Grand Design for sale for £1 million. Would you buy it?

Updated
Grand Design for sale
Grand Design for sale



A Milton Keynes home that featured on Grand Designs has hit the market. For £1 million, you could snap up a project that an enterprising couple built in their own back garden, and Kevin McCloud described as looking like a space ship had landed in the shrubbery.

Among the unusual features are the three-quarters-of-a-doughnut-style design, the planted roof, and the Siberian larch cladding that makes it blend into the garden like a super-sized garden shed from outer space.

However, inside this crazy exterior is a functional family home complete with four en-suite bedrooms (including a master suite with garden access leading to decking and a hot tub). It even has a handy utility room, garage and off-street parking.


Reception room
Reception room



Of course, this comes within a very striking design, which includes a huge open plan reception room with polished concrete floor and full-height windows. The swanky touches include four sets of bi-fold doors opening out into the garden, and underfloor heating.

Kitchen
Kitchen



The master suite even has the unusual addition of a bathtub in the bedroom.

Master suite
Master suite



The home featured on the show back in 2014, when Peter and Chard Berkin - the couple behind the build - said it had cost them a total of £400,000. If they get the asking price, that's an impressive profit.

However, it's a drop in the ocean compared to the profit that another property from the programme could be about to make. The seven-bedroom castle in Yorkshire first featured on the programme in 2007, and cost a total of £915,000. It's currently on the market for £1,650,000.

That in turn, was nothing compared to The Big White House, a four bedroom property on Pett Level beach in East Sussex that the owner spent £350,000 on building. He put it on the market a decade later for £1.55 million.

Of course, as some Grand Designs builders have found, getting the asking price is not always straightforward. In the past, some of the projects have been priced to reflect their ground-breaking nature, and they have found buyers are unwilling to pay quite the premium they had in mind. One of the most striking examples was an incredible water tower conversion in Lambeth.

The programme quoted the owners as saying they spent £2.38 million buying and developing the project in 2011. Two years later they put it on the market for £6.5 million, but failed to find a buyer until they dropped the price to £4.75 million. At the time, this reflected the cost of more traditional and similar-sized properties in the area.

But what do you think? Would you pay £1 million for this striking Grand Design? Let is know in the comments.

Luxury Aston Martin lifted onto skyscraper roof
Luxury Aston Martin lifted onto skyscraper roof



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