The British estate agency and residential land and property auctioneer Hollis Morgan is selling a home in Bristol with the accompanying graffiti known as “Well-Hung Lover” by the infamous street artist Banksy emblazoned on the side.
Banksy, who hails from Bristol, painted the graffiti on what was a sexual health clinic in 2006. It is one of his oldest works and was vandalized in 2018. The online sale will take place on Feb. 12, 2025, and has a guide price of £700,000 ($887,000), according to the lot listing from Hollis Morgan.
The artwork features a nude man hanging from a windowpane and covering himself with his hand for modesty while a woman in her underwear “inside” the window stands behind her (presumed) jilted husband, who looks out of the window to try to catch the lothario.
The building itself is described as a “Grade II Listed Leasehold Georgian terraced property,” meaning it is included on Britain’s list of buildings of special architectural or historic interest and that the buyer would not own the property outright.
A leasehold, a type of homeowning legal arrangement in the U.K., differs from leasing or renting a property. Leasing typically refers to short-term rentals from a few months to a few years where there is no ownership agreement and stricter controls on the tenant. A leasehold by contrast includes some contractual long-term ownership rights and typically last from decades to centuries, though the property is technically owned by a “freeholder.”
Specifically, the Bristol property is owned by the Bristol City Council which is seeking a new leaseholder for a 250-year lease to the property. The council said there is no official city policy regarding street art, noting that such art when created by Banksy or others is often made illegally and without the permission of the owner of the building.
However, the Bristol City Council will require any purchaser of the leasehold to accept a restrictive covenant preventing the artwork from being removed from the building. The purchaser will not be required to have an insurance policy for the artwork or maintain it as long as it remains visible on the side of the building.
With the artwork, the new leaseholder would be buying a five-story and 4,661-square-foot building with a self-contained nightclub in the basement. The nightclub currently has a lease set to expire in December 2032.
The vacant upper floors can be converted back into a residential space or possible turned into low-density apartments for students at the nearby University of Bristol.
Last month, Hollis Morgan listed another property bearing a Banksy mural with a guide price of £750,000 ($979,000). That building, located in Stokes Croft in the center of Bristol, features the work Mild Mild West, which first appeared on the building in 1999 and depicts a teddy bear hurling a Molotov cocktail at a group of police officers.
