Discounted property: Kinmel Hall price slashed by £13.5 million

The UK’s most-reduced home, dubbed the "Welsh Versailles", is now for sale at £13.5 million below its original asking price. But it’s not the only bargain of the moment, as Jessie Hewitson discovered

On the morning of October 12, the county’s most-reduced property will go under the hammer: a 163-year-old estate in North Wales with a price tag that has been dropped by £13.5 million. 

It’s the ultimate property bargain - now a snip at just £1.5million, Grade-I listed Kinmel Hall, dubbed the “Welsh Versailles”, is found in the village of St George, near Abergele, north Wales.

It comes with 122 rooms - 52 of them bedrooms and one a parlour specifically designed for servants to iron newspapers in - as well as 5,000 acres of parkland, 18 acres of walled Venetian gardens and spectacular views of the rolling Welsh countryside. It is being sold at the Radisoon Blu Portman Hotel by auction house Lambert Smith Hampton.
Wonderful as Kinmel Hall is, not everyone will be able to move to North Wales or find enough uses for so many rooms, so what other property bargains are there at the moment? Generally the big discounts are for properties with the highest price tags - as a rule they have been inflated the most and their owners may be able to take a more pragmatic view on the market.
Strutt & Parker, for example, is selling Dalton House, a seven-bedroom Georgian home in St Albans owned by Joe Burns, of developers Oliver Burns. The property is now on the market for £2.75 million, a £750,000 discount from the £3.5 million it was on for a year ago.
Meanwhile, a five-bedroom property sitting in front of Lake Windemere and on the market through Fine & Country has been reduced by a cool £1.25 million. The price for the home, which comes with two acres and an indoor swimming pool, is now £4.75 million - marginally more managable than the £6m price tag it came with not so long ago.

Other huge discounts are easy to find: West Country agency Helmores is selling a five-bedroom country house reduced by £850,000 in rural Devon. The modern house, which is surrounded by farmland, measures 6,500 sq ft and is now on the market for £1.25 million. Back in September 2010, when it was first put on the market, it was priced at
£2.1 million - a huge 40 per cent drop.And Hamptons International is selling a eight-bed property within the New Forest for £3.5 million. Previously the house, which comes with nine-hole golf course, tennis court and swimming pool, was on for £4.2 million. Bargain-hunters rejoice.