That brand-new, multi-bedroomed, Palladian-style mansion you can see on the horizon, was built by a very rich man, with no expense spared on detail.
It distantly dominates the skyline of the small village from where I took the photo yesterday, but it is difficult to tell that from this image. There were a few opponents to the location, but he managed to get it squeezed through the normally stringent planning procedures in this area somehow.
How did he make his money? Simples.
Bristol City Council sold him acres upon acres of old industrial wasteland near Avonmouth - for £1.
Without doing anything at all to the vast expanse of hard-standing, he quickly let it out to companies who import cars through the Avonmouth docks, and now the whole estate is covered in an ever-changing multitude of brand new cars awaiting delivery to various dealers around the country, each one clocking up a weekly rental fee of quite a bit more than £1.
I wish I had thought of that. I could even have afforded to buy the site if it was £10,000 and not just one.
Right place, right time, right price!
ReplyDeleteRight attitude.
DeleteVision and a little bit of luck. I used to have two clients, not connected, who made lots of money from car parks. And then I invested their profits for them and we all made loads more money.
ReplyDeleteBuying a plot like that for a quid has to involve something a little more than luck, I would have thought.
DeleteI suppose he could have paid the other £9,999 in bribes to get the land for £1....if planning committees ran true to form...
ReplyDeleteYou said that, not me.
DeleteHello Tom:
ReplyDeleteAnd when there are so many country houses in need of rescue..........
Presumably he needs to be somewhere near to the Avonmouth Docks to collect the lucre.
Yes, I think he may be a 'bin-liner' sort of bloke, but I've never met him. I'm trying hard not to sound envious...
DeleteAnd I thought I'd done well finding my reading glasses for a pound!
ReplyDeleteNow you can read the small-print.
DeleteWhat a transfer station! For some time I did a show at Bay Harbor, Michigan, a summer resort town developed on an abandoned cement factory site. The before and after pictures were astounding. It was Hoity-Toity to the n-th.
ReplyDeleteThey are selling luxury flats in a massive old power station at Battersea, London right now.
DeleteWas he the only person had the chance to buy the land or did others have the opportunity too. One pound seems rather low on first sight. But maybe he was the only one who read the advert in the local paper or who attended the auction or whatever ... Or maybe it was on eBay ... Often heard of bargains there ... The question is how does the potential one pound investor stumble upon such bargains ?
ReplyDeleteMaybe he made an offer? Usually, when this much is paid for such a site, then the buyer pledges to invest in the area, but I don't think anything was spent in this case, other than putting up a fence if there was not one there already, then paying a bloke with a dog to hang around all night for £10 per hour.
DeleteCould be he was a Bristol councillor in an earlier life ;)
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