A derelict Victorian house with a sitting tenant; offer accepted at £5.95m after twelve months.
Transaction facts
| Service | Development |
| Location | Kensington, W8 |
| Complication | Sitting tenant — £120,000 of planning and legal costs |
| Exit | Offer accepted at £5.95m after twelve months |
The brief
A Victorian family house two minutes from High Street Kensington and five from Kensington Gardens, the Victoria and Albert and the Natural History Museum. Derelict, and with a sitting tenant — which is why it was available at all.
What we did
We bought it with the tenant in place and spent £120,000 on the planning and legal work required to resolve the tenancy and consent the scheme. Most buyers will not touch a house with a sitting tenant, because the outcome is uncertain and the timetable is not theirs to set. That is precisely the reason to look at one, provided you have done this before and can price the risk rather than guess at it.
The result
An offer accepted at £5.95m twelve months after purchase. The uplift came from removing an uncertainty, not from building anything.