According to a survey by Savills, the following addresses are potential candidates for future primeness. The important driver is an influx of professionals combined with nice existing stock, preferably Victorian or Edwardian homes. The advantages to being "prime"? If you've been reading the Rat and Mouse at all over the last few years you'll know that prime London tends to outgrow the rest of London, indeed the rest of the UK. So here goes:

• Tooting ("the new Notting Hill")
• White City
• East Acton
• Tulse Hill
• Camberwell
• Fortis Green
• Finchley
• Brondesbury
• Willesden Green
• Cricklewood

[via the Times]

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Just a fortnight ago, the Rat and Mouse pointed its whiskers at Earlsfield, and it smelt good. Now - here's the Times - with a few more reasons why buyers looking for a value foothold into the London's south west might want to look at SW18.

property for sale

All eyes on Earlsfield [July 11, 2007]

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Property portfolio managers Young Group have bought into The Retreat - a gated development of 26 apartments by Findon Urban Lofts off Garratt Lane, on Furmage Street - and are extolling the virtues of Earlsfield as south London's next hotspot. Although the Rat and Mouse knows little about The Retreat, it agrees with Young that Earlsfield has everything going for it in terms of location... situated, as it is, close by the Wandsorth-Putney-Clapham triumvirate, which has been making astonishing ground in property prices recently. Young Group buys properties off-plan for private investors, and lets them out for them too. They claim to have "successfully let all investors' apartments within a week of completion". The Retreat will be ready in the summer of 2008. More here.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Londonist points to news that Youngs might be about to sell their famous Ram Brewery in Wandsworth (original story here). It's all a bit of a shame - as we've suggested before - but it's also a prime chunk of south west London, a five-and-a-half-acre site with a book value of £11.3 million. When we brought you rumours of an impending sale just over a year ago, the story was that the brewery was in negotiation with Multiplex. God, tell us this isn't still so! The statement currently mentions advanced negotiations with a developer, but doesn't name them. We still think it's all a shame.

The Rat and Mouse - now you can comment [May 22]

Local police warn landlords - if a gang of Vietnamese men get in touch with you and offer you six or 12 months rent upfront in exchange for the keys to your property and no identity checks, be suspicious. Unless you don't particularly mind them knocking down internal walls to facilitate giant cannabis farms with fire-starting hydroponics. More here.

A call to Newham residents - please sniff your neighbours [August 10]
Clarke Hillyer's Leytonstone Vice [April 26]

Prices are soaring, apparently, in Merton, where prices rose 0.9% in January - way above the 0.1% national average (all figures courtesy of Hometrack). Merton was equalled only by Kensington & Chelsea - where prices, aided by six months of City bonus chatter - were almost certain to rise. More, here.

I would never aspire to live in Wimbledon, the shops are too chichi and the houses being built here are hideous, mock-Tudor monstrosities.

Designer Ab Rogers lives in Wimbledon, but in a hyper-cool Zip Up House, designed by his father. HIs children sleep in pods, complete with DVD players and stereos. And Rogers himself has a micro-office - a complete office-in-a-chair. It's a good read, and it's on the other side of this link.

Somebody is going to fall in love with this two-bedroom converted 19th Century coach house in The Tonsleys. Check out the two front arches (now French doors)... they were the original Hackney carriage entrances. There's a 30ft garden, too, and a small roof terrace, and the ground floor is open-plan in a very airy and cool way. Interestingly, the property still comes with its commercial license. It's with Foxtons, at £595,000. Find particulars on the other side of this link. (Incidentally, the agents seem to have really gone to town on this one, even featuring a glossy photograph of the inside of the owner's pantry. Say what you will about Foxtons, that's what I call attention to detail.)

Congratulations to ThisIsLocalLondon for this cracking tale of ministerial property intrigue in Southfields. It appears David Blunkett has managed, once again, to ricochet off the boundaries of ministerial propriety by writing a letter, on House of Commons-headed notepaper, to Wandsworth Council registering his disapproval, as "a former resident" of Fulwood Walk, to the council's plan to add some private flats onto neighbouring Clevedon Lodge. His objections appear to be entirely environmental. But what he doesn't mention is that he still owns and currently rents out 7 Fulwood Walk, which backs directly onto Clevedon Lodge. While he gets busy apologising for using Commons notepaper for an entirely private matter, and explaining that he never meant to mislead Wandsworth Council, it turns out that the building work is designed to raise money for the local Linden Lodge School for blind and partially-sighted children:

The council has already released funds from the potential Clevedon Lodge asset for the school, in expectation of being able to recoup it from the sale. The disused Clevedon Lodge was not seen as a fit site for the school to use in the future. Instead, its sale is partially funding a £4million development at the Princes Way school including a 37-bed residential complex, new teaching accommodation, pool facilities and a play area.

Government's freebie housing round-up [May 9]

So a NASA employee named Pete Mouginis-Mar, who used to live on Trinity Road, gets the chance to name a crater and decides he'd thrill his mum and dad by naming it "Tooting". For those interested in this kind of thing, Tooting Crater is 28km across, at latitude 23.1N, 152.4W. And you can find the crater's official listing here. Whether it will do anything for house prices in (our) Tooting is still being debated.