Whichever way you look at it, this is a weird one. Insurers Norwich Union have suddenly decided a temporary obsession with the idea of a "happy home" is going to make them seem caring, so they've launched a survey seeking to establish which celebrities have - in the eyes of the public - the happiest homes, plus a competition to find the key to home happiness. Now, I know what you're thinking. This isn't proper social science. And you'd be so right. For what it's worth, Jonathan Ross and Jane Goldman have the happiest home, with Jamie and Jools Oliver's home coming in a jocund, merry second. Norwich Union even comes up with a few handy tips to make your own home happier. Want to waste your valuable time by reading them?

Ensure you get on with you neighbours. Allow each member of the family their own space. Make your house a clutter-free zone. Allow plenty of sunlight into your home. Kitchens and lounges should be warm, spacious and inviting. Make time for each other. Ensure your home is secure and adequately insured.

If you think you can do better, and fancy the chance of winning an £8,000 prize and thus making your home so happy it squeals, go here.

In case you didn't know it, it's the Peabody Trust's Dalgarno Gardens that's been surrounded much of the day by police apparently shouting "Mohammed" through megaphones. The entire estate has been cordoned off all day - with residents told to stay indoors. Somebody reported a "controlled explosion" - possibly a smoke bomb.

A bar in the lounge, obviously. According to an interiors piece in today's Times, the home cocktail bar is back, with the trend led by Madonna, who hired David Collins to recreate the Berkeley Hotel's Blue Bar in her own New York pad.

"People are increasingly entertaining at home," says Alex Michelin, director of the property developers Finchatton. "And they want to do so in a relaxed yet sophisticated way. Having people over for cocktails is fast replacing the labour-intensive dinner-party scenario."

Right. But does that mean you really need somewhere to lean your elbow? It all sounds like the kind of kitsch silliness that you look back on with embarrassment when it crops up in the corner of old photos. What do you think?

Almost three weeks after the announcement of London's winning bid for the 2012 Olympics, properties in Stratford have almost completely dried up and this could soon spread to other parts of East London. Market experts at the Property Investor Show are labelling the phenomena the 'Olympic Ripple Effect' and say that its influence could spread as far as Dagenham.

... and the Hams, and Plaistow, and Forest Gate. More, here.

East beats West [July 13]
Capital property bonanza? And they're off... [July 7]

Until a court case comes along and shuts it down, blagger.com is where you go if you want to vent about your cowboy plumber, builder or estate agent. We've been flicking through the estate agents' rogues' gallery - how we love it:

As if that wasn't bad enough I realised a week after they had moved the tenants in that they had not actually got round to completing the reference checks and when I phoned to complain, the director Mark ------ was abusive down the phone and told me to F*** off.

They are dishonest, irresponsible, useless and arrogant.

Remember, all those of you who complain about the minis- they're just the tip of the iceberg, used by all the new lower sixth drop outs from Eton and the office secretaries- there's a whole fleet of very expensive, unmarked, cars perepetually on the roads cutting you up and with very, very large boots, stuffed with £50 notes from yours and my pockets......

You,d be better of renting from a loan shark,at least you,d know when your going to get your balls kicked in.

I cannot believe the service or lack of i received from this so called "estate agents." I suggest that before anyone uses these cowboys they seriously asses the other options available.

Yeah, seriously, asses the options, like your life depended on it.

A change in pension rules presages a tidal wave of new money into housing, money which, in the absence of new supply, can only raise prices.

Head to the Adam Smith Institute, here, to join the party. But don't end up cornered, drink in hand, by Madsen:

Madsen: What makes you think we cheer on these inflationary policies? We do not.

New figures from the British Bankers' Association show mortgage lending up to an 11 month high. With an interest rate cut likely, could this be the start of a house price recovery? Check back later to hear from somebody who thinks so. In the meantime, more on those lending figures here.

It's not strictly a property story, but how we love these ridiculous figures. The latest, from the Office for National Statistics, confirm that we're worth one hundred grand each, not accounting for the fact that a whole bunch of us are more equal than others. Apparently, our wealth level rose 7% in 2004, bringing the total to £5.8 trillion (if you're American, somebody once told me that a US trillion is different to a UK one... but I guess it's all a drop in the ocean compared to your own bloated asset value). Actually, there's a property angle:

he report adds up a range of assets, including the value of buildings, roads and financial products. Housing continued to be the most valuable asset, worth £3.43 trillion - up 12 per cent on the previous year and making up 59 per cent of the country's total wealth.

More from the Independent, here.

£700, to be precise, which we think is rather a lot considering it's right at the upper end of the scale of survey costs, and it's unlikely to deter a suspicious/conscientious buyer from commissioning their own survey. More, courtesy of a suitably outraged Daily Mail, here.

Remember us featuring the skinny masterpiece back at the very beginning of June? Well it apparently takes more than first prize in the RIBA Future Homes competition (2004), a listing as one of the Independent's Top Ten Modern Buildings (2004) and a Best Building prize in the London Architecture Bienalle (2004) to shift a house so thin you need a crane to hoist in your furniture. So it gets this big feature in the Sunday Times (just posted on the Internet), which tacitly suggests the owner has just decided to let it go. At £1.15 million, there's no mention of a reduction either. That's because there hasn't been one. You can still find the particulars here.

See what happens when I leave town for a couple of weeks? The North-South house price gap narrows so much there's talk of London "losing the house price crown", Hometrack reports that annual deflation reaches its highest level in more than four years with a -0.2% drop in prices in July, and Housing Futures 2025 (a report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research) suggests that houses are still overvalued by around 5%. I don't know what to say. Sorry? And thanks to guest-blogger Gil for injecting new life into the Rat and Mouse over the last fortnight. Hopefully he'll continue to post.

I always find it rather puzzling how the moniker 'modernism' can have found itself attached to a particular architectural movement - didn't anyone realise that there would come a day when it was no longer actually modern?

That said, the focus on light and space that characterises the modernist movement of the 20's and 30's does still feel fresh and this elegant property that has come up for sale in Dulwich, SE26 is a fine example of the genre. It was designed in 1932 by the Tecton practice, headed by the darling of the British Cement Association, Berthold Lubetkin, probably best known for designing the penguin pool at London Zoo. The house was built by the engineer Ove Arup whose firm later went on to collaborate on the Sydney Opera House, the Pompidou Centre and the Gherkin. It has been lovingly restored by architect John Winter and is now on the market with The Modern House for £1.5 million. (Thanks to Albert for the tip-off)

You have got to love the way Old Father Thames is flowing back into the centre of London life. I walked from the National Theatre over to embankment yesterday and it felt vibrant and beautiful. The Royal Festival hall is being spruced up, the underrated Golden Jubilee footbridge was full of kissing couples and the London skyline was glittering.

And now there is another wonderfully ludicrous new project proposed for the stretch of river between Waterloo and Blackfriars Bridges. The proposed design has been created by the Metropolitan Workshop and consists of a mad web of cables, along which run champagne-bubble cars to a suspended bar. So picture yourself in a bar on the river, with tangerine trees and marmalade skies... (sorry!) Sounds pretty far-fetched, huh, but then again who would have predicted a giant bicycle wheel in the middle of the Big Smoke?

OK, so we have established that living near a good school not only helps your children get to college but also does wonders for the value of your house. However you had better make very sure that when you do send the children to college you send them far away, because new research suggests that having students next door can reduce the value of your property by 10%. A couple of savage rottweilers on the other hand frighten buyers only to the tune of 8%, so if they see off the students then thats 2% clawed back.

A good school could not only get your children into university, but help pay their way too according to this new piece of research from Hometrack. Improving schools (as judged by the DfES) improve the value of the properties in their catchment areas - radically! London's most improved is in Stepney Way, E1, and here property prices have increased since 2001 by 56% within the catchment area as opposed to 13% outside. The next best is in St Pauls Way, E3, where the differential is 35% to 13%. (its all happening out East these days). I guess it pays to get involved in the PTA.

For Sale, the "cage" from which Virginia Woolfe longed to escape. For a mere £1.5 million, you could own the penthouse flat at 22 Hyde Park Gate: once the study and attic of the house where the novelist and suicide Virginia Woolfe was born and grew up. Scene of her incestuous sexual abuse and interminable misery, the walls and curtains however are no longer black and by the looks of the particulars on Hobart Slater's website the flat is really rather spiffy.

According to the Motley Fool's latest piece of research, we British are a fine, devil-may-care bunch when it comes to splashing out. Despite the incredibly low interest rates we currently pay more to service our mortgages than ever before: some £50 billion per year. Now think what would happen to interest rates soared back up to the levels they enjoyed in the 80's.

Olympic regeneration in the Lower Lea Valley could be held up by the presence of a long decommissioned nuclear reactor, according to this article in the Times. A fact that was apparently not mentioned to the IOC when London was presenting its bid to host the games. This is hardly Chernobyl though - the reactor was built by Queen Mary College's department of nuclear engineering and the "core was the size of a bucket and produced virtually no energy". Still it only took one bite from a irradiated spider to give Peter Parker some pretty exceptional crimefighting skills. Just think of the consequences for the Olympic movement.

Shameless surfing for property porn turned up the fact that London's second largest house (after Buckingham Palace) is up for sale through Knight Frank. A snip at £32M, This cosy little pied-a-terre boasts 25 bedrooms and 5.5 acres of garden.

New research commissioned by the County Homesearch Company shows that even without the Olympics, East End Boroughs have far outstripped their snooty West End cousins in terms of house price rises over the last 10 years. If you bought a flat in Newnham in 1995, then you'll be laughing all the way to Estapona, with your average house worth more than four times what it was worth back in the day, and the games just around the corner. Poor souls in Richmond, on the other hand, will be weeping into the cinzanos having failed to so much as triple the value of their houses. Diddums.

go east

More good news for residential landlords - a report published yesterday by the Association for Residential Letting Agents (ARLA) suggests that the buy-to-let property market is more robust than ever with both rental returns and actual rents rising and landlords indicating that they will not sell their investment properties even if prices were to fall.

The report characterises buy-to-let landlords as "financially mature investors" with an average portfolio of 5.7 properties up from 4.1 this time last year. Rental yields are improving once again and a record 37% of ARLA member offices are reporting more tenants than properties available. Void periods have dropped from 32 to 29 days on average and the value of rental flats is bucking the overall property market, up 0.2% in central London (6.5% nationwide).

Who's buying to let?
Buy-to-let debate

I know Ben said that we were not going there with last week's dreadful bombings, but we are Londoners after all, and I felt I should take this opportunity to say a very quick 'hats off' to Ken Livingstone, for his message of defiance delivered in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. Here's how he wrapped up his statement on Thursday afternoon:

"...Finally, I wish to speak directly to those who came to London today to take life.

I know that you personally do not fear giving up your own life in order to take others - that is why you are so dangerous. But I know you fear that you may fail in your long-term objective to destroy our free society and I can show you why you will fail.

In the days that follow look at our airports, look at our sea ports and look at our railway stations and, even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfil their dreams and achieve their potential.

They choose to come to London, as so many have come before because they come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don't want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail."

The BBC website has pictures of people still missing so do have a look and see if you can't help track someone down.

And for my last thought before normal service is resumed... can you believe how quickly the T-shirts come out?

Piggy-backing on London's Olympic success, could there finally be enough momentum to follow through on this ambitious plan to redevelop my favorite London Landmark, Sir Gilbert Scott's awesome Battersea Power Station.

This mouldering hulk is big enough, according to the Guardian, to sit 2.5 million people down to dinner. Then again, who wants to rub shoulders with the riff-raff? Personally, I would prefer to skim up the river in a speed boat, under the elegant footbridge they are planning, then shoot straight up to the single dining room that is going to sit atop one of the power station's four chimmneys (the chimney in question completely reconstructed to withstand my considerable bulk). Power lunching with 360 degree views over some of London's most expensive real estate - that's Rat and Mouse heaven.

It's happening in Battersea
Battersea Power Station, good on the inside too

I'm taking a holiday. Yes, clearing off for a whole two weeks. It will be the first time I've left the Rat and Mouse to fend for itself since May 2004... which is why I've decided not to let the Rat and Mouse fend for itself. Say "hi" to Rat and Mouse stand-in blogger Gilbert Gazunder, who will be posting in my absence. I know for a fact that he's very keen that Rat and Mouse readers share their grubbiest property porn with him - so don't be selfish with the smut, send your favourite particulars to the usual address and make a sick man very happy.

If you read US blogs you're probably aware of the compulsory purchase (they call it eminent domain) scandal currently taking place in New London, where a bunch of homeowners are being kicked to the curb to make way for big business. (Okay, that's a slightly one-sided reading of the situation - for the full story, try this.) Now steady yourselves for more, in the coming months, on the subject here in Old London. First up... here's the story of salmon-smoker to the stars Lance Forman who might end up £2 million out-of-pocket as he and his fish are packed away to make room for the main Olympics venue. And this is just one of hundreds of East London businesses facing compulsory purchase. They'll lose, the big building firms will win... good for Londoners?

According to this, she's taken a £10,000 kicking on the sale of her three-storey Georgian house in Hammersmith. If this is truly a story, it's that the house was bought - for £10,000 more than the £680,000 she's said to have accepted - way back in 2001. It originally joined the market with an asking price of £775,900.

Also lost in yesterday's news... property group Liberty International were given the green light to redevelop Stamford Street's King's Reach, on the south bank of the Thames in Southwark. The Milroy Walk arcade will come down, and be replaced by new shops, offices, cafes... in fact, according to the press release, a veritable office village. IPC (who publish everything that EMAP doesn't, including Country Life and Nuts) will leave the King's Reach Tower. The Tower, however, will remain, and gain an extra four floors and some external cladding which we hope won't look anything like the illustration.

Yesterday was a truly terrible, by any person's standards. And now we have to decide whether to continue with our usual fare of house price speculation, scurrilous London property gossip and big-annexed property porn, or - like the rest of the media - pick over the memories of a sadistic and very stupid crime. Let's go with the usual fare. Later, we'll catch up on one of yesterday's most trivial celebrity-related London property stories. But in the meantime, you'd be forgiven for not having noticed that the Bank of England met yesterday, and despite much speculation and pressure from the high street, decided to leave rates unchanged. Again. Also, there was a Halifax house price report for June. The result? House prices rose 0.1% in June, knocking the annual inflation rate right down to 3.7%, the lowest since March 2001. Click this for Halifax's pdf of disappointment. So... will what happened yesterday have any impact whatsoever on London house prices? Let us know your thoughts.

If you're one of our London readers, you're probably aware by now that the city's in chaos, with a series explosions reported in various locations. If you're reading this from afar, please be patient with us, as we wait and see how this develops before deciding on what posts will continue today. In the meantime, go here for breaking news.

The Daily Mirror looks into its crystal ball and sees:

London property bores working out how much they expect their house prices to rocket. Regional bores wailing about how London gets all the hand-outs.

The Halifax has already made its own statement about what might be in store for London house prices. Here's the FairInvestment newsletter:

Typically the differentiation was as high as 18 per cent, leading Halifax's group economist Tim Crawford to identify a "bounce" on the back of the successful bid. "This is great news for London. Hosting an Olympic games encourages city regeneration and is usually accompanied by an improvement in facilities and transport links. These factors tend to be positive for house prices," he said.

According to the FT, East London Is Set For An Olympic Windfall (an article which gives a nice summary of the Olympic-related regeneration plans in Stratford and the Lower Lea Valley). AboutProperty brings news that estate agents Spicerhaart have already started planning a new branch in Stratford. Bloomberg reports on the hurdles facing construction companies planning to make a proper buck out of the redevelopment in the face of intense competition and high costs. Meanwhile, the BBC pays close attention to what really matters, strips the headlines from the Halifax and talks to the nearest hysterical estate agent:

Barcelona, Sydney and Athens all saw house prices rise by more than 50% in the five years before the games.

Any advance on 50%? You bet... here's the Guardian:

Homebush Bay, a former industrial site 20 minutes from the centre of Sydney, saw house prices rise 70% in the five years before the games took place.

So where's the spoiler? Here it comes, from Forbes: London Olympics unlikely to lead to marked increase in property prices - RICS.

More, later, as they come in....

... buy... buy! Of course, the Rat and Mouse will bring the inevitable Olympics-related property speculation as it comes...

It's the subject of a feature in ThisIsMoney, which comes with new stats from the Council of Mortgage Lenders. Like, did you know the average cost of a first home has increased by 478% in the last two decades? Or that it would take a price drop of 20% to bring property in line with what first-time buyers can reasonably afford?

Thanks to Londonist for pointing out these amazing images from inside Battersea Power Station, over at the BBC website. Imagine this... patterned marble floors, wood features... it looks more like a 1930s Manhattan hotel than a place that manufactures power. And keep clicking through for creepy images of the remnants from the workers' final tea-break - tupperware, a hard hat and a Daily Mail, frozen in time like a museum exhibit.

It's happening in Battersea [Jan 31]

Yeah, in case you didn't know, Brad Pitt is is helping Frank Gehry out on that big redesign of the Hove seafront. He's not, strictly, qualified as an architect. But he's really interested in architecture and he's got massive respect for architects. How much respect? According to Oprah Winfrey, this much:

"I'm really gay about the whole thing," laughs Brad.

So now, according to this, Pitt is making a documentary for the BBC about Gehry and the Hove project. We'd suggest a docu-drama, in which Pitt could play the septuagenarian architect, and redesign the south coast at the same time.

Incoming celebrity alert - it's a biggie [May 10]

Thanks to a Rat and Mouse reader for pointing this one out to us. It's (too far) west of Little Venice; and it's with Hamptons at £1.25 million, for which you get four floors of live/work space, five bedrooms, a roof garden, and the kind of 60s pop layout that might make you feel like Twiggy or Peter Sellers, depending on your persuasion. We can't bring you a link to the particulars, because the Hamptons site just doesn't work that way. But we can bring you a link to this, which showed up after a bit of research.

Here's an interesting new product from the Yorkshire Building Society. Drawing on the latest figures, which suggest that the average British marriage lasts just 11 years - 14 years less than the average 25 year mortgage term, the YBS launches the Fresh Start Home Loan. It sounds more optimistic than the You're Losing Your House, Kids and Most of Your Income Debt Relief Scheme, and its purpose is to split a joint mortgage and provide two separate loans with the minimum fuss and expense. Sounds sensible to us. And anyway, what do you expect from a building society? Romance? More, here.

First it's broadsheet journalists casing your home when you think you're conducting a viewing, now it's identity theft in the weeks following your move. Research by CreditExpert reveals that almost half of identity theft originates from a previous address... one still receiving bank statements, mail order account information and other official documents. That's made me feel a little paranoid. And you'd understand why if you'd seen the little crook who moved into my old house. (I've got my eye on you, mate.)

Help yourselves [April 28]
Alistair McGowan - rich rubbish, red face [March 10]

What have we always told you? Stop feeling sorry for them. And now there's this... research by the country's 12th largest mortgage provider (that's the 12th, not the 11th or the 13th) suggests that renters are renters not because they can't afford to buy, but because they just can't commit. Seventy-one per cent of renters said that buying a property sounded too much like "settling down"; 80% didn't like the idea of committing to an area; while 72% didn't want to buy because they might, like, decide to, like, go, like, travelling in the future. More, here.

Kick out your kids [May 9]
First-time buyers, eh? Give them an inch... [April 29]
First-time buyers - don't feel sorry for them [February 9]

Brooklyn already has its own property bubble blog, BKSqueeze (a bit like our own HousePriceWatch), and our friends at Curbed have a long-running Bubble Watch thread - but it's not holding back fearless New Yorkers. Today Reuters carries this, on how the average Manhattan apartment costs 30% more than it did this time last year.