On our recent site visit, we spoke exclusively to Claire Bathgate, head of sales for Dandara, who is in charge of both residential and commercial sales in the Aberdeen area.
Please tell us about our current location.
We’re now on the Hazelwood and The Grange sites and we've got about 120 homes still to build here. We’re selling well and have a mixture now of mainly bigger, four- and five-bedroom detached homes available, with only two three-bed homes remaining.
On our last phase at Hazelwood, subject to planning, we're looking at approximately 100 homes with more of the smaller types, because those with two- and three bedrooms in the last phase at our Oakfields development sold very well and not everyone is looking for a house at £500,000+ , though we do have some great deals on our bigger houses at the moment. While we don’t offer Part Exchange, we do offer tailored incentives.
Can you tell us a little bit about this area and the appeal of living here?
We’re really lucky where we are, I think we’ve got the best site in Aberdeen. Our developments are linked by footpaths, not roads, so this won’t become a ‘rat run’, which residents of both developments appreciate. We’re very close to Hazlehead Park, one of Aberdeen’s favourites which looks particularly beautiful at this time of year with the Autumn foliage, and a lot of the appeal to move here has been that we’re 10 minutes to the centre of town. The railway station, airport and great road connections to the south and north are very accessible but you feel you’re in the middle of the countryside. Both parts of the development are very peaceful.
We have supermarkets very close by, and there are lots of sports facilities too, with football pitches and the golf club, Hayfield Equestrian Centre and Gordonians Hockey Club. Some of these have inspired rooms in our new show home here at The Grange.
We have two state primary schools close by and we also have the Hazlehead Academy. We also have a lot of clients who send their children to private schools. In town we have Robert Gordon’s, St Margaret’s School for Girls, Albyn School and the International School not far away. We've got Robert Gordon's playing fields directly across the road from our Hazelwood entrance.
The Grange
Is there a typical homebuyer here?
We’ve got a really diverse range, which helps build our community here. We’ve everything from first-time buyers, to downsizers buying the smaller homes but we’ve also had first-time buyers going for the four- and five-bedroom homes. Everybody’s situation is unique. A number of people have downsized from larger, traditional granite properties in the West End, for example when families have fled the nest, but they still require a certain size. For some of these our four-bedroom ‘Beech’ or five-bedroom ‘Yew’ can still be a downsize! There are a lot of families looking here also, as you would expect with the size and range of homes.
You have the ‘Yew’ show home here – is it open seven days a week?
Yes, we're open Monday to Friday from 10.00am to 5.00pm and at the weekends we're open 11.00am to 5.00pm. You can make an appointment but we welcome walk-ins as well, though they sometimes have to wait if we have an appointment going on
Does the show home have a standard specification?
Yes, we've always tried to do it that way and I think buyers appreciate that. Sometimes we can be showing somebody around, almost having to say to them, ‘no, no, this is standard!’. I think from a sales point of view, it's enjoyable to show somebody around to say what you see you're getting as standard. The washing machine and tumble dryer in the utility room of the show home are not standard, they are installed to show people there’s the space for them, and we tell them so. But we haven't upgraded the kitchen.
We can offer upgrades such as stone worktops, and extra wardrobes in the bedrooms but we find a lot of clients don't feel they need to upgrade. We have Siemens appliances in the kitchen, chrome towel rails in the bathrooms, chrome fittings for the ground floor. In the areas where you're showing off your house to people, we've really provided that attention to detail for you so you're not having to upgrade.
You mentioned tailored deals for buyers.
Some people need the help with the mortgage contribution, with others it may be a 5% deposit contribution. Sometimes people prefer to take an LBTT contribution. We want to work with buyers and we want them to enjoy the experience with us as well.
We offer an Assisted Move scheme where the client puts down the money to effectively reserve the plot while we then help market their house. We get independent valuations, and we ask the buyer which of our recommended agents they would prefer to use for that. We have a conversation with the client to agree a minimum price but they control what price their current property goes on at.
We guarantee to work with them for a set period of time and effectively take our property off the market during that period of time for them. That can be appealing if a client is particularly interested in one specific plot.
Hazelwood
Can just give a quick outline of what the different parts of the development are, what’s available now, and what's planned for next year?
There are two parts of the development, called Hazelwood and The Grange. On the Hazelwood section, we've had multiple phases and we've got one large phase still to build, around 100 houses. We're looking at having two-, three- and smaller four-beds on that site, including some three-bedroom dormered bungalows.
On the Hazelwood side, in the Oakfields phase, we've got a couple of our three-bedroom terraced ‘Poplar’ house type, set out over three floors, with a starting price of £259,995. One of them is ready to move into now, the other early next year. Also within Hazelwood at The Wynd, we've got a couple of the four-bedroom ‘Beech’ still to sell and we've got one five-bed ‘Yew’ with sunroom on Plot 98 on the market with some brilliant incentives available.
At The Grange, we have one stock unit in the last phase, Plot 30, which has just had a price reduction. That one would still allow someone to choose their kitchen and would then be ready in the new year now.
We're now on to our final phase at The Grange. We've got 18 plots with the first new owners moving in early December. We have the four-bed ‘Maple’, the ‘Beech’, which is the larger four-bed with sunroom, and we've got five-bed ‘Yew’s with sunrooms in this phase. We also have one larger five-bedroom, which is a ‘Cedar’ property. We've got early-bird reservations on the ‘Cedar’ and three of the ‘Maple’s.
We are currently in planning for our development in Crichie, Inverurie and hope to have news to share on that soon but it will have a mix of styles and sizes available.
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