D.J. Alexander - Estate Agents & Property Managers

A Glasgow townhouse at £1.5 million

13/12/2009

At offers over £1.5m, No 53 Dowanside Road is that rarest of beasts: a fully intact, west end townhouse. Its location alone, just a minute’s walk from bustling Byres Road, ensures a hefty price tag. But asking £1.5m in a year where the G12 postcode has achieved only two £1m-plus sales could be a tall order.
No 53 is a five-bed semi, upgraded by the architect Riach Partnership and the developer-owner G1. Built in 1862, the four-storey home’s interior includes a Bulthaup kitchen and a glass-and-steel staircase.
The home represents an attempt to transfer a concept first popularised by Rangers’ goalkeeper Allan McGregor and the design duo Colin and Justin, to one of the city’s most established addresses.
The £1.2m purchase by the comedian Frankie Boyle of another west end townhouse in the summer is the only comparable G12 sale this year. And many would argue that the house he bought from the Motherwell FC owner John Boyle is at least the equal of the Dowanside Road townhouse — although it is a more traditional home.
Indeed, local agents are questioning the wisdom of anybody marketing a home at such a price, when there is no off-road privacy and no allocated parking — two obvious prerequisites for blue-chip buyers, they say.
But the developer will point to the precedent of a Savills’ sale of £1.5m in the same street at the peak of the boom in 2007. And they will also point to Alasdair Thomson, the managing director of Acorn Property Group, who launched Glasgow’s first £1m townhouses four years ago to a similarly sceptical market.
Suggested buyers of those properties in leafy Turnberry Road included a range of prominent people, from the Celtic shareholder Dermot Desmond to actor Robert Carlyle and the sports power couple Gabby Yorath and Kenny Logan.
A year on, none of the houses had sold. Four months later, though, Thomson’s patience was rewarded with the £1.45m sale of Luchairt, which smashed the original £1m price tag and vindicated Acorn’s assertion that Glasgow was ready for a rash of £1m-plus sales.
With five bedrooms, luxury bathrooms and 6,000 sq ft of floor- space, the converted former Church of Scotland properties were certainly grand. Both houses contained a wireless network linked to a concealed IT hub and top-of-the-range home-entertainment systems. There were even anti-mist televisions in the bathrooms. G1’s home is clearly operating within a similar ball park.
Subsequent developments in the west end are also evidence of a market for projects such as Acorn’s. Carlyle paid £1.9m for a house that probably needed another £500,000 spent on it to achieve the standard of the Turnberry Road homes, and there have been other notable £1m-plus sales in areas such as Westbourne Gardens and Sydenham Road.
Thomson defended his trailblazing by saying that the demand at this exclusive market sector reflected exacting aspiration and low supply. There are probably only 25 homes in the west end of a similar scale to those on Dowanside and Turnberry Road and they don’t come onto the market often. But to convert that into a £1.5m sale in the depths of winter might not be straightforward.
Properties in the west end have begun to sell for more than their asking price again in the past few months and there have been a number of closing dates.
Mark Hordern, of the Glasgow Solicitors’ Property Centre, says: “In that part of the city and at around that size, I can find a couple of good examples of sales over £1m. This one is slightly larger, but the difference in size is not enough to justify a difference in price of about £400,000.”
Another agent, David Alexander, of DJ Alexander, says: “It maybe isn’t a time to be pushing the boat out. Times have changed from 2007 and there is just not a lot of confidence, buyers or liquidity in the market.
“Though they have their work cut out, I’d certainly wish them well. It only takes one person to fall in love with the house and it would certainly help the market if they get what they’re asking.”

THE SUNDAY TIMES, 13 December 2009

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