If you're driving home for Christmas out west, it's worth knowing that - following a week of leaks and rumours - Transport for London have finally confirmed that Hammersmith flyover is suffering from a serious structural defect and, deep breath, please, they've closed it. Expect congestion. Don't expect it to re-open quickly. Sorry.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

We're not kidding.

Yeah, it looks more reasonable when you see it split on a weekly basis.

It's Gordon House, in Richmond... a giant riverside stately home featuring a 47ft-long ballroom, landscaped gardens and more wings than a flock of seagulls. It used to belong to Brunel University. Now, it could turn out to be the most expensive rental property in the 'burbs. Knight Frank particulars here.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

There's a good picture over at the Standard. Forty-four prefabs are bring dropped opposite Hammersmith Hospital - all one and two-bedroom homes - on top of the existing four-storey blocks. One bedroom flats will be let at £794 a month, two-bedrooms at £961 a month.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Two bedrooms, lots of light, nice internal architecture and a bed raided on perspex... bestselling chick lit author Adele Parks is selling her Evershed Walk (Chiswick) flat. It's with KFH, £1.295m. Particulars here.

If these walls could talk... are you pleased to see a US edition, or is that a gun in your pocket? [June 11, 2010]

Technorati Tags: celebrity, London, property, real estate

Back in 2007, we reported on plans by Declan "Dec" Donnelly to renovate his Chiswick home so that it would match the Chiswick home of Anthony "Ant" McPartlin, which can be found, conveniently, a few doors away. The neighbours weren't happy, was the story, and I'm not surprised. A whole street can be tainted by that kind of weirdness. I didn't think Dec would get away with it... but apparently - and a little bit creepily - he has:

Just so visitors can tell the difference, Ant's is on the left and Dec's is on the right - the positions the pair religiously follow in their public appearances.

And there's nothing like mock-Edwardian when you want everyone to know you've arrived.

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I used to live a stone's throw from Charing Cross hospital... and remember watching plans for their specialist cancer centre closely. Architecture's all about form and function, which is why Maggies Centre won the Stirling. No Stirlings for Poundbury, eh, Charles?

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It's a plan apparently being considered by Hammersmith & Fulham Council.

The plans comprise a building that is divided into five and 10 storeys fronting Shepherd's Bush Road, with shops and more than 2,800 square metres of leisure space, according to a planning statement. There will be some 429 student studios, singles and doubles.

Expect more news in November.

Technorati Tags: development, London, property, real estate

Colonel Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi has bought a plush pad in Hampstead. Here's how the Mail on Sunday managed to paint a picture of a venue fit for a Bond villain:

The neo-Georgian eight-bedroom property bought by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi in a secluded road in Hampstead, North London, boasts a swimming pool, sauna room, Jacuzzi and suede-lined cinema room where he will be able to monitor world events.

... while stroking a long-haired white cat. He might choose to watch Laurel & Hardy films while he's in there, too, but they're probably right. He'll mainly use it to monitor world events. What's the country coming to?

Meanwhile, it gets worse. Over at the Telegraph, that final bastion of opera-loving, Jag-driving, University town murder-solving Englishness Inspector Morse has had his elegant home redesigned redneck-style by a bunch of hapless squatters:

Members of the Inspector Morse Appreciation Society regularly travel to see the historic house, which was once worth well over £2 million. But they have been horrified to find that the one-time delightful 19th century mansion now lies derelict with boarded-up windows and doors a far cry in from its TV heyday. The Polish squatters stripped valuable fittings from the house and have left its overgrown gardens strewn with discarded junk furniture and other rubbish.

Interestingly, the house isn't in Oxford, it's in Ealing.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

A freedom of information request by Andrew Slaughter, MP for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush, shows notes of presentations to senior Tory figures made by Stephen Greenhalgh, Tory leader of Hammersmith and Fulham council, which suggest limiting social housing to the old, infirm and disabled in a bid to solve the "concentration of deprivation".

Also among the recommendations: enforced "downsizing" for single tenants, perhaps to rooms in shared houses, and five-yearly reviews of personal circumstances, and the demolition of the some of the boroughs housing estates. Labour MP Andrew Slaughter has accused the Tory borough of "social cleansing". Council officers have denied contributing, other than by providing facts.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

A little-known regional index (no, not house prices) was published by the Communities and Local Government Department a couple of days ago. It's the happiness index... how happy are you living where you do. The City came out tops, with a 92.4% swellness rating, narrowly beating Richmond upon Thames into second place. Richmond - clearly taking this kind of crap far too seriously - has fought back... calling the City "statistically insignificant" because of its sub-10,000 population, and proclaiming itself the swellest place in the country. Incidentally, the least swell place in the country was also in London... sorry, Barking and Dagenham (56.6%).

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate