THE National Trust for Jersey has defended its decision to sell a listed farmhouse in St Ouen without putting the property on the open market.
La Ronce, a 17th-century house on Route de Trodez, was sold by the trust on Friday for £1.5 million, almost 13 times the price for which it was acquired in 1987.
However, Islanders writing on social media have questioned why the trust accepted an unsolicited offer for the property, rather than seeking to maximise the proceeds of the sale by marketing La Ronce through an estate agent, or selling it at auction.
Charles Alluto, the trust’s chief executive, said that the organisation had been considering selling the property for some time, with an initial attempt around ten years ago being unsuccessful as a result of a long lease being in place.
He said: ‘We were then looking to progress a sale just prior to the Covid pandemic, but we again opted to put the sale on hold in order to safeguard the rental income that the trust receives from this and other properties.’
Mr Alluto said that the trust had obtained two recent valuations for La Ronce, one of which matched the £1.5m sale figure, with the other giving a lower estimation of its worth.
‘The sale was agreed around 12 months ago, but could not proceed until the current tenancy concluded,’ he added.
‘We’d been considering the sale for a long time, and given the valuations we did not consider there would be much difference if we had marketed the house, apart from incurring an estate agent’s fee.’
Mr Alluto also refuted suggestions made on social media that the purchaser of the property had benefited from a close relationship with senior figures at the National Trust for Jersey.
‘We can confirm that there is no direct relationship between any members of the trust’s council and the family which acquired the property,’ he said.
Speaking ahead of the court transaction last Friday, Mr Alluto said that the trust took a different approach for properties that it had purchased, rather than those it was bequeathed and would not sell.
The trust had renovated La Ronce and ensured the sale was subject to covenants placing a legal restriction on any future development or modifications, he added, with the property being sold in order to raise equity that would go towards an estimated £3.5m backlog of work required on other properties that it owned.
