Wanna buy a castle?

Very nice, I'd be happy poncing around there all all day in my meerkat dressing gown. 

jonseventyfive said:

Very nice, I'd be happy poncing around there all all day in my meerkat dressing gown. 

I'd be more like Henry the 8th. Not the beheading wives bit but the regular royal feasts

I shot a wedding there last year.  Its a really nice wedding venue.

cantersaddick said:

JohnBoyUK said:

I shot a wedding there last year.  Its a really nice wedding venue.

Whats it called please mate?

Allington Castle

bobmunro said:

cantersaddick said:

Decent money to be made as a luxury wedding venue with rooms tbf. Looks fairly well set up for it, maybe needs a bit of modernising. 

Goes and gets business loan for £10m.

A lot of money, of course, but looks reasonably priced and the capacity and facilities could generate a pretty good return on investment for weddings, corporate events and so on. It's already used for such events and would need to look at the current revenue figures to be confident (or not!).

No, I'm not buying a castle!

Aw, beat me to it ! 

You were top of my list 

bobmunro said:

cantersaddick said:

Decent money to be made as a luxury wedding venue with rooms tbf. Looks fairly well set up for it, maybe needs a bit of modernising. 

Goes and gets business loan for £10m.

A lot of money, of course, but looks reasonably priced and the capacity and facilities could generate a pretty good return on investment for weddings, corporate events and so on. It's already used for such events and would need to look at the current revenue figures to be confident (or not!).

No, I'm not buying a castle!

Reckon they'd go for £3m. Suddenly looks good value! 

Doesn’t look a bad price tbh. Suspect a fair bit of maintenance work is foreseen on the horizon 

bobmunro said:

Chris_from_Sidcup said:

How much does it get hired out for?

I'm trying to work out how many weddings it would take before you saw a return on your 5m investment.

And no i'm not buying it either.

Dry Hire (that's just the facility and excludes catering, bar, flowers, and all the other wedding costs, and presumably also the costs associated with the guest accommodation) - £10k for a Saturday in high season. 

If you add in catering, alcohol, and so on you would probably be looking at £25-30k as gross revenue per wedding. Ballpark is a 30-40% margin for such businesses so a net profit of let's say £10k per wedding. is doable. Add in to that midweek weddings, corporate events and the like and a net of £750k pa isn't unrealistic - so 15% return pa on the initial purchase price.

Most good wedding venues like that are booked out a year or so in advance, with advance staged payments as well, so cash flow is good. If Canters is correct at £3m (I doubt that is possible) then I may think twice!! In reality a margin like that would cover the mortgage costs and leave a healthy surplus.

Yes if you could get it for 3m that would seem like an incredible investment. I suspect that AFKA is right though and it probably needs a fair bit of maintenance work on it in the not too distant future, although i guess you could assess that and adjust your offer accordingly.

• 14 - 30 bedrooms
• 13 - 26 reception rooms
• 10 - 20 bathrooms

Are they just guessing how many they have ? 

Algarveaddick said:

Wouldn't fancy the heating bills though…

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/94146222#/?channel=RES_BUY

Nah, not enough garages for me!

MrOneLung said:

Could be the latest addition to the properties @Rob7Lee oversees 

Already live in Kent ;-)

I believe it's been offered off market for a while, it's losing a fair amount a year, running costs and maintenance will be huge (suspect the gardening contract is north of £150k per annum for instance).

It's a private residence currently, so the owners are likely happy it doesn't make money, but for a commercial venture it would need quite a lot to make it a going concern ,far more than 52 weddings a year.

Rob7Lee said:

MrOneLung said:

Could be the latest addition to the properties @Rob7Lee oversees 

Already live in Kent ;-)

I believe it's been offered off market for a while, it's losing a fair amount a year, running costs and maintenance will be huge (suspect the gardening contract is north of £150k per annum for instance).

It's a private residence currently, so the owners are likely happy it doesn't make money, but for a commercial venture it would need quite a lot to make it a going concern ,far more than 52 weddings a year.

Similarly pitched wedding venues in the area (Cooling Castle Barn for example) are booked 5+ days a week April to September. Obviously price point and profit is higher on a Saturday. But I've been to a Monday wedding there (in November as well) as have other family members there is clearly demand.

With the amount of grounds it has it will probably need to be mixed use - realistically this type of venue needs 1 or 2 decent sized, nicely kept gardens. The rest is extra cost wonder if it could be used for other purposes or even sold off?

Depends in the backlog of how much maintenance is needed to get it ready - that will be the killer. But in steady state I reckon plenty of money to be made. 

Believe it or not in 2023 me & the wife and 2 friends seriously looked at a wedding venue as a business venture. Not a high end as this. Had a whole business plan and a decent amount of funding in place (business loan and an investor). Didn't happen in the end but another couple of friends did move up north and renovated a barn to be a wedding venue. I have just sent this link on our old WhatsApp so maybe we will reignite that idea!