Reading the Regency

Property - An Introduction

Another option was to build a house, to your exact design and specification, or there were many architects who would design a house for you. It was still relatively easy to find land to build on at this time, even close to London.

The area around Grosvenor Square had been built during the 18th century, but in the early 19th century, new buildings were springing up to the north-west of Portman Square, and the streets around Tavistock and Brunswick Squares were laid out in readiness for their future occupants.

Builders often speculated, by building new townhouses in the hopes of attracting a wealthy buyer. If the buyer agreed to purchase the property early enough in the building stage he could pay in stages and make changes to layout or choose different finishes before the house was complete.

The cost of buying a house

"Landed property has again become the favourite source of investment. The recent sales in the metropolis have been generally effected at considerable advances upon the vaulations. 38 years purchase is the lowest rate, and many sales have been made at 35 to 40 years purchase at a fair rental."
[Worcester Journal, 18th June 1818]

Just as today, there were no set prices for property. The value of a house included the building itself, what facilities it contained, its condition, and where it was located. A freehold property would be worth more than a leasehold house, because you were also buying the land it stood on. Due to high demand, there was a premium on properties within 60 miles of London.

The standard method of calculating what a house was worth was to find the amount it would cost someone to rent for a year and then multiply that by a set number of years, known as the Years Purchase. The years purchase averaged around twenty years during the first half of the Regency period, although a more desirable property, might sell for thirty, forty or even eighty year's purchase, while a house less in demand could sell for ten or fifteen years purchase or even less.

If a townhouse would normally rent for £100 per year, its valuation for a private contract sale might be £2,000, based on twenty years purchase. But at auction, if the house was in a sought after location and many people were bidding on it, the final selling price could reach £7,000 or more.

Old Dudley House in Park Lane, London, sold for £6,510 in 1789, but when it went up for sale again in 1826, with improvements and an extended lease, it was thought to be worth £24,000.

In 1816, the Government bought Claremont House in Surrey as a wedding present for Princess Charlotte. The value of the park, farms and farmhouses was £36,000. The mansion house cost £19,000 on top of that and they paid an additional £6,000 for the furniture.

The value of a Country estate was partially based on the income it generated, or could generate with proper management. This included the income from the surrounding land, either from crops, timber or minerals. Then they would add the value of the house, based on how much the house would rent for.

So if an estate produced an income of £4,000 per year, at twenty years purchase that would make it worth £80,000. A house that could be let for £800 per year, at twenty year's purchase, would cost an additional £16,000, making a total approximate purchase price of the house and the estate £96,000.

In this way, a large country house surrounded by a large and very profitable estate could sell for upwards of a hundred thousand pounds. Sir Walter Sterling sold his estate at Shoreham in Essex for £100,000 in 1811. Lord Melville sold his estate and Melville Castle, near Edinburgh, for 80,000 guineas in 1816, while in 1819, Mr. Watson Taylor bought Erlestoke House in Wiltshire for £200,000.