Top Ten Country

‘I have seen every market, but never one like 2016 before,’ says Harington, our index’s most veteran adviser, with over 42 years’ experience. The further rise in stamp duty has left the high-end country market in an ‘absolute shambles’, he says: ‘The politicians have frightened the life out of it.’

With a ‘huge amount’ of the business being about understanding clients’ psychology, Harington often hears buyers’ (both local and foreign) frustrations with the additional price tag. A Scandinavian purchaser told him the £375,000 tax on a £4 million property in West Sussex was offputting: ‘“Why would I pay it to your exchequer?” he said.’

There has also been a ‘whole change in the dynamic’ in the way HNWs buy, he says, bearing in mind the portfolio of properties they may already own abroad. When asked if homes in Oxfordshire, Ascot and Hampshire still provide an allure, he replies: ‘The country idyll is for less people than it used to be. If you went back to the City twenty years ago, people were sat in front of their screens, dreaming and dreaming about owning a lovely country house. However, a very large percentage of those people are just not in that world — that’s not where they’ve come from.’

Nonetheless, the former Coldstream Guards officer, whom one contemporary describes as
‘a bastion of discretion’, remains optimistic about the future. Movement triggered by the three Ds (death, debt and divorce) ‘will roll on’ and create more buying appetite. And despite limited stock, he predicts that private vendors might be on the rise to offset demand. ‘And our job is to make sure that absolutely nothing slips through the net.’