At home with Modernism
Words | Emma Mahony An online estate agency which specialises in modern British homes is thriving despite the downturn AS NEWS ABOUT the value of UK property prices seems to worsen with every fresh survey, it makes a change to talk to an estate agent who claims that his business is flourishing. What makes [...]
Words | Emma Mahony
An online estate agency which specialises in modern British homes is thriving despite the downturn
AS NEWS ABOUT the value of UK property prices seems to worsen with every fresh survey, it makes a change to talk to an estate agent who claims that his business
is flourishing. What makes his story unusual? “Being able to appreciate what is being sold,” says Albert Hill, founder and director of the Modern House, a British
agency that sells only modern houses.
This interest in architecture means that it is not just the Richard Rogers buildings or Norman Foster flats that find their way to his website but any period architecture
– however small or large – where care has been taken to preserve the heritage. “The first sale we dealt with back in 2004 was a 1930s modernist house in Dulwich,”
says Hill, “which most local people thought was a hotel.”
He adds: “It came on the market at the same time as a ‘glass box’ in Shepperton, Surrey – and both were snapped up by designers in London.”
alt="Modernist houses by respected architects are still selling: including, from left, Span, Richard Weston and David Adjaye">
Today the website, www.themodernhouse.net , is just as likely to have a sold sign on a £3.5 million house in London’s
Notting Hill Gate, as an apartment designed by
the company Span in the 1950s and 1960s, which are on offer in estates in south London, Surrey, Cambridgeshire and Oxfordshire for as little as £250,000. “Our buyers
are not concerned with luxury, but with design – they tend to look for how a house relates to the environment and whether it has light and space,” Hill says. This means
when people approach him to market their “modern conversion” with little architectural input, they get turned down.
Hill’s own background and passion for architecture stems from his time as a property journalist, most notably for Wallpaper magazine, the international design and fashion
title. Sent to Florida on an assignment to cover a real estate company dealing only in modern houses, Hill realised on his return that no such specialist agency existed in
the UK, and decided to make the most of the opportunity. “At that time modern houses in estate agency windows were often photographed to look like Victorian
properties, to downplay their very modernity.”
Having set up the only modern house agency in the UK at the time, Hill now seems to be enjoying a high level of interest, while traditional properties are struggling. “I
think architecture has crossed over into the art market, and the art market – particularly in America – is still a good place to invest,” explains Hill. “Christie’s and
Sotheby’s are now selling architect-designed houses, such as 1950s houses in LA which go for around $15 million, because they see them
as the cream of the crop.” So much for America, a newer and bolder country in its architectural outlook, but what of little Britain, better known for its stately homes?
“Britain as a country is growing out of its ideal of a thatched cottage; the new generation’s dream home is no longer a Georgian rectory,” says Hill. “The whole point
of the houses we sell is that they are quality architecture, not opportunist development, and a good work of art will always sell.” And as the credit crunch continues to
bite, a modern house is a good work of art which you can not only admire, but live in.
www.themodernhouse.net
