OK, so the unwillingness isn’t the unique part.
So the market value (assuming the Queen doesn’t care) is basically going to be a pound more than the second highest amount that any existent, interested entity would be prepared to pay. How do we calculate that?
Or rather, a little more than the second-to-last bid, if that makes sense.
We seem to be on the same page now, Mange. That, to me, is the hard part, and the reason I posted the question. As I said, what I’d really like to know is whether at sums that high, value that is added to intrinsic value is significant. In the example given of the child’s trinket sold to finance his education, the addition of hundreds of thousands of dollars is significant indeed. But if Windsor Castle, already valued at nearly a billion — what with all the art and everything — is tagged with a sentimentality charge, does it really matter? I mean sentiment is sentiment. I don’t see why the castle would be any more sentimental than the trinket.
I think that’s the root of the whole problem; it isn’t something that can be valued based solely on its material composition; the value is more or less defined by the collective whims of the interested parties.
I suppose we could argue that logically, everything is like that; this heap of bricks, that hunk of gold, the other trained squirrel, only have value attributed by those people interested in trading them; it’s just that in the case of houses, precious metals and possibly performing animals, there is a substantial consensus as to the attributed value, out of sheer popularity. Not so with singular items or massively large collections.
No, I stand by what I said before. You are assuming that the Windsor Estate is the same as the Windsor Castle. Note:
Note, no mention of the castle. Don’t forget, Windsor is a town. By “the Windsor Estate” they just mean the Crown Estate’s landholdings in Windsor.
If you read through this Guardian article it is passably clear that Windsor Castle is an “Occupied Royal Palace” and not part of the Crown Estate.
It occasionally happens that works of art which are held to be “British” are sold to, or in “danger” of being sold to, non-national collectors or institutions. On these occasions the art world is more or less successful at promoting the idea that British institutions - even the British people and possibly the British taxpayer - should fund a successful bid in order to keep the statue or painting on UK soil. (Never mind how few people will ever even have the chance to view).
I think we can reasonably assume that, if Windsor were up for sale to a non-national, there would be an enormous uproar, followed by an attempt to put a rival bid together. That rival bid, in comparison with the intrinsic value of the estate, art, furnishings etc. would give you the size of the “sentimental value” - or a pretty close proxy thereof. Unfortunately, actually estimating what that would be is utterly beyond me - my feeling is that people’s fondness of the monarchy isn’t strong enough to put their hands too deep into their pockets. On the other hand, if presented as a piece of British history, rather than monarch’s dwelling, the appeal might well be stronger. (This analysis of course reflects my own prejudices about whether, what and why I personally would be prepared to shell out to stop you buying).
Then wouldn’t the same argument hold against the concept of eminent domain? Is fair market value really fair if the person’s family has lived in the home for generations, and has invested its toil and sweat into not only improving the property, but into making it uniquely theirs — complete with priceless memories? The fence post that Junior put in crooked. The tree where Aunt Judy’s name is inscribed with Uncle George’s. And so on.
Ah, thank you! Frankly, it was quite a disappointment to see the figure. It seemed cheap.
Excellent analysis. Thanks!
You’re too kind. Here, have a castle.
Thinking about it a bit more, I wonder if the sentimental value might be apparently negative - e.g. the Queen, if at all desirous of maintaining the institution of the monarchy, would be a fool to reject a British bid that was, say, £1 million light (compared to a bid based strictly on intrinsic value). The difference would be such a small percentage of the total sum that rejection would be seen almost as a calculated insult, and some pretty radical legislation would be on the books within weeks. Of course, we haven’t asked: how much more would owning (living in?) Windor Castle be worth to you than the intrinsic value (which, in the hypothetical, you already possess in hard cash)?
apparently the Treasury has recently required all branches of government (including the Crown) to put a book value on all its fixed and moveable assets. And so a figure of £154m was arrived at, how we don’t know. But of course that’s not the price they propose to advertise it for. In such an unlikely eventuality, they would probably invite sealed tenders.
I make one of my exceedingly rare forays into Great Debates and I’m greeted with this mental image. Gosh, thanks for that. Pass the brain bleach.
In short, those considerations are not taken into account in determing value for eminent domain.
Well then, what’s the in length? Because there is not supposed to be a value for eminent domain; there’s supposed to be a fair market value which government pays when it exercises eminent domain. Otherwise, you could have a fair market value of a hundred grand for a house, but Mayor Deeppockets and the City Council decide it has an eminent domain value of ten dollars.
Yeah, I know. Band name. 
This is actually General Questions. 
See, I told you my forays into GD were exceedingly rare. I’m not even there now.
But, as Princhester has already correctly pointed out, the £154 million figure does not include the Castle. The major royal palaces are not administered by the Crown Estates, but by the Property Services Section of the Royal Household (subject to oversight by the Department of Culture). In fact, this distinction is a centuries-old one, with it having been recognised since the Middle Ages that there were (and are) basic functional differences between managing the Crown’s landed estates, which could generate income, and managing its palaces, which usually just consumed it. In the specific case of Windsor, the distinction between the Castle, controlled by the Governor, and the Park, controlled by the Ranger, is equally old.
Nor is it quite true that seriously important medieval castles never come up for sale in Britain. Lord Brooke, who admittedly needed the money very badly, sold Warwick Castle to Madame Tussaud’s for £1.5 million in 1978. And, as part of Tussaud’s, it was included in last year’s £800 million sale to Dubai International Capita. But in these cases, the value of Warwick Castle reflected its potential as a tourist attraction. Except that Windsor Castle could be - and, come to think of it, already is - run as a tourist attraction. As such, there is nothing at all absurd about asking what a company such as Tussaud’s would be prepared to pay for such an asset. Moreover, for them, factoring in Windsor’s royal, cultural and historical associations would be a trivial exercise, for the very simple reason that we already know how many tourists those associations can attract.
Seen in those terms, its potential ‘value’ immediately plummets. As a going concern, Windsor Castle would clearly be worth less than Alton Towers, also part of the Tussaud’s group and also one of the assets sold to Dubai International Capita. And there’s a good reason why this should be so. The theoretical value of the contents of Windsor Castle makes almost no difference to potential visitor numbers. Sell half the paintings and the average visitor would still be impressed, mostly because the average visitor is not actually interested in individual paintings.
Which is one reason why the owners of stately homes almost never sell the house and contents together. It almost always makes more sense to sell the art works off individually first. The Marquess of Bath knew precisely what he was doing when he flogged off £27 millions-worth of the art works from Longleat in 2002. How many of the visitors to Longleat will have missed them? So, if the Queen was really concerned about maximizing the money, she would have asset-stripped the furnishings long before the Castle itself came on the market. Which might not actually make that much difference to someone who wanted to run it as Ye Olde Royal Theme Park (with a rollercoster ride in the Upper Ward and joint tickets to Legoland?). They would probably just asset-strip what remained and would doubtless calculate as such when they put in their bid to Her Majesty.
Moreover, talk about historical associations boosting values can be exaggerated. At the very top end of the market prices are set more by how much buyers can spare. Would Rubens’s Massacre of the Innocents have sold for much more than £49.5 million if it was being sold by the Queen? Rather unlikely. The qudos of being able to buy a Rubens is so great anyway that a royal provenance would merely be a minor bonus. More to the point, would Bill Gates have paid more than $30.8 million if it had been the Queen who had been selling the Codex Leicester? Indeed, would it have made that much difference if it had been the Windsor notebooks themselves? You see, one rather suspects that if you’re Bill Gates, any Leonardo manuscript will do. True, royal provenances make more of a difference further down the market, but the point about the contents of Windsor Castle is that a significant proportion of it is of superlative importance, irrespective of its royal associations. Bidders would be scrambling to get together as much spare cash as they could find anyway.
And as Prince and Princess Michael of Kent are discovering in their attempts to sell Nether Lypiatt, buyers don’t necessarily want to pay over the market value just because a property is an ex-royal house.
The Crown Estates may say the lands are worth 154 million pounds, but you seem like a nice person. I’ll have to talk to my boss, but I think I can get 'em for you for… 144 million. But only until Tuesday.
It is, to a large extent, simply an exercise in futility to guess at the value of Windsor Castle. It is probably priceless under all but the most farfetched circumstances. Then again, the Queen was quite attached to the Royal Yacht, by all accounts. She still let it be decommissioned and sold by the Royal Navy due to increasing operating costs. She could probably afford to build a new yacht herself, but hasn’t. There are, then, probably some circumstances under which she would accept - or even approve of - the sale of Windsor Castle, but I’m hard-pressed to guess what they would be.
BTW, has anybody been watching the A Year at Windsor Castle specials on PBS? Some pretty interesting peeks behind the scenes, including an interview with the guy who does nothing but care for the castle’s and estate’s 400+ clocks. He’s not fond of Daylight Savings Time, for obvious reasons.