Gorgeous Green Spaces | How much is your garden worth?

A colleague of mine just presented a low offer on a flat we have on the market right now which has a 780 sq ft garden. I felt the buyer hadn’t appreciated the value of the garden in his offer… so I wrote this to my colleague and thought it might interest one or two of you.

How much is your garden worth?
Here, we have 7 Earls Court Square – a ground floor flat located in the heart of Kensington and Chelsea. The internal square footage (excluding the garden and storage on the mezzanine) is 740 sq ft.

When I went to see this flat, the owners had done a fabulous job on the interior and I thought wow – this tiny flat could be worth £1,000,000 (£1,350/sq ft). To my surprise, they said “we want £1,300,000”. My first thought was am I missing something here?

The garden at this flat is 1,382 sq ft. They felt this was worth £300K alone. My response was that it might be, but we can’t tangibly value outside space; it’s a romantic value-adder and will surely persuade someone to buy but we can’t put a monetary figure on it.

They said “let’s market at £1,300,000 and see who’s right”.

Challenge accepted.

With a month of marketing, we had a cash buyer at £1,275,000.

The buyer completed on the sale a month after that, just in time for the lighting of the Christmas tree in Earls Court Square communal gardens (which the buyer clearly thought was worth something too!) at an incredible £1,723/sq ft.

In the very same month, the top floor maisonette in the same building sold for only £1,144/sq ft with another agent. The flat needed some cosmetic work and didn’t have a garden.

I believe the buyer of the ground floor flat at 7 Earls Court Square paid £275,000 for the garden.

Fast forward to today and our Room 101 flat on the corner of Lexham Gardens. This flat is 467 sq ft internally and has 780 sq ft of private garden all backing onto Lexham Gardens.

What’s the flat worth? Your buyer says £500,000. I think this is a little cheap, personally. Only £1,071/sq ft for a very well refurbished and furnished flat. I would argue that £550,000 (£1,177/sq ft) is more appropriate.

Based on the maths from 7 Earls Court Square, the garden for this flat should be worth £200/sq ft. That would add over £150,000 to the value.

So, in my view, the total value should be nearer £700,000.

We’re advertising this one at £600,000 at the moment as the owner is very keen to sell.

What a bargain!

In Covid times, one could argue that £200/sq ft for garden space is actually cheap! The tangible value of outside space has surely soared over the course of three lockdowns in 8 months. Anyone without it has craved it, has longed for it, has valued it much higher than they ever did before!

How much is your garden worth? Now I know.

Toby Brown
Sales Director