An unusual opportunity has arisen to buy a £12m Victorian building in Notting Hill, currently divided into multiple flats, and convert it into a single home, thanks to extensive pre-approved planning permission.
While the 8,300 sq ft Pembridge House was made up of flats that were previously owned by a housing association and are now rented out privately, a local developer who bought it three years ago has quite a different vision for it, which he is offering buyers the chance to take him up on for an additional £8m.
While the home is not listed, it does sit in a conservation area, meaning its exterior cannot be changed.
However, the developer, who specialises in excavations, has now obtained planning permission to dig underneath the garden to all corners of the property, giving buyers the opportunity to extend it, for example, by adding a pool below ground.
The vision would involve a primary residence over the ground, lower-ground and first floors, but keep a couple of semi-self-contained flats above for grandparent, older children, staff or visitors.
The main residence under this plan would be about 6,200 sq.ft, and could include a wine cellar, gym and private cinema as well as the pool, and five bedroom suites.
Bbut Karoush Tamjidi, Head of Sales at Hamptons, is careful to point out that buyers are not tied to this plan.
What is special about this house, he says, is the opportunity to build the interior of a huge mansion however you want it, while maintaining the traditional Notting Hill stucco-fronted exterior.
“The whole point behind it is the proposed plans at the moment are what our client saw as the best option for what he thought the market would want.
“But ultimately, you've got a house there whereby everything will be taken away from it other than the front facade. So it can be manipulated into whatever design that you want,” Tamjidi says.
The benefit of the proposed plans would be that the developer has prepared them ahead of the sale and buyers could theoretically dive in at his estimated cost of £8m and estimated timeline of 18 months.
If buyers want to go with other developers or other plans, the planning permission is already obtained, Tamjidi says, should cover pretty much anything they could want barring perhaps a lift.
He believes the combined projected cost is a good deal compared to similar properties that were ready to occupy in the area, which he says have recently gone for between 35 and 45 million.
While there has so far been interest from local buyers as well as some from the Middle East and Asia, Tamjidi is betting on Americans to close the deal.
“There's been an insurgence, I mean, the last five deals that I know of that are 30 million pound plus in Notting Hill have been to Americans.”
