The news, almost exactly a year ago to the day, was of Marcus Cooper's £32m purchase of Witanhurst, Highgate's 65-room West Hill mock-Georgian mansion, and plans to do it up and sell it on for an estimated £150m. By September, the talk was of a flip, for £75m. You see, those were the days... the days of 234% profit in less than two months. How things have changed. In the current market it takes an entire 12 months to make a measly 156% profit on a property. The news, today, is that London's second largest gaff - after Buckingham Palace - has, at last, found a buyer, and has been picked up, for £50m, by Russia's first richest woman, Elena Baturina... who according to the Telegraph is so rich she's actually married to a construction company.

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Her Camden neighbours have had enough of her "antics", they say, and are campaigning to the council to have her evicted. One of them, quoted here, has apparently been filming her frolics and fisticuffs, and will be handing the evidence over to Camden Council shortly. (What's that? The sound of half a dozen newspapers opening their cheque books?)

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... with their incessant building and bragging and odd-smelling organic cheeses and expensive handbags. Except mainly the building. According to today's Times, the City of London, guardians of the Heath, are warning that the character and peace of the place is under threat from a spate of extensions and home improvements which will loom over the capital's favourite parkland, and offer the toffs uninterrupted views of ladies bathing in the ladies' pond and men coupling in the bushes. More here.

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The apartment - two bedrooms in Islington - cost, according to Foxtons, the asking price of £550,000. Tony Blair's spokesperson has issued a denial that the flat was actually bought by mum and dad. He didn't, however, deny that the flat was now owned by Euan. How - asks the Independent - did 24-year-old Euan, who has yet to start his £30,000-a-year graduate-trainee stint at Morgan Stanley, arrange that mortgage? (The Rat and Mouse wants to know why he paid asking price.)

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Seems like an odd time to open a new branch, but that's exactly what Foxtons is doing. The Camden office - at 120 Parkway - opens its doors on Saturday, June 14, and will be celebrating their new premises with cappuccini and zero commission for the first 200 instructions. It's a courageous way of winning business from the rivals and getting a bunch of Foxtons boards about, but how will the zero percenters fair compared to the other clients when it comes to pushing homes?

[via housefund.co.uk]

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It's 12 Fitzroy Road in Primrose Hill, the former home of author HG Wells, and thought to be the place where he at least started work on War of the Worlds (remember the references to the area?). It's with John D Wood, and a guide price of £3.25m buys you three reception rooms, four bedrooms and two bathrooms in one of the capital's most sought-after areas. Listing here.

[via the Times]

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It's on Hemingford Road in Islington, and the vendors have managed to interest the Telegraph's property section, although it already appears to be under offer this morning. The story's interesting... two homes, without a party wall, previously joined at the hip and turned into a nunnery, re-converted by two separate owners, the extension at the back literally sliced in half by the two buyers.

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For the last 40 years, he'd been digging tunnels under his big house in Hackney. Now - at the age of 77 - William "Mole Man" Lyttle has been billed £300,000 to put right damage which left 121, Mortimer Road supported by nothing more than a handful of white goods. He's got 14 days to pay before - presumably - the council takes possessions of a big house, recently held up by a fridge freezer and a washing machine. Ahh, Hackney. Full story, here. Archive, from when he was evicted, here. Weird search result suggesting the property's a Hackney B&B here:

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The Telegraph visits a subject we haven't seen since this back in August, 2005... the shell apartment... the unfinished development waiting for the buyer's own interior design vision. Fred Redwood has found an unfinished development in Hoxton, and he's also found that the shell sale is still for the loaded only. Don't expect a discount.

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Almost a year ago, the Rat and Mouse reported on squatter Harry Hallowes' £2m windfall, after a judge awarded him squatters' rights to a little parcel of land on the edge of Hampstead Heath.

He was back in the news on Saturday, in a piece about the problems he's creating for a local developer, who has plans to build an unpleasant-sounding pile of tack on land shared by Mr Hallowes and grand 19th Century home Athlone House. The plan was to bulldoze both. The Highgate Society is opposing one; Hallowes the other. But the squatter can at least comfort himself with the knowledge that - according to a valuation in the Daily Mail - he's made a 100% profit in just 11 months:

His small plot is now worth a staggering £4million.

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