A home fit for football royalty and a grade-I listed abbey are among this year’s most-viewed properties on the listing website Rightmove.
Jürgen Klopp left his job as manager of Liverpool in May, and in October the six-bedroom home he was renting from the Merseyside club was put on the market at an asking price of £4.25m.
Since then fans of football and snooping around posh properties have propelled the mansion in Freshfield, Formby, to the top of Rightmove’s list, swapping scrutiny of his back four for a nosy at his back yard.
The detached house, which was previously owned by both Steven Gerrard and Brendan Rodgers, boasts everything the modern football manager could wish for.
A “glass leisure building” houses a gym and treatment room and bar area, the big match can be viewed on a huge screen in the cinema room, and off one of the bedrooms is a trophy room, which would have been well-used in recent years.
The estate agents marketing the home, Berkeley Shaw, describe it as a “truly unique and distinguished residence” that “exudes opulence”.
The price tag looks like a steal compared with some of the other homes that have attracted hordes of virtual viewers. Second on Rightmove’s list is a nine-bedroom house in Buckingham Gate, central London, complete with a six-person lift to all floors and a 10-metre pool in the basement. It is on the market for £45m.
Wytham Abbey, a Grade I-listed manor house near Oxford, has also garnered clicks. The 27-bedroom house, which has over the years been visited by Queen Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria and Oliver Cromwell, was put on the market earlier this year by the Effective Ventures Foundation. The EVF had planned to use it as a retreat for philosophers and scientists.
Rightmove’s list is of the most-viewed homes that are still on the market. The website says 10,000 properties are being viewed on its platform every minute, and the most popular homes can receive hundreds of thousands of views.
Henry Pryor, a buying agent and property expert, said looking at such sites provided “that perfect combination of money and lust that we Brits crave – nosing about in other peoples houses and exclaiming: ‘You’ll never guess how much they want for that!’
“It allows us to see how the other half live, to work out what our own might be worth and to pass judgment on your neighbours’ taste or – more usually – lack of it.
“We look at the cheap stuff, the overpriced stuff, the stuff that nobody seems to want and we pretend to be shocked at what’s on display and how it’s presented.”
