Look4AProperty.com might be claiming to be on the verge of a gargantuan ad spend, and PickAProperty.co.uk might be charming the smalls off estate agents, but the big guns are still firing. London's No 2 portal - FindAProperty - is apparently on the verge of a giant, Associated Newspapers-funded campaign which will include a space across the Daily Mail Group titles, as well as radio and outdoor advertising. This comes hot on the heels of its radical redesign, which now offers better navigation, some nice editorial and extras. Which is your favourite?

It's Swedish, it's reinforced for public use... a real toilet for heavy-(s)hitters... and its clean industrial lines are creating a splash over at the Trendir design blog.

[via Trendir]

I don't buy the Times every day so I missed this one, but apparently the well-heeled residents of Mayfair's Upper Brook Street recently took out a two-page ad in the newspaper demanding that Westminster Council close the roads surrounding the neighbouring American Embassy. Six million pounds worth of security measures are about to be put in place to protect the area from its obvious terrorist attractions, but it's not enough. And - for Christ's sake - imagine this:

[A] resident, who wished to remain anonymous, told The Times that she was displeased with council plans for hydraulic bollards that can be raised during periods of high alert. "It's going to look like a prison," she said, adding that the authorities had not even had the decency to match railings with the existing gold ones.

What's the world coming to? The best bit's still to come:

A neighbour, Thea Haddad, understands, however. "It is going to be like living in the West Bank," claims the 29-year-old property developer, whose pillared doorstep is not far from the Embassy.

I'm sure it must be just like the West Bank. But that's only the very first layer of irony. Unwrap the others for yourself. And here's the piece.

Congratulations to Kirstie Allsopp on the birth of Bay Atlas Anderson, who is, apparently, "big". The Rat and Mouse office competition to guess the name is officially deemed a no contest.

[via FirstRung]

It's a 0.6% rise in July, but largely due to London gains of !%. Seventy per cent of the country saw zero gains. Interestingly, London homes were taking an average of just 3.8 weeks to sell, and Londoners were getting an average of 96% of asking price. More here.

Anti-noise website proves popular [TheMoveChannel]
Endowment cock-up - the costs [Guardian]
Daily Mirror urges British Gas customers to switch [Mirror]
On Rightmove's exit from the HIPs business - cost £22 million [TheMoveChannel]

The Rat and Mouse - it's about your house

Tuesday afternoon linkage - parents: know your limits [July 25]

There's an interesting citizen journalism case study over on the BBC wesbite. Arno de Wever wants the equivalent of £25,000 a year when he retires. What about downsizing the home? What about buy-to-let? it's a good read.

The Telegraph' s Catherine Moye looks at the trend for attaching celebrity architects to major city developments, and asks, is the glamour enough to compensate for high prices and doors that open the wrong way? Read it here.

I'm in Manchester for a few days. Look what I found a few metres from my hotel.

Property, internet, coffee.

Yesterday, it was Look4aProperty, today it's PickAProperty, claiming in a press release that estate agent signups for this soft launched portal have already far exceeded expectations. Expectations must have been pretty low, then, because when I searched for properties in a 2 miles radius of W6, the closest result I got was in Twickenham. The website intends to forge relationships with new estate agents with a free introductory offer. To be fair - the page looks nice (they're putting a lot of emphasis on the definition of their illustrations), and the site offers a few enhanced features (the ability to save notes and bookmark favourite properties for instance), but this is a sector that's looking more overcrowded by the minute, and - despite the fact they seem to advertise everywhere - estate agencies don't hand out cash casually.

Rightmove and Propertyfinder - under attack [July 26]

"We wanted to prove unequivocally to all UK estate agents that they do not need to keep paying other portals over 300 pounds Sterling a month per Sales & Lettings Branch," [Aaron] Turner says. "Our service is free to all UK estate agents for the first six months, and then it's just 49 pounds a month per branch thereafter. It has taken us over two years and over 1m pounds to design and build Look4aProperty.com. We know that technically Look4aProperty.com is more than a match for any of our major competitors, and the feedback we have had from both estate agents and Web site users looking for property and has been overwhelming."

I know... the usual routine is: they come, they're crushed, they hang around until the owners can't be bothered to renew the domain name, they go. But Turner means business. He says he has £40 million to spend just on TV advertising over the next four years, and there's talk of a fleet of Minis. Because they're a proven way of building popularity. Whatever, Turner's hardly modest. The website appears to have trademarked the phrase "the UK's Number One Property Search Website". Read the press release here. Visit the site here.

The Rat and Mouse - The UK's Number One Property Blog [TM]

Twelve secluded acres in Twickenham known as the St Margarets Pleasure Grounds, shared by 140 properties at the cost of £400 a year for a key, and worth an extra £400,000 to the value of a home. And now, thanks to the Telegraph, a secret no more.

If you want to keep a tenant fast, give them wifi and Sky, says Chris Partridge, in today's Independent. You won't get more rent, but you'll get more interest, and you'll be ready for when wifi and satellite TV are considered basic amenities.

Buy-to-let parents: learn the rules first [W3 debt solutions]
Lambeth walks - property booms [Croydon Guardian]
Council Tax rises seriously threaten old people [Local Government Chronicle]
Olympic Stadium - £280 million and counting [GamesBids.com]
CBI head warns Bank Of England on dangers of interest rate rises [Times]

The Rat and Mouse - because Londoners think about property every three seconds

Monday afternoon linkage - Justin Timberlake wants to get wit' you! [July 17]

Thou shalt not exercise thine own in thine own home unless it has been vetted by a qualified professional, and preferably on national television. When it comes to interior design, there is but one God and her name is Naomi Cleaver. It is wrong - spiritually, morally, objectively - to depart from her teachings, unless it is to supplement them with the Ann "House Doctor" Maurice catechism ("Who made cream walls?" "Sensible people." "Why did they make them?" "To reflect light, hold value and not alienate buyers").

Lucy Mangan, writing in the Guardian, takes a look at matters of taste, in an entertaining look at contemporary morality. Funny. But depressing.

Hasbro - masters of publicity. A month rarely seems to go by without some story about the venerable Monopoly updating place names or property values or something. Here's the latest. First, out with cash, in with debit cards and a little machine designed to enable electronic transfer from one player's account to another's. What's more, it's goodbye to the dog and the iron, and hello (appropriately, in the case of the dog) to a burger and a mobile phone. The old version of the game will remain on the shelves. The new version - called, snappily, Monopoly Here And Now Electronic Banking - will cost twice as much. It's already been available in Germany and France for a while, and has apparently done well. Sounds joyless to me.

According to an AA insurance survey, these are the people who live on Acacia Avenue:

Their recipe for happiness involves never moving, never divorcing and never changing job. They have three bedrooms, and a garden, on which one in five has a shed and one in 10 a gnome. They earn on average the average national wage, £22,500, and waste just 21 minutes of their busy lives getting to work. Just over half go abroad once a year, with Spain by far the most popular destination.

Head over to Londonist for some interesting Acacia Avenue facts.

[via Londonist]

It's a strange move for one of the most vociferous pro-HIPs lobbies out there, but Haarts estate agency is so disgusted with Yvette Coopers dodgy HIP-replacement that it's now calling for a boycott. The firm is arguing that without the mandatory Home Condition Report, the half-HIP will remain expensive but become pointless. More here.

Wednesday afternoon linkage - the UK's most wanted... Yvette Cooper? [July 19]
HIPs fiasco - Rightmove first casualty [July 19]

The Tory Bow Group have come up with an interesting way to replace council tax and, er, capital gains, inheritance tax, stamp duty, TV license... it's a 1% annual tax on the value of your property. It's surprisingly simple, and it's surprisingly socialist, radically shifting the tax burden away from the north and to the south, where house prices are higher. The Guardian suggests David Cameron, and his wealthy London based supporters, might be less than delighted with the Bow Group's ideas.

The Tory Bow Group have come up with an interesting way to replace council tax and, er, capital gains, inheritance tax, stamp duty, TV license... it's a 1% annual tax on the value of your property. It's surprisingly simple, and it's surprisingly socialist, radically shifting the tax burden away from the north and to the south, where house prices are higher. The Guardian suggests David Cameron, and his wealthy London based supporters, might be less than delighted with the Bow Group's ideas.

A record's just been broken, Stateside, with the listing of Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz's Aspen home, Starwood Ranch - the most expensive single family home in America, listed at 135 million dollars. It includes 95 acres of prime Aspen land and it's bigger than The White House. More here.

Remember this? The latest London compulsory purchase order disgrace appears to be taking place in Barnet's Grahame Park Estate, where the council has apparently admitted that the price being paid out to residents won't be enough to allow them to buy back in again, after their homes have been demolished and replaced. Residents' choices are simple. They can move away (the most likely outcome... despite school or work ties); they can increase their mortgages to cover the price hike; or enter into a shared ownership scheme. Isn't the point of regeneration to improve an area for the people who live there? Full story, here.

... continues to break records. All eyes on interest rates.

... not too upmarket to be starring in a Magnet kitchens promotional DVD, available in a Magnet store near you, soon.

Rosalind Russell reports on the market in the Telegraph, and the unanimous view from the estate agents is that the good leads are out this summer:

"It is interesting to note that although the number of prospective viewers drops, the actual number of sales remains similar," says Peter Young, managing director of John D Wood & Co.

It's a similar story from Lane Fox's Lulu Egerton:

"The difference between this and other years is that every single person who is looking is serious."

And the message from Russell is that if you were thinking of taking a holiday and dealing with a house sale/purchase on your return, you might be about to miss the party. Read it here.

Average buy-to-let landlord - 49, and in business for 10 years already [Reuters]
House prices - is the only way up? [BBC]
Your local's most-wanted - website shows northern pub troublemakers' mugshots [BBC]

And some HIPs-specific headlines:

On Rightmove and Countrywide's pain [Guardian]
RICS not happy [First Rung]

The Rat and Mouse - with teeth in London property

All the wasted column inches, wasted time, wasted money, wasted breath, on yet another Government non-policy... and don't for one minute think there aren't real casualties each time these 24 month fancies are announced. Today, it's Rightmove... the companies share price tumbling as it is forced to warn that revenues from the companies HIPs business won't be what they expected.

HIPs - one giant embarrassing shameful cock-up [July 18]

A fast new mobile service for house-hunters has been announced by MyHousePrice.com... text "House" to 64488 and then enter the relevant postcode, and you'll receive the completion prices for the ten closest properties, for free.

[via Telegraph]

Thanks to the Rat and Mouse's special correspondent for hipping me to the latest on HIPs - which makes for some painful reading. Here's Yvette Cooper:

As part of the development of the dry run we have engaged in detailed consultation with a wide range of stakeholders and have gathered substantial information on the progress of implementation so far. As a result, we have concluded that there would be significant risks and potential disadvantages to consumers from a mandatory "big bang" introduction of full Home Condition Reports on 1 June 2007. In particular:

Further testing is needed to ensure that Home Condition Reports deliver the assumed benefits for consumers and that the operating systems that support them work smoothly. Design work on the dry run has made it clear that this cannot be completed in time for the results to be taken into account in by 1 June.

A recent report from the Council of Mortgage Lenders identified the real possibility that some lenders might not be fully geared up to use HCRs until 2008-09. In particular the industry’s plans for bringing in Automated Valuation Models means that many lenders will not have them in place by June 2007 and so will continue to seek separate mortgage valuation surveys where they could have relied on a Home Condition Report.

There are concerns about the number of inspectors that will be in place in time for June next year.

Ouch! And there's more.

There's also a quick response from Which's Nick Stace, which includes this:

The new Department for the Communities is not worthy of its title, it seems incapable of defending people in our communities making the biggest purchasing decision of their lives.

The homebuyer was looking to the government to hold firm in the face of criticism from the estate agents, instead the government has shown its house is made of straw.

Even estate agents are trusted more than politicians which is hardly surprising when politicians seem incapable of defending homebuyers. The new "half-HIP" will be a useless but a very expensive waste of time.

Read the rest here, and wait on the full fallout tomorrow.

Today, the RICS - reporting London's steepest rise in six and a half years, in the three months to June. Combined with this and this, it looks a little like a boom, doesn't it? Well, in the south, anyway. More here. But remember the Halifax, folks. And wait patiently on the DCLG.

Forbes - the place where people with money read about people with money - is hosting a kind of stalkers' slideshow of properties belonging to US celebs in the UK. Homeowners include Madonna, Jerry Hall, Terry Gilliam, Gwyneth Paltrow, Gillian Anderson, Tim Burton and Kevin Spacey. It also poses the question... why?. Apparently, it's all about status (pronounced as in splat - us):

"U.S. celebrities get kudos in their social circles for owning a London property," says Tom Tangney, associate at property agent Knight Frank.

There's an odd end to the feature. The writer is clearly under the impression that Notting Hill's "rise" from multi-cultural stop-off to hangout of the rich and arty has happened in the years since the Richard Curtis movie:

Seven years ago, the film Notting Hill spurred interest in London's more diverse quarters. In one scene Hugh Grant, as a bumbling poor bookstore owner, tries to break up with movie star Julia Roberts with the explanation: "I live in Notting Hill, you live in Beverly Hills." It was a metaphor for the difference in house prices, class and status that each neighborhood represented...

Go here to read more and enjoy the slideshow.

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Justin Timberlake to move to London and rock English ladeez to the break of day [Contact Music]
Friends and landlords... students who rent to their mates [Guardian]
Invasion of the estate agents [Times]
IT salesmen vs estate agents in honesty showdown... hey, guess what? [Silicon.com]

The Rat and Mouse - rockin' estate agents to the break of day

Research from Oxford Economic Forecasting has predicted the average house price could rise from £195,000 to nearly £290,000 by 2011.

Holy mackerel! That's a rise of 50%! An Oxford-based boffin explains that it's a shortage of housing that will fuel the fire and "spell disaster for tomorrow's first-time buyers". More here.

In the four weeks to July 8, Rightmove reports a leap of 2.9% nationally. Remember, that's a surge in asking prices, and - while a few publications are headlining this story "the biggest monthly rise in five years" (or, indeed, since Rightmove began keeping records), it was actually the biggest percentage increases since 2004. The "since 2001" figure is based on cash values (of course, as prices rise, it takes a smaller and smaller percentage to produce large cash rises). The figures relating to the south east are more dramatic. The average asking price increased £12,000, and the annual inflation rate hit 12.5%. In London, the monthly figure was also 2.9%, but it left annual inflation at 13.8%. Rightmove's Miles Shipside insists asking prices are being achieved. In a few months, when the DCLG catches up on June's completion figures, we'll know something like the truth. More here. To download a pdf of the actual report, click here.

They're saying he's just spent £6 million on a riverside property in Chelsea - a place to stay when he's in town with (to quote the Daily Mail) "his 6ft 4in girlfriend". (Is this a special case, or a new trend in which journalists are to specify height?, asks 6ft 1in Ben Brandt.)

The view appears to be that the appointment of Andrew Sentance (to replace David Walton, who died recently) might tip the balance away from rate rises in the near future. On fellow appointee Timothy Besley, the jury's still out.

Ninety-one per cent happy with their builders [SourceUK]
One hundred new UK millionaires every day [Daily Mail]
Don't know what a sofa brick is? [design*sponge]
Penthouse pampering at One West India Quay [Telegraph]

The Rat and Mouse - reading all the property news, so you don't have to

Ian McCartney proposes to force English estate agents to join an ombudsman scheme, or have their phones, fleet cars and keyrings confiscated. Currently, only 60% are members of the voluntary scheme (Foxtons are a prominent agency refusing to be regulated), and yet RICS takes exception to McCartney's plans as "unfair" and "anticompetitive". (That's anti-competitive, to require all estate agents to operate from a level playing field.) McCartney plans to introduce the Bill during the next session. More here.

Mr Blair is wrong about cul-de-sacs and he should think again. I love mine. It is along a narrow street in west London with a communal garden at one end and a church at the other. My loop is not packed with fatties. Mothers get their exercise by running up and down the quiet street teaching their children to ride their bicycles while fathers show off their footballing skills at the weekend.

In today's Telegraph, Alice Thomson writes in defense of the cul-de-sac. More community. Less traffic. Nice piece.

Okay, not immediately. The man - Kyle MacDonald - traded up from the paperclip gradually, making a small profit on each trade, until receiving the keys to a 1920s farmhouse in the small town of Kipling. It looks as if he was helped at the very end by the town itself, which realised it could gain from the publicity. Still - a property's a property, and it took just 14 trades and one year to get from paperclip to house.

[via First Rung]

Funny how things turn out... who would have thought, in this confused era of blue Labour and green Conservatives, that it would be as niche and technical a subject as the Home Information Pack that would finally split the left and right so neatly? Have you seen what the front page of the Daily Mail looks like today? Then see above (apologies for the cameraphone quality). Meanwhile, writing in the Guardian, Australian-in-London, uber-blogger and Guardian Weekly deputy editor Natalie Bennett takes a more considered view of the HIP, and writes from the experience of a buyer who had her fingers burned. She tackles the subject of the Tories' much vaunted cost and time-related complaints very nicely. She doesn't tackle the issue of whether, as a buyer, she'd trust somebody else's surveyor. But then, I'm undecided on that one myself, too. Oh yeah, and here's the Daily Mail piece, with some interesting comments.

Lederer refreshingly admits to having tidied up the pants before opening her home to the Independent. How many of these pieces do you read, and then come away wondering... do rich, arty people really live like this? Even though they have kids? Perhaps that's why I'm not as rich and arty as they are? Perhaps if I turned my home into a casual interpretation of the British museum - flotsam from my many trips across the subcontinent scattered with zero thought at all for my own image - and added whatever contemporary design trends will turn my place into a stomach-churning middle-class cliche within five years - then I could be richer and artier too. But Lederer's a refreshing change:

There's a lot of fake stuff - even a "Dufy" painted by my friend Brenda! We laid fake York stone on the terrace, and even the facade is fake.

Read it here.

The battle for Cameron's chimney, won by Cameron.

David Cameron and the battle for wind [March 6]

The Telegraph carries a very interesting piece about the potential economic dangers of an interest rate hike. According to the Bank Of England:

A sudden jump in borrowing rates - potentially caused by a further surge in the oil price - could cause a 2pc fall in economic output and wipe out banks' annual profits, estimated this year to top £40bn.

This is the "fine line" of profiting from debt. Push the interest rate too high, people just can't pay and then you really are in trouble. Other results include a 25% fall in house prices over three years. The Bank is said to have drawn out a list of six major risks that could lead to City meltdown. All six rest on record levels of consumer debt.

Record mortgage levels [June 29]
Mortgage broker world - where "sub-prime" includes "heavy adverse [June 28]

If there's one thing I don't like it's being taken for a fool. And so - swimming in the shark-infested waters of the London property market - I get a bit cynical sometimes. Only numbers don't lie... I tell myself. And I was in this kind of mood when I received an email entitled story of hope for potential property buyers, urging me to recommend my readers drop £25 for raffle tickets for a house. Now, Rat and Mouse readers have seen this kind of thing (and this kind of thing) before. They rarely end well - except for the people organising the raffle, of course, who get to keep 50% of whatever amount of cash they manage to squeeze from the witless. So, I took issue with the whole thing and got into a bit of an extended email tussle with the guy who wrote to me. After a few exchanges I felt that we clearly weren't getting anywhere, and suggested throwing it open to the readers. Mr Lottery agreed. I still think I'm right. I think this kind of thing - far from being a story of hope - is a tax on the stupid. But, after reflecting on the correspondence, I wonder whether I've been taking the whole thing too seriously. The emails (live, unedited, and which you should take with a giant [sic]) after the jump.

Government house price figures show 0.9% May jump, add to confusion {Channel 4]
Asda estate agency wing actually launches [Reuters]
Propertyfinder buys London Property News [Egoli]
BNP's Barking council housing lies [Guardian]
Agents say HIPs won't help [ThisIsMoney]
Paragon say ftbs still hit hard [Reuters]

The Rat and Mouse - because Londoners think about property every three seconds

Friday afternoon linkage - houses aren't cash [July 7]

As you've probably noticed, the property search engine game has been heating up like crazy recently, with new players joining our list of all-time favourites every week. Now here's Nestoria - a brand new engine, based on a Googlemaps mashup, but featuring all kinds of intelligent design features, including useful local geographical information taking in healthcare, schools and pubs. They've even added automatic reference to photographs bookmarked on Flickr. (Although I'm not sure, in practice, whether house vendors will welcome Flickr's interesting graffiti-heavy content in this instance.) So far, Nestoria's London-only. But - by picking off a limited area and going slow - the developers have created something that works fast, works well and is just uncommonly satisfying to use. Over the weekend, I contacted Nestoria developer Ed Freyfogle with a few questions, and he was kind enough to come back to me. Read the interview after the jump.

The Daily Mail takes an indepth look at how Jemima French (one half of Frost French, the label she runs with Sadie Frost) went from Bali beachbum single mother to Primrose Hill princess:

When she began looking for a bigger space for her now four children, boyfriend Francis, who runs his own celebrity management company, and two cats, Jemima stumbled upon a five-storey, six-bedroom Victorian townhouse just a stone's throw from Regents Park. Even better, it didn't need any major work, just paint and some TLC for the original floorboards.

It's amazing what you can just stumble across when you try. Let that be a lesson, whining ftbs. Anyway, here's the link. Do with it what you will.

Buying agents - not just for the rich [Telegraph]
14% of mortgages are buy-to-let [My Finances]
Houses aren't cash, shock [Money Week]
Interest-only mortgages - deadly [Motley Fool]
So what happened to the east London boom? [Telegraph]

The Rat and Mouse - it's about your house

Thursday afternoon linkage - beware the Docklands new-build [June 29]

As further details of the ambitious and exciting Battersea Power Station development are revealed, am I alone in feeling a little sad that - no matter how cool it eventually looks - we'll all know, deep down, the sheep's legs aren't really its own?

[via Telegraph]

Battersea Power Station - good on the inside too [July 5, 2005]
It's happening in Battersea [January 31, 2005]

If you can tear yourselves away from Big Brother, how about Tenants From Hell, tonight, at 9pm, on ITV1? Including the tenants who turned their flat into a cannabis factory, and the tenants who... er... murdered their elderly landlady. Which definitely wasn't in the contract. Meanwhile, click over to the landlords/tenants page at Channel 4 4homes to be greeted by the truly nasty photo caption below.

Jeez, no wonder ftbs are angry.

In its own trading statement ahead of half-year figures, Rightmove said: "Given the positive first half out-turn, the board is confident that revenue and profit before tax for the full year will exceed the top end of the range of analysts' estimates."

The top end of the range of analysts' estimates. What's that then? £16.4 million, actually.

Rightmove - soared like an eagle [March 10]

... unchanged at 4.50% for the 11th consecutive month.

Just in time for this afternoon's Bank of England committee meeting (I know, it shouldn't influence them, but bet'ya it does) Halifax reports a 1.2% fall in the national house price index for June. The first half 2006 figure remains up 4.5% (2.6% in the second quarter), and London's annual growth rate - although quite possibly distorted by big gains at the very top of the market - stands at 10.9%. Download the official pdf by clicking this.

In the Telegraph, Jonny Beardsall tracks Kirstie Allsopp down to... Devon! That's right, the bird has flown. Read the extended interview here.

Sealed bids are taking place almost weekly as competing offers have created higher prices. We have more buyers this year, less property and the frustrations over buyers securing property continues.

That's Andy Buchanan of Chelsea's John D Wood & Co, and part of a very bullish overall market report by the estate agency - characterised by talk, in every office, of a serious shortage of quality property. Interestingly, it's (apparently) not just the family-sized houses that are sparking bidding frenzies. According to one agent in Primrose Hill, one-bedroom flats - the traditional ftb purchase - are moving into sealed bid territory, too.

... they'd probably look like this.

The result of six years' work by Dutch architect Janjaap Ruijssenaars, this bed hangs in the air, suspended by magnets. It also costs one and half million dollars. But there's apparently a miniature version, not exactly a bed, more a perch, that's available for a tenth of that figure.

[via Engadget]

Music industry honcho Tommy Mottola lists very lovely North Salem (NY) estate for 21 million dollars [link to particulars]
Is it a mansion? Is it a Westchester mansion? Yes, and it's Christopher Reeve's old pad, on the market for 2.95 million dollars [pictured, link to particulars]
Colin Farrell keeps it real in his new 4.3 million dollar Hollywood Hills villa [Miami Herald]
Denise Richards, Charlie Sheen, Heather Locklear, a house, a Bon Jovi guitarist and a big sordid story [LA Times]
Ricky Martin puts Time Warner Centre condo on the market - 9.95 million dollars [New York Observer]

The Rat and Mouse - London is not enough

Rat and Mouse international celebrity property round-up - Robert de Niro's waiting, talking 49 million [June 15]

The estate agents' photographs have picked up the rather desolate atmosphere of the flat, which has put many people off even viewing; those who have been enticed through the door "have been unable to visualise themselves living there", says Hannah Bentley, from estate agents Douglas and Gordon, "particularly in the bedroom, which has no bed."

Okay, call me intolerant, but in my book if you haven't consciously grasped the fact you're buying a building, and into that building you'll be putting your stuff, then you've really no business buying a property in the first place, and you deserve to live in a Transit van. And yet - according to the Telegraph - people are queueing for the services of HomeStagers, who, for a small fortune, will show you how to put the right stuff into your flat so that a prospective purchaser will temporarily go giddy with all the aspirational lifestyle crap around them and believe - for long enough to make an offer - that they're getting the whole package... gadgets, gundog and trophy wife out of a magazine, too. Interesting. Incidentally, if you own a property in Pimlico there's another reason to read the Telegraph piece... it's not the first message the Rat and Mouse has received telling us that the Pimlico market's hot and getting hotter right now.

Then why not try any old bullshit?