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Entries in January 2006
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Nationwide today. And a 1.4% rise in January, putting the annual rate of house price growth to 4.4%, its highest since May. More, from Reuters, here. Download the actual factual Nationwide report as a pdf by clicking this.
Hometrack reports - second rise [January 30]
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There's news in today's Times that the organisers of the 2012 Games have lifted the threat of 95 CPOs just north of Stratford. Clearly, it's good news if it means 95 businesses aren't forced to relocate, and if the London Development Agency has managed to find a cheaper alternative venue for its temporary carpark (95 businesses were being threatened for the sake of a temporary carpark!)... but lawyers aren't in the business of applauding win-win wins. The lawyer representing the interests of the 95 (plus a further 200 threatened with CPOs) isn't impressed. They're only doing it for the money, he says. So? And, in any case, the remaining businesses will in all likelihood be forced out when their leases rocket at renewal time. Well he might have a point there.
East London vision [October 31]
Livingstone compared to Mugabe for Olympic land-grab [October 6]
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The trouble with a lot of property TV is you can never be sure the presenter-guru has walked the walk as well as talked the talk. Except in the case of Build, Buy or Restore's Michael Holmes. The story of his (and his partner's) three new-builds in ten years (plus a host of other property deals), and their plan to ditch the mortgage by the time they're 40, reads like a thriller. It comes courtesy of the Sunday Times, here.
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It's a horror story over at the Telegraph... one in which model tenant Andrew winds up £1,300 out-of-pocket because the landlady of his Camberwell flat has reached the end of the line with her mortgage arrears. It's one more thing to check, but the only sensible lesson to learn from this story is: ask to see your landlord's mortgage statement before signing anything. Although it would be nice if letting agents checked this out as a matter of process. Wouldn't it? Full story, here.
The bad landlord blog [January 26]
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Hometrack reported its first monthly rise in 18 months back in December. It's another rise for January - although of a mere 0.1% (leaving prices, according to Hometrack, still down 1.04% on this time last year). Reuters, here. Keep checking here, for the official press release (at time of writing, it still hasn't been uploaded).
Bullish survey [January 26]
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More in this Category - _Other
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It's art. And it radiates heat. Cinier's stone sculptures offer a daring alternative to the chunky old-school look and modernist excess. They won't be love-at-first-sight for everybody, but they're certainly different. They list Radiating Style (I almost couldn't bring myself to type that) as a UK outlet.
[via Trendir]
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News is breaking that Madonna has spent £900,000 on the house next door to her Mayfair terrace... for her staff. More, here.
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So the Highgate Society, in its ongoing campaign to banish the estate agents from the "village", thinks a survey will do the trick, and so polls the residents. We're not so sure it's helped. According to this, only 16% wanted to see fewer estate agents on the High Street. What's more, the overall response to being given a say has been less than charitable... and resulted in the selection of a brand new target for a brand new hate campaign. This time? Charity shops.
Luke O'Toole, a volunteer at the Cancer Research UK shop in Highgate High Street said he was very surprised by the finding. He said: "Business here is going very well, so it seems a bit strange. I certainly don't see why there should be fewer charity shops. Most people seem very happy with what we are doing and we offer a good service."
Parkheath estate agents - Highgate's final straw [January 9]
Evict the estate agents of Highgate [December 16]
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 And I always thought Americans were scared of lawsuits. The story goes like this... a blogger put up this very detailed and well-illustrated post about exactly why he felt he was being screwed by the Trembickys - the owners of his rented Brooklyn apartment. And then it turned out it wasn't just him. Soon, the Trembicky-complaints were flooding in... so many, in fact, he decided it was time to launch a whole new blog. Trembicky.com isn't just about the Trembickys. It's a place for all disgruntled American tenants to vent, and it makes for some great reading.
[via curbed]
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A survey by The Homebuyer Show suggests optimism amongst British homeowners. Almost 80% expect prices to rise over 2006. Last year the figure was more like 25%. And - confirming what we all know at the Rat and Mouse - house prices weigh heavily on the minds of the British public. It's the UK homeowner's third biggest worry (after affordable housing and interest rates). More, here.
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 Anyone else intrigued by news of property megamogul Donald Trump's decision to sue author Timothy O'Brien? O'Brien's crime? Seriously under-estimating Trump's wealth. He suggests, in a book with a fabulous cover, that Trump's net worth is no higher than a mere two hundred and fifty million dollars. Honestly, what a xxxx-ing liberty!
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Oh yes.
Armand B Frasco's blog is named after an essay by Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad, and it's certainly fanatical. In fact, it's terrifying.
[via design*sponge]
Edmonton - natural selection, live [February 10]
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Striking dining, eh? The Independent gives this Blenheim Crescent, Notting Hill home, listed with Marsh and Parsons, a thorough going over today. It's being sold by a long-time investment banker recently turned punk promoter (nobody say it, because it might not be true) and his wife, who's in the flip-flop business. They like Morocco; they like to shower outdoors; and they appear to have a strange prejudice regarding ceramicists' agents:
"The light is amazing as you go up," Julie says. "But it had been owned by a ceramicists' agent and was very bland with lots of neutral beige colours. It badly needed decorating."
It's no longer bland, that's for sure. And, despite the flip-flops and ceramicist agent hateration and everything, we think it's lovely. It's listed at £3.4 million, it has five bedrooms, off-street parking and a large roof terrace with shower. Find particulars here; and the Independent feature here.
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You say tomayto, we say tomarto; you say bubble, we say crash... either way house prices continue to avoid the catastrophic free-fall predicted by a host of American blogs and our own HousePriceCrash. Now, LongOrShortCapital (an American finance blog with the brilliant tagline, "Let us think for you, since we're better at it") dares to say what a few of us have been thinking. Isn't it time for all these bubble blogs to pack up and admit they got it wrong?
[via Curbed]
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More in this Category - _Other
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 Charles & Marie report that the classic Paul Henningsen snake chair is going back into production. It's a doodle. It's a chair. We like it a lot.
[via Charles&Marie]
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 I know, I know... who has a front garden? But this is one Royal Horticultural Society campaign actually inspired by west London:
The RHS's advice is available in a leaflet called Front Gardens, compiled by Leigh Hunt, a horticulture adviser at RHS Wisley, who was influenced by his experiences in West London. "I remember witnessing vast swaths of gardens being turned into hard surfacing. The roads became inhospitable and grey." he said.
And it's not just about inhospitality and greyness, either. It's about house prices, too. (That got your attention.) Here's a list of reasons why it's bad to turn your front garden into a carpark:
- Less rainwater's absorbed. It has to go somewhere, and the drains weren't built to cope. It could back up and flood your house.
- More pavement, less trees means more heat.
- Birds and small animals don't like tarmac.
- A Halifax study showed you gained as much as 23% in property value by living in an area with nice gardens.
And if you must squeeze your car up to your house, the RHS goes so far as to provide some tips about how to do it without totally nuking the nature. There's more over at the Times.
Don't pave over your garden... [September 6]
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There's a worrying piece for many Londoners over at the Telegraph. Am I imagining it, or are there more and more stories, right now, of leaseholders being served monumental and unexpected bills for "essential upkeep" from their landlords? Like the lady with the £250,000 basement flat in Knightsbridge, who received a bill for £14,400. Except that the "essential upkeep", in this case, turned out to be the construction of two extra flats on the roof. In other cases, the work might be needed - but the job could be overpriced and channeled off to contacts of the landlord. It's a crazy system. And unfortunately it's our crazy system. More, here.
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The Independent put on its coolest threads and visited Bistrotheque - Wadeson Street's HQ of Haggerston hip in London's new East End. Like the man says - a rocketing of house prices was an inevitability, what with the area being sandwiched, as it is, by some proper property totty in Shoreditch, Hoxton and Islington. But the front line of gentrification is strictly for the brave. Take, for example, the case of the squatters who have rebuilt a property demolished by developers... and moved back in. Read it, here.
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More in this Category - Celebrity homes
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Asks the Times' Ben West.
 At Allsop's London auction last December, 88 of the 110 lots sold above the guide price. Those included a former goods yard in Sussex with a guide price of £1 million-£1.25 million that went for £2.235 million; land in South Wales with a guide of £1,000 that sold for £18,500; ground rent on a flat in St John's Wood, northwest London, with a guide price of £22,000 that sold for £73,000; and the £645,000 flat in Earls Court Road that had a guide price of £150,000-£175,000.
So what's going on? Well, it looks like a combination of two factors. Certainly, guide prices are set deliberately low, to make the auctions seem more attractive to the naive. And then, when the naive turn up, there's what I call the Ebay effect... a complete lack of self-control on the part of buyers programmed to treat an auction like a competition. (Hey, I won!) It's an interesting article, with some useful advice for those looking for a property auction bargain.
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Council of Mortgage Lenders figures out today reveal that December 2005 was the busiest December for lenders since records began (up 25% on December 2004). More, here.
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According to Neisha Crosland, Allegra Hicks and Carole Lee of John Lewis, interviewed by Damian Barr in the Times:
- bespoke objects
- continuing popularity of wallpaper
- rich jewel colours
- candle sticks
- rugs
- stylish sofabeds
In their own words...
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More in this Category - _Other
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And it's just so damn hard to find the fine stuff. Hive H2 is a shelving system based on the original award-winning Hive system by Chris Ferebee of 521 Design. It's American. But it ships... if you're feeling flush. (Incidentally - if you're investment-minded, some original Hive prototypes are available via the website.)
[via design*sponge]
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The Rat and Mouse's favourite journalist, Nick Cohen, writes in the New Statesman about a fascinating documentary slated for BBC 4 on Wednesday, February 8. Property Is Theft is a film, by Vanessa Engle, that takes a detailed look at the 1970s squatters of Villa Road in Brixton:
By the time Engle takes up the story, in 1974, there were 30,000 squatters in London alone. She concentrates on one street, Villa Road in Brixton, just south of the Thames. Lambeth Council had planned to knock down its Victorian terraces and build yet more tower blocks, but the money had run out and so had patience with brutal high-density housing. The homes stood vacant, and so young white radicals, nearly all of them Oxbridge graduates, forced their way in.
Cohen looks at a few of the luxuries a mortgage-free lifestyle enabled... like political activism, primal screaming and literary criticism. He also uses the contrast between the 1970s and the current property market to make a lucid defense of Prescott's housebuilding programme. Look at what we're losing, he says, by making homeownership such an expensive, all-encompassing obsession. And he's right. He doesn't, however, look at what would happen to generations of under-pensioned low-to-middle-earners if - for one reason or another - the bottom does fall out of the property market before they reach old age. Nor does he notice that these low-to-middle earners, now reliant on the property market, are of the same generation as the Old Etonians and Oxbridge graduates who fought for their rights to squat, scream and criticise in the mid-1970s. The difference? They didn't go to Eton. Or to Oxbridge. The documentary looks like great television, though. And in the meantime, Nick Cohen has produced, as always, a great read. You can find it here - but don't expect to be able to return to an online New Statesman article once you've read it. Unless you pay. Anything else would be squatting. So we suggest you go straight to Nick Cohen's own blog and read it here.
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Three times as many renters feel out of control of their money as those with a mortgage.
I know, lots of singletons buy, lots of the partnered-up rent, lots of renters know what they're doing with their wallets... but these generalisations come from a survey by an IFA promotional survey. Apparently, 41% of singletons have already suffered a "financial crisis" (compared to 28% of married people). What's more, the average age for marriage (m: 30, w: 28) and first property purchase (34) is going up. More, here.
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Okay... so now we've got our "headline of the year" sorted, and it's only January. The story is that the "controversial" king of pop - one of the few people in the world who would become more popular by becoming best known as an estate agent - is considering a job offer from Aaj Holdings Ltd in Bahrain, where he would offer advice about theme parks and concert halls. More, here.
Lock up your nippers... Mikey's coming [May 26]
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More in this Category - _Other
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Two (south side of) Harrow Hill houses, which the young Anthony Trollope once called home, are currently on the market for £3 million and almost £2 million. Julian Hill House, at £1.95 million, is a Grade II-listed, five-bedroom home (above) in 1.25 acres of land. You can find the particulars, here. It shares a driveway with Julian Way, listed at £3 million... an utterly beautiful 7-bedroom home (below) in four acres of grounds and "wooded secret gardens" including an orchard of apple and plum trees. Particulars, here.
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The Telegraph reports on Cliffe Cottage, Redcliffe Mews in Chelsea, apparently the only house in London (apart from the Queen's) to not carry a number. The story is that the house was built after the rest of the mews had been developed. and all the good numbers had already been taken. It's said to be with Lane Fox, at £1.7 million... but we can't find any reference to it at the website. For what it's worth, the Telegraph page starts with an upbeat story about estate agents John D Wood who reported 261 users visiting their website on Christmas Day, as evidence of a turn in the property market. The Rat and Mouse can confirm the Christmas Day property frenzy with visitor figures of, well, let's just say treble that number and add some more. So if you want to consider advertising on the Rat and Mouse... email to discuss.
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Cool interior design blog Trendir thinks it's spotted a new and growing trend for urinals in high-end bathroom design. But if they all looked like this...
[via Trendir]
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"The housing market is definitely seeing signs of a recovery. We expect the positive activity at the end of last year to continue over the coming months," said RICS spokesman Jeremy Leaf.
Today's RICS report reveals that house prices rose in the three months to December, and the number of completions rose faster than at any other time in the last two years. Furthermore, enquiries from prospective buyers rose for the seventh consecutive month - the longest stretch of increases since 1999. The press release hasn't made it to the RICS press page as of writing this post (although it might be there by the time you read it)... so, for the meantime, the Rat and Mouse officially endorses Reuters.
Mervyn King on the market [January 17]
More indices - ODPM [January 16]
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More in this Category - _Other
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Some remarks the Bank of England's Mervyn King made to a local radio station in Kent have been passed on to Reuters.
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So the Scotsman pretty much takes at face value a very exciting competition in which a north London couple are effectively raffling their flat at 48 Grove House, Waverley Grove, N3. The story is that they're so desperate to sell they're offering tickets at £2.50 each, and the person who correctly guesses the value of the flat (as estimated by estate agent David Harris and Company), gets to keep it, plus the cost of conveyancing and stamp duty too. Good deal. But the Rat and Mouse has seen this kind of thing before, and our experience is that the public rarely responds with the enthusiasm necessary to cover the costs. So what happens if the "north London couple" don't raise enough to award the flat (plus conveyancing plus stamp duty)? Nobody would reasonably expect them to hand over the deeds to their flat for a fiver. The answer is here:
If there are too few entries and the market value of the flat, Stamp Duty and transfer costs are not covered, at the end of the competition the winner will receive a cash prize of 50% of the amount raised through the competition.
That's 50% of the amount raised through the competition. Maybe it's not such a stupid idea. What's more, when the "north London couple" have finished with the website, another "couple" might want to use it.
Tits up for property draw [December 22, 2004]
Want to win a house? [October 14, 2004]
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News of the battle for Hackney's Francesca's Cafe reaches Korea.
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According to this fabulous piece from the Sunday Telegraph, self-storage units (those warehouses with rentable secure space you see looming at the edge of A-roads) are getting used for all kinds of unlikely things... lunchtime flute practice, secret wine cellar, giant porn stash. And, with space at a premium, it's a booming industry, gaining in demand by something like 30% or 40% a year. Wow. But how's this for a tragedy:
Terence, 56, potters off down a long brightly-lit corridor, takes a key out of his pocket and opens a locked door to his left. Beyond is a room, 250 foot square, containing a battered old armchair and an urn containing his mother's ashes. He will spend the next couple of hours cocooned in this temperature-regulated box to which nobody else in the world has access.
Sad, and a little bit weird.
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We've just digested the Rightmove figures, and now it's time for the ODPM... late, as ever, but a whole lot more meaningful (because they're based on completions, rather than valuations or asking prices or voodoo). The figures are for November 2005, and they show a 2.5% rise in the month, bringing the annual figure to 2.2%. More, here. Or press this to download the report as a pdf file.
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The story is that house prices rose 0.1% since December 4 and January 7. Okay - nothing particularly significant there. But what the newspaper headline writers are getting all excited about is the detail that, after a typically dead December, prices rose 0.9% in the first week of January... rewarding the typical British homeowner with an extra £2,000 to spend in the sales. Obviously, the whole thing's a load of nonsense. The Rightmove figure is based on asking prices - so if this does reflect any significant move, it could easily be a tidal wave of overpriced properties flooding the New Year market... which isn't good news for anybody. But the kids love it.
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More in this Category - Celebrity homes
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 The ongoing saga of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin's haunted Belsize Park home has taken a further turn for the ridiculous with this revelation that the ghost is a musical ghost... called Adolphus White... who taught at the Royal College of Music and lived in the house until his death in 1902... and who won't leave until Martin can explain what this means. We suggest moving.
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But don't bother, like, tidying up or anything. Join the discussion, here.
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More in this Category - _Other
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So the Rat and Mouse's switchboard and email client are both blowing up right now with one and only one incoming story... and it's the story of Prescott's council tax bill. Once again, a quick explanation for our foreign readers: John Prescott is the Deputy Prime Minister and should know the council tax rules pretty well - because he's in charge of them. So it's with a certain cynicism that we read his apology for using a total of £3,830.52 of public money to pay the council tax on his Admiralty House apartment. Apparently, he'd thought he was paying council tax... More, here and here and here and...
New Year linkage - Prescott's eye in the sky [January 3]
Pervy councillors to photograph your underwear drawer [November 15]
Government's freebie housing round-up [May 9]
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... steady at 4.5%, for the fifth month running.
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The ink is barely dry on our last City bonuses post (which follows Telegraph writer Ross Clark on a tour of the upmarket estate agencies with the question - so who exactly is confident they're going to get their mitts on this City cash?), when a new report adds more fuel to the fire. Today's study - by the Centre for Economics and Business Research - estimates that half of the 7.5 billion pounds expected to be paid to bankers in the coming weeks will be spent on property. And - if not property - where else will all that lucre get blown? According to the survey: fast cars and plastic surgery. Nice. Press this to download the report as a pdf file.
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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.
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The Telegraph reports on an 18% increase in Kensington and Chelsea house prices in a nine-week period up to December 12. The figure's courtesy of Rightmove, and the trend is courtesy of the much heralded City bonus bonanza. But is it really about a City bonus bonanza; or all the talk of City bonus bonanzas combined with a little vendor price fixing? Property writer Ross Clark delves a little deeper, talks to estate agents, and reports back:
"There are a lot of vendors out there who feel they have scented blood," says Tangney [Tom Tangney of Kensington's Knight Frank]. "Two or three months ago they might have accepted an offer, but now they are turning them down, in the expectation that prices will rise. There is a real sense of greed out there."
The picture that emerges is one of bankers showing restraint and limiting themselves to purchases of between one and one-and-a-half million pounds. Certainly, the five-million-and-above sector looks like it's being paid for in rubles. In the meantime, Kensington and Chelsea's greedy vendors need to be very careful indeed. The full story, here.
£2.25 million starter home [November 23]
Rich to get richer than Richie [November 8]
City bonuses eyed by estate agents [October 4]
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 Pregnant - that's the first piece of news. And, apparently, her mother "had to be peeled off the ceiling" (although she fails to mention whether the ceiling had any period features). The second piece of news is moving. Her west London flat will go on the market (more details as we get them), and she'll be moving in with her property developer boyfriend Ben Andersen, who plans to convert two Notting Hill apartments into a large family home. We've been told Kirstie looks at the Rat and Mouse now and again, so may we take this opportunity to say "congratulations". More here.
Kirstie - seriously angry... and sexist... and pursued by Prescott [November 9]
Kirstie Allsop - too sexy for her flat [June 14]
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... Confusion reigns. Yesterday the news was that the Blairs' property curse reached his Sedgefield constituency last year, turning it into (according to Nationwide figures) one of the big property losers with an average fall in values of 10%. That could have wiped £40,000 from the value of the Prime Minister's constituency home. But today's Guardian takes a more considered view... factoring in the information that he paid only £30,000 for the property (way back in 1983). The Guardian also points out that the same survey gives Westminster a massive 10.8% rise in the year which, if applied to his much-derided Connaught Square investment, would make the Prime Minster enough profit in a year to buy his Sedgefield home in cash. But it's more complicated than that. Many believe that the Blairs paid to much for Connaught Square, and we all know that house price figures are micro-regional... one road will do much better than another. Read more, here.
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I really, really hope he's genuine - as I said, we were supposed to be exchanging yesterday & everything else has gone through. Everyone else in the chain is ready to go & getting jumpy - so you can imagine how we're feeling! He does seem a bit naive & over cautious though - when he came to view the property first time round before making an offer it took him over an hour to look round (we have a 1 bed house) & he came armed with a notebook, tape measure, camera, Dulux colour card thing (to match against the colours of walls & carpet) & he's asked for proof of really silly things, eg that we're in a neighbourhood watch area.
See? I've got to stop visiting the Channel4 4homes forum, because this is what happens. Some honest-to-goodness homeowner dips a toe into the slug-infested pool that is the UK housing market and pulls it out with a nasty disease... I read about it and have to go and open a bottle of wine in sympathy because it brings back all kinds of memories of property tussles past. Head over (on the link above) for up-to-date news on Josie's property sale and if he turns out to be a gazunderer let's stick pins in his effigy.
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First, they admit a few rogue estate agents might have been a little willfully extravagant with their valuations, and then the president of the NAEA, Christopher Hall, releases this:
For the long term, I have reason to believe, and am confident, in the average house price increasing by up to 100% over the coming 10 to 15 years so my advice is to continue to invest in bricks & mortar.
He's "confident". He has "reason to believe". He clearly knows something we don't. Perhaps he's actually an estate agent from 2016, just visiting 2006 after a traumatic accident. Go here to read the pres's very upbeat UK housing market state of play, in which even Gordon Brown's SIPPs u-turn is a good thing for the housing market...
Brown's S(L)IPP up [December 8]
SIPPs - it's a scandal [December 6]
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More in this Category - Celebrity homes
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 The residents of Bethnal Green and Bow invite you to help them encourage George Galloway back to work. (A word of explanation for our foreign readers - George Galloway is the elected representative of an east London constituency, and earns almost £62,000 of tax payers' money to represent his [generally low-income]] constituents. Except he's decided to devote the coming weeks to his real job [media whore] and loaf around the Celebrity Big Brother house instead - a situation most would see as a serious lack of respect.)
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In the last days of 2005 the Rat and Mouse pointed readers to some comments by novelist Andrew Martin in the New Statesman, in which he nominated the estate agents of Highgate for eviction (part of an ill-spirited column in which various thinkers were given the opportunity to put the boot in wherever they liked). He's back... this time in the Telegraph... and with an interesting tale of a Highgate Society petition to limit the number of estate agents in the area. There's a suggestion that the final straw came when Parkheath got around a retail lease requirement by opening a shop selling scented candles on the ground floor and doing their business in the basement. According to Martin, not only have most of the agents themselves have signed the petition... as each tires of competing for business with 15 others... but Chris Underhill (of the venerable Prickett, Ellis and Underhill) was one of the petition's co-originators. Surely, logic suggests that when business is too thin on the ground and competition has driven down commissions to a point at which they no longer make renting premises in Highgate economical, the market will do some natural culling. In the meantime, I wonder if vendors are profiting from vastly reduced commissions? If you've a tale to tell, we'd love to hear it.
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This morning's report is for the tricky month of December, and it shows a 1% rise.
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The FT's Rob Budden - mildly traumatised by a problematic home-selling experience (shared not too long ago by a very sympathetic Rat and Mouse) and so glad to be temporarily off the property ladder - wonders whether he should be praying for a crash, but doesn't foresee one in the near future.
My cash in the bank is making about 3 per cent a year after tax. So if the property market - or to be more specific - the area I want to buy into increases by about this level annually, I am maintaining my property purchasing power.
Caution is advised. But if clarity is the first rule of sense, Budden's refreshingly bs-free approach suggests he'll come out of this well.
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Chiswick is "an area that's been coming up, but no one talks about it very much," said Dalton, of Knight Frank. "But it's an area that needs to be spoken about and shouted about.
That's Knight Frank's Tony Dalton talking to the International Herald Tribune about W4 - home to Dennis Waterman and Ant and Dec. The Trib's hyping Chiswick like it's just invested in property there... insisting it's both the new Notting Hill, the better Belgravia and family-friendly Ealing rolled into one. Which I guess it kind of is, if restaurants, organic food shops and Nick Jones's plans for Fouberts are the criteria. But I lived on the border of Chiswick (in other words, Hammersmith) until very recently (and always liked the place), but I'm just finding the whole hoo-hah hard to buy for one reason and that's geography. Call me a spoilsport, but once you get past Fulham isn't there some kind of inescapable cap on coolness? Especially on an area dominated by the sounds of the A4? I hope I'm wrong. It would be nice to see some money filter out away from what the agents like to call "prime central" London... the Rat and Mouse will be paying particular attention to Chiswick house prices throughout 2006. What do you think... let us know.
Platform romance [May 6]
Bedford Park - sanitory [March 24]
Ant and Dec are buying Chiswick [March 18]
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That's according to east Londoners, asked by the Institute for Public Policy Research. New homes were also said to suffer from small rooms and a lack of privacy and outdoor space. It's bad news for the Government, whose Thames Gateway house building plan is intended as an answer to overcrowding and high prices in the Capital, and it's an interesting comment on the state of new-builds in the country. The focus groups suggested they'd only be attracted away from "the second-hand market" by more individual-looking properties, designed around a proper plan that puts community first. More, here. And, below, some of the comments lifted from the focus groups (because they're interesting):
"The number of times I walk to the corner shop because I haven't got any milk! You need one of those."
"You need shops you can walk to. Just for bread or milk. And maybe a takeaway."
"When I go to a house I look at the street. Where the shops are located. Bus stops and train stations. Facilities I'm going to need every day."
"We get bigger TVs and bigger stereos, but they keep the walls really thin so you can hear everything."
"I'm paranoid about new build houses - a lot of them are lifeless."
"They are all made out of the same sort of shiny brick. They look like plastic houses"
"We don't want to feel like we are living as just one more in a series. We want our home to be a bit different."
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Was it just me, or did anyone else find Pay Off Your Mortgage In Two Years extremely dull? It's probably a bad sign that watching the wife perform karaoke in an old people's home felt like a peak moment.
Darn that mortgage [January 5]
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Remember the reality TV show we reported on way back last September? About the couples who get radical in an attempt to pay off their home-loans and live mortgage-less? Well, it's being billed as a television event over two years, and it starts tonight. Get to your TVs by eight o'clock to see how the first family gets on. Incidentally, not all financial advisors consider 100% debt freedom the best option. A little well-serviced debt shows you can be trusted. No mortgage, no credit card... no credit rating...
Property TV - guru school [December 22]
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"The most requested animals for the signs have been tigers and pandas. Grizzly bears were quite popular for a while but I think the pandas took over in the end, probably because they looked a bit more cute."
Can't see it taking off in London.
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That's the trend as we forge into 2006. Credit card borrowing was down £300,000 in November, while mortgage approvals (seasonally adjusted) reached 115,000, the largest annual rise since 1982, leaving them above the decade's average. It's hard to read this any other way than a return to confidence in residential property. More, here.
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Writing as a new landlord, my attention was drawn to this sobering story from the Daily Mail. It's a tale of Mr Hawthorn (the kind of man who'd give up his job to go abroad and do charity work) and his tenant (the kind of man who'd steal Mr Hawthorn's identity and use it to remortgage the house for £200,000 just days after moving in).
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Forget about Celebrity Big Brother, reality TV is about to get interesting in Shoreditch, where the Shoreditch Trust is considering a plan to link up the borough's huge network of CCTV cameras into a giant broadband-linked security channel residents of the borough's housing estates will be able to watch on their tellies. Called Shoreditch Digital Bridge, it will offer viewers a Community Safety Channel, plus a "Usual Suspects" ASBO line-up... a kind of Shoreditch's Most Wanted. Experts foresee problems with privacy rules, but if the plan goes ahead, the Rat and Mouse predicts demand from boroughs right across London, where snooping on the neighbours from the comfort of one's own sofa will surely prove the hit of 2006. More, here.
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