Worried about being snapped in Vegas? Luxurious UK properties with hot tubs fit for a prince!
August 22, 2012 at 2:04 PM Nigel Lewis Leave a comment
During the 1980s the alfresco ‘hot tub’ was an American import largely ignored as mildly naff, unhygienic and beloved of those with a need to bathe outdoors year round, whatever their neighbours thought.
But today huge leaps in technology, quality and public attitudes have transformed these bubbling tubs into a desirable home feature helped by their frequent appearance on TV programmes such as Footballer’s Wives and The Only Way is Essex.
Research out recently revealed how they are now considered the ultimate status symbol by 69% of us, followed by US-style fridges, walk-in wardrobes and room-to-room sound systems that play music all around your home.
Such saucy communal bathing does not please everyone. BBC Gardener’s World magazine last week reported that its readers for the first time listed hot tubs as an irritation, only slightly less annoying than blaring TV and radios, late-night parties, screaming children, power tools and house alarms.
Nevertheless sales of hot tubs are rising year on year despite the recession and Zoopla’s property listings are increasingly full of homes with a hot tub. Some two percent of all homes for sale in the UK feature one and there are an estimated 250,000 out there, bubbling away.
Here are the top five most luxurious for sale today, found using the Zoopla keyword search.
1. Canford Cliffs, Poole, Dorset – £2.5m
Canford Cliffs is the next best thing if you don’t want to pay the astronomical prices in nearby Sandbanks, which would comfortably double the value of this house. What many of the celebrity houses there won’t have is the vast footprint of this six- bedroom property, which comes with a tennis court, swimming pool, next to which is a large hot tub set into the ground.
2. Lower Parkestone, Poole, Dorset – £1.75m
This eight bedroom house was built unwittingly to fit the list of popular must-haves detailed above. Not only does the back patio area feature a bubbling wooden hot tub but it has a walk-in wardrobe too and, for good measure, a Swedish-style sauna in the garden.
3. Stibbington, near Peterborough, Cambridgeshire – £995,000
This house just HAS to have been built by a Scandinavian or Canadian. Wood is the dominant theme inside and out, and its low-rise design, high arched roof and acres of glazed glass would make a perfect location for an episode of TV show Wallander, whose detective might also appreciate the indoor hot tub, which sits within an island of timber.
4. Hunsdon, Ware, Hertfordshire – £1.25m
This four-year-old house is owned by Simon Belofsky, one of Britain’s leading songwriters fresh from his collaboration last year with former S’Express singer Sonique. His home features the kind of understated modernism you might expect of a music biz ‘name’, except in the master bedroom, which features a huge hot tub. More conventional leisure pursuits on offer include a pool in the garden and a vast, wall mounted flatscreen TV in the lounge.
5. Rose Cottage, near Tintagel, Cornwall – £385,000
At first this compact but gorgeous cottage overlooking a small eye catching valley floor seems like many of the houses on the narrow road that winds down to a popular local beach and coastline walk. The rear of the property enjoys extraordinary views over this gap in the coast and the stream that gurgles down it, particularly if you’re sat either on its wooden patio or, in the garden, while sipping a Bacardi within the raised wooden hot tub.
Entry filed under: For sale, Interesting properties. Tags: hot tub, jacuzzi.
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