A community trust has eleven days to raise the remaining £800,000 of a £2.9m bid for the estate that surrounds its village, against a competing cash offer from a private buyer who has not visited the property.
The estate includes 4,000 acres of hill ground, eleven houses currently let to local families, the village hall and the only remaining site with planning consent for affordable housing.
Eleven houses
The houses are the crux. All eleven are on long-term lets to residents, several of whom work in the village. A change of ownership does not automatically end those tenancies, but the trust’s concern is what has happened at three comparable estates since 2021, where lets were not renewed as they fell due and the properties entered the short-term market within a year.
“It is not about who owns a hill. Nobody here minds a hill having an owner. It is about eleven front doors and who decides what happens behind them.”
Chair of the community trust, known locally as the Boss
The competing bid
The rival offer is understood to be at the full asking price, in cash, with no conditions and a fourteen-day completion.
The trust’s bid is conditional on grant funding that has been approved in principle and will be confirmed in September, which is after the closing date. Selling agents have confirmed that a conditional offer at the asking price does not outrank an unconditional one, and this is standard practice rather than anything irregular.
The bid
- Asking price: £2.9m
- Raised so far: £2.1m
- Still required: £800,000 in 11 days
- Houses included: 11, all currently let long-term
- Population of the village: 240
- Donations received to date: 4,100, from 31 countries
The wider pattern
Land agents report a marked increase since 2024 in enquiries from buyers seeking Scottish holdings of over 1,000 acres, with a rising share described as motivated by long-term climate resilience rather than sporting or forestry returns.
Community right-to-buy legislation gives trusts a route in, but the mechanism runs on grant timetables and the market runs on fourteen-day completions, and the two have never been reconciled.
A plaque in the village hall, put up after an earlier buyout attempt failed in 2009, reads: “Building the future. Passing on the torch.”
