A one-bedroom townhouse has been listed for sale for £10 million near Trafalgar Square in central London.
Originally listed for £11 million through an online agency — which valued the property after a virtual viewing — the Grade II-listed townhouse in Craven Street is arranged over seven floors and could be reconfigured to include six bedrooms.
The property is unusual for its location between Charing Cross and Embankment in that it has been converted back into a house whereas most others in the immediate area have been split into offices and apartments. The homes comes with the freehold and is now for sale through Dexters.
As might be expected after a £1 million price drop, Dexters'James Staite says interest has risen in recent weeks — mainly from overseas buyers who are presumably undeterred by looming changes to non-dom taxation or stamp duty surcharges.
A shock increase to the stamp duty surcharge for additional home buyers saw agents scramble to get deals completed in the hours following Labour's first Budget on 30 October. Now, following the overnight increase, buyers must pay five per cent additional stamp duty on homes if they already own property in the UK. Overseas buyers will continue to pay a two per cent surcharge.
After experiencing a bit of a lull in the run up to the Budget, however, Mr Staite says buyers are able to plan better this side of the fiscal statement. "We've seen buyers come back and sellers accepting offers," he says.
"Every time we've seen a change to stamp duty, people just factor it into their offers," he adds. "It doesn't stop the market."
On purchasing the Craven Street townhouse in 2018, the current owners carried out an epic renovation that's likely to have cost several million pounds and saw the property converted back into one home from offices.
The couple, who have backgrounds in publishing, have a main residence outside of London so use the property to work - “in his and hers studies” - and for entertaining.
In fact, a 34-foot dining room spans the length of the townhouse, with large sash windows that flood the space with light. Marble flooring and hand-painted silk wallpaper line the stairway leading to the first floor where two reception rooms feature wood panelling, cornicing and marble fireplaces.
A library, studies, bedroom, dressing rooms, bathroom and gym are currently arranged across the upper floors. Six of the seven floors are accessible by a private passenger lift.
The kitchen, utility room, a further dining room and staff quarters are found on the lower ground and basement levels. To the rear of the property sits a gated, residents-only lane with a private parking space and electric car charging point.
Converting the home again, likely amending the current layout to increase the number of bedrooms, is likely to cost somewhere in the region of £300,000, suggests Mr Staite, adding that’s it’s more a case of removing carpentry rather than big structural changes.
Several famous political and literary figures have called Craven Street home over the year. Benjamin Franklin, one of America’s founding fathers, lived at 36 Craven Street before the American Revolution. Aaron Burr, the third President of the United States also lived in the street in the early 1800s.
Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick, lived at 25 Craven Street in 1845.
William Hewson, a British surgeon dubbed the ‘father of haematology’ for breakthrough discoveries about blood coagulation, ran an anatomy school at number 36. Workmen restoring Benjamin Franklin’s former home in 1998 discovered a pit with 200-year-old bones showing signs of experimentation and dissection. Hewson is thought to have been obtaining cadavers from graverobbers for use in the anatomy school and burying them in the basement afterwards.
