Tiny London alley sells for over £400,000
A 13-foot wide service road between two London houses has sold for more than £400,000, with planning permission for a two-storey house.
On Leysfield Road in Shepherd's Bush, the tiny patch of land was owned by Paul and Debbie Potts, who lived next door.
According to the BBC, the couple initially hoped to extend into the plot but decided to sell instead when their planning application was refused. Their first two attempts to develop the site were turned down over concerns about a basement and parking provision.
Despite the narrowness of the plot, the proposed house won't be a bad size. With 1,100 square feet of space, it'll have three bedrooms and two reception rooms, and there will even be room for front and back gardens.
Robert Barr, sales manager at Kerr & Co residential, tells the Evening Standard that there was high demand for the land with nine offers at or above the asking price.
"Clearly, [the buyer] will make some good money back on it, but it all depends on the market at the time and could depend on the outcome of the EU referendum," he says.
Other houses in the street are worth up to £1.6 million.
As a new-build, the house will conform to the recently-introduced London Space Standards, which set out minimum room sizes. And at 13 feet wide, it's by no means the narrowest property to have sold recently for a huge amount.
In February, for example, we reported on the sale of a house in East Dulwich that's just ten feet wide - but which still went for £800,000. Two years ago, an eight-foot wide house in Denmark Hill in south-east London went for £450,000.
And an even narrower property, in Haringey, London, sold for £200,000 in 2014, despite measuring less than seven feet wide.
But the prize has to go to a house in Seattle that, from the front looks perfectly normal. Inside, though, it narrows and narrows to just 55 inches at its tightest point.
