000. This may have been because there was no planning consent at that time…

This Data Is derived From Official HM Land Registry Records

Of material importance is the fact several hundred thousand pound has been spent turning this ruinous shell of a building into an exceptional home…

Stede Hill: Water Tower: Contemporary Newbuild Addition

The inside of this extra area of house is completed to a very high standard and does not disappoint…

Stede Hill Water Mill – Open Plan Kitchen + Dining Room

The original resale price of the finished refurb., at £1,195,000 was evidently far too ambitious and in the years since it first came up for resale, it has come down by over a third of a million pounds.

Ouch.

Stubbornly there has been no sale. The fact this water tower has been for sale for “years” is not a good thing. Sensibly, the owner did let it out for rent for a while…

Temporarily For Rent. Now Back For Sale – As At December 2017

Methinks, and this is just a personal opinion, that Stede Hill Water Tower may have some further wriggle room on the current sale price of £870,000. Were I still working down in London, then there would be a huge temptation to engage in price negotiation with the owner, as this unique property in the South East of the country is so very close to a sale.

The Old Water Tower, Stede Hill – Floorplan

We love this water tower conversion and would be delighted to help secure a sale for the owner, and a new, amazing home for the buyer.

lf you would like some help negotiating to buy the Stede Hill Water Tower, please feel free to telephone us: 0793 557 2803.

We do not normally get involved in direct efforts to sell/buy property. After all, this is just a not-for-profit website that has been accidentally successful (readership often tips over the 100,000 mark). Plus our Unique Property Club is currently on it’s 25th building project for our core group of members and the three main volunteers here have over 100 directly owned building/purchases between them during the last 25 years, we do have a decent amount of track record that might be of use in helping you.

So we would be more than happy to assist the buyer secure their dream home.

If we are retained by any of our readers and do achieve a further discount with a completed property conveyance at the end, saving the buyer many thousands of pounds, we would ask the successful purchaser to consider donating a 0.5% honorarium equivalent to the eventual purchase price if the efforts at Unique Property Bulletin prove successful for you. This donation will help secure the long term future of this website and our mission to inform and assist all those who are keen to live in an unusual home. 

After too many years on the shelf, this water tower deserves to have a sale go through. The owner has advised he could do with less stress, whilst amongst our thousands of readers, there is very possibly a buyer who would like to acquire this converted water tower.

The Old Water Tower, Stede Hill, Harrietsham, Maidstone, Kent, E17 1NR

The Old Water Tower, Stede Hill – Architect Concept Drawing. Not Finished Item

If you would like further details, please…

Click Here To Visit The Old Water Tower Sales Brochure

Archived Details For Future Reference: Here

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Previous Listings

To read about, and study earlier unique property listings, please…

Click Here