Rich Foreign buyers are changing the face of our countryside by snapping up the finest estates, says Anna Mikhailova.
Clad in tweed jacket, plus fours and Hunter wellingtons, with several brace of partridge in his hand and his labrador at his side, he looks the very image of the country gentleman as he strides through his East Lothian estate. Yet Lars Foghsgaard hails not from Scotland - or even England - but from Denmark.
Since buying the Spott estate, east of Edinburgh, a decade ago, the multi-millionaire former company boss has channelled his energies into transforming his Scottish domain. By snapping up neighbouring land, he has quadrupled the size of the estate to its current 2,463 acres and invested in new cottages, farm buildings and improving the shoot.
“The previous owner was very involved in the land” says Foghsgaard, 68, the founder of Scandinavian Mobility, a supplier of aids for the elderly and disabled. “I am not a farmer, so I employed a farm manager: it’s crucial to have the necessary skills and connections in the area to do the job well, and as a foreigner I did not have those.” He has, however, enjoyed overseeing the process: “When I walk the dog, I always pass through the cowshed, where we have lambs being born each day - it’s such a joy to see.”
Keen to spend more time with his newborn grandchild, Foghsgaard is returning to Denmark and has put the estate on sale. Prices at £25m, it is the most expensive country property to be launched on the open market in Britain so far this year. He says he will miss Scotland and may buy a smaller place to keep as a base.
Foghsgaard was in the vanguard of a growing number of overseas buyers who, over the past decade, have fanned out from their traditional hunting grounds in Mayfair and Belgravia to snap up some of our most exclusive country estates. While he is leaving, many more are ready to take his place.
Knight Frank estate agency says 41% of its sales of country properties last year were to foreigners - a threefold increase over 2008. The Russians dominated - they accounted for 13% of sales - but there were also South Africans, Americans, Nigerians and Italians.
“The top end of the country-house market will follow the lead of London and become more and more international,” says Liam Bailey, head of Knight Frank’s research department, who expects foreigners to be behind more than half of such purchases within five years.
The biggest country sale so far this year was Compton Castle, a 1,270-acre manor near Wincanton, in Somerset, bought last month by an Australian for £17m. The property, which has a helipad, a hangar and a heart-shaped lake, had struggled to sell since going onto the market in October 2006 for £22m.
Last year, high-profile overseas buyers included Stefan Persson, the Swedish billionaire boss of the clothing retailer H&M, who acquired the £25m Linkenholt estate, in Hampshire - which came with a village - and James Gaggero, an airline tycoon based in Gibraltar, who bought the Encombe estate, in Dorset, for £20m.
Not only are overseas buyers more numerous, they are becoming more adventurous. Quintessentially Estates, the property arm of the top-end concierge service, tells of a Russian who bought a country pile in Herefordshire - not a county with a strong international profile - and installed a Thunderbirds-style underground helicopter landing pad, accessed through a retractable roof.
“I’m sure we will see more Russians in the Cotswolds and Oxfordshire soon,” says Jonathan Bramwell, head of country for Prime Purchase, a top-end buying agency. This is partly because of the good local schools, but also because of a shortage of suitable properties in traditional favourites such as Ascot, in Berkshire, and St George’s Hill and Wentworth, Surrey. Knight Frank’s country offices in the Cotswolds, Dorset and Wiltshire have already seen increased interest.
How do these new lords of the manor differ from their British counterparts? “They do away with traditional English gentlemanly disorder and make their houses, gardens, grounds and estates immaculate,” says Mark Lawson, partner in The Buying Solution’s country department. “No more nettles, thistles and untidy hedgerows and houses - it takes away the traditional feel.”
For many foreign buyers, security is a priority. Since buying Glympton Park, a spectacular Oxfordshire estate that backs onto the grounds of Blenheim Palace, for £8m in 1992, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a former Saudi ambassador to America, has spent £42m doing it up. Cameras and movement sensors have been installed, and there are round-the-clock patrols across the 2,000-acre site. The arrival of the owner, who helped to negotiate the controversial £43 billion al-Yamamah arms deal between Britain and Saudi Arabia in 1985, is preceded by checks by a 10-strong security team.
It’s a theme common among wealthy foreign landowners. One Canadian asked for ex-SAS men to watch over his recently renovated 18th century manor house in West Sussex. An Israeli-owned estate on the Oxfordshire-Northamptonshire border has guards patrolling its heated half-mile driveway.
“At a Gloucestershire manor house owned by a Middle Eastern family, I was told the owner wanted a rocket-proof room in case of a terrorist attack,” says Nick Ashe, of the buying agency Property Vision. In the same house, the dressing room has 9in glass in the windows and a panic button, so those inside could seal themselves in.
Turning a profit is rarely the main objective. “These new owners have made their fortune on something else, so the land and its working is not seen as a primary source of livelihood,” says Mark McAndrew, head of farming estates at Strutt & Parker estate agency.
Matthew Sinclair, director of Saint Property Search, a Scottish buying agent, says foreign buyers, like Foshghaard, usually plough money into sporting estates when they buy, “There won’t have been a gamekeeper or stalker on an estate for 30 years, and they will come and hire three or four,” he says. “They are good at employing locals.”
When it comes to restoration, many put a premium on authenticity. One buying agent describes a client in Oxfordshire who reseeded the lawn with the type of grass used in the 18th century. “It added absolutely no value to the property and cost a fortune,” he says.
How do the neighbours react to the arrival of an overseas buyer? With curiosity and wild rumour, says Rupert Sweeting, head of Knight Frank’s country department:
“One American-Russian owner caused so much talk when he moved into his £10m Grade 1-listed property in Northamptonshire four years ago, he invited all the locals over for drinks. He said he just wanted everyo0ne to stop speculating about what he’d spent £5m doing to it.”
