The Hyde Farm Estate in Balham has £100,000 in the British Gas Green Streets competition and will now spend it on making the row of Victorian terraces a showcase for energy-efficient, but traditional, London housing. A number of solar panels are expected to be fitted, and the community's looking into easy solutions for drafty sash windows.
Bills. For fire safety improvements. It's lease-owners in Perronet House, Marie Curie and Castlemead who are affected, 51 of them facing bills of £500,000 between them, their share of works to the blocks. More here.
It's a six-bedroom detached house, built in 1912 for an army officer, and - although it's been properly refurbished - still has a few nice features (colonial-style veranda... presumably ordered by the India-based army officer who commissioned it, log-burning fire in hallway). Other features? A rare mulberry tree in the garden. It's with Marsh & Parsons, £3.35m. Particulars here.
It's a slim three-bedroom house detached in Streatham... should she take advantage of current upward trends and sell while the going's good not bad? Or add it to their current rental portfolio, making a hat-trick? Details here, and if you can bring yourselves to care, drop me a line or comment below. Agent comments more than welcome.
Remember The Curved House... on Channel 4's Grand Designs? The story was: David and Anjana needed to expand their tiny Clapham coach house, so they could fit in a family. They hired architect Peter Romaniuk and built a curved wood and glass house around a protected horse chestnut tree. It was, is, lovely. And it's for sale. Guide price: £1.5m, particulars here.
It's thousands of years old, and at one time served the people of Peckham (the "Pecks") and the people of Dulwich (the "Dulls") with their drinking water, when taxis refused to bring Evian south of the river... or something. Anyway, it's been rediscovered, in a 64-year-old woman's back garden. According to the Telegraph:
The slightly clichéd assumption made by estate agents is that a weak market leads to a "flight to quality" as purchasers concentrate on "best in class" properties that are likely to retain their value. Conversations with investors and more market savvy purchasers at thee current time reveals [sic] that the market downturn is providing them with opportunities to buy into future growth areas.
Where?! Where?!
The document namechecks Fitzrovia (not just Fitzroy Square, but "more peripheral" locations), Bloomsbury (when Kings Cross eventually pulls its pants up), Paddington ("properties on a par with Notting Hill") and the South Bank.
Over at Rat and Mouse HQ, we can remember when Will Anderson began his ambitious eco-home self-build in the heart of Clapham. In fact, I have a feint recollection of a diary, running in - I think - the Independent. Anyway, it was completed a couple of years ago, and now the Guardian is giving us what we've wanted all along... the house, in pictures.
