Open Market - A backward glance

In Spring 2009 we decided to raid back copies of our reviews and searched even further back into our archives and found some fascinating information gathering dust. You might like to share it with us.

35 years ago
In February 1974 we sold a charming terraced house on the outskirts of Town for £30,000, while May saw our highest price sale of the year, a lovely 1930’s home in the Les Vardes area of St Peter Port achieving £164,500. Two properties on the Citadel at Fort George sold for £120,000 and £115,000, while the year ended with the lowest sale, of a Sausmarez Street house, for £24,000!

25 years ago
By January 1984 a home on the Citadel, Fort George was worth £222,500 a rise of around 80% over the decade. Early Spring saw a sale at just over £500,000 for a superb manor house with 10 acres of land on the western edge of Town, while the year ended on a low note once again when a ground floor flat sold for £72,000.

20 years ago
1989 was a very busy year, and the extent to which prices had risen is shown by the fact that we sold ten properties for more than £500,000 compared to only one five years previously. Top price in 1989 was for a totally secluded country house with outbuildings and a large block of land, which sold for a total of £950,000, just short of the magic million. At the other end of the scale, the ‘cheapest’ property sold for £190,000 which was for a 1960’s semi-detached house on the busiest road in the Vale parish.

10 years ago
The early months of 1999 brought plenty of instructions and purchasers had one of the widest choices of properties seen for many years. However, the market was sluggish except at the top end. By Summer we were saying ‘It is our belief that confidence is building in the market, albeit slowly. The much publicised recession never really happened and interest rates are at the lowest level in living memory’. During the year a Ville au Roi Estate bungalow with a good size garden sold for £330,000 whilst a superbly positioned Fort George home netted £2,500,000. Top price however went to a St Martins’ clifftop property with over 2 acres of land which sold for £3,640,000.

Five years ago
In 2004 we started the year short of properties under £1m but with a plethora between £1m and £2m, however this didn’t stop Swoffers setting a cracking pace for sales including a record-breaking July when no fewer than 11 properties were sold with 10 more agreed and waiting for signature! Homes sold that year included the first of the luxury Marina Court apartments at prices ranging from £800,000 and £1.1m, a selection of modern estate homes and terraced Town houses between £500 – 700,000 with top spot at £2,500,000 going to a Town house with great privacy and exceptional sea views.

We hope you have found this as interesting to read as we have found it fascinating to put together. How interesting it will be to see how things progress in the coming years and what we will be writing about in the next decade and the ones beyond.

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