(As nominated by Rat and Mouse readers)

I can't even imagine who could afford something like this (some ****-ing property blogger, no doubt) but when a house is described as "potentially the finest in St Johns Wood", it's probably worth a post. Dating from 1825, 44 Grove End Road is the former home to Jacques Joseph Tissot and Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. It's listed at (wait for it...) £17 million, with Goldschmidt & Howland. Go here to read the house's remarkable story.

STOP PRESS! UNDER OFFER!

(As nominated by Rat and Mouse readers)

Perfect for Hoxton new media millionaires... a Shoreditch High Street two bedroom duplex penthouse with a private roof terrace and one of the coolest staircases I've seen for a while. It's with Foxton's, at £950,000.

(As nominated by Rat and Mouse readers)

Thanks to a sharp-eyed reader for spotting this contemporary re-appraisal of the 60s/70s space-age look. It's in St Paul's Street in Islington, and it's a three-bedroom duplex plus roof terrace with some innovative inside/outside detailing. It's priced at £850,000. Click this to download the particulars as a pdf file.

(As nominated by Rat and Mouse readers)

What's so special about this one bedroom Putney flat, listed at an eye-watering £285,000? It's in the recently converted Gilbert Scott Building... designed by and named after the man who gave us the red telephone box, Battersea Power Station and the Tate Modern. It's in it's own 12-acre park, and comes with access to communal gym and library.

(As nominated by Rat and Mouse readers)

We're going west for this one... out to Shepperton, I guess the fringes of what anybody could reasonably call London, but the journey's worth it, because this time we're looking at a three bedroom house on a Thames island, accessible only by boat. It comes with grounds, a swimming pool, a sauna and (strangely, perhaps) a garage. It's on Pharaoh's Island - apparently so named because it was given to Lord Nelson after his victory at the Battle of the Nile. It's listed at £1.1 million. More here.

(As nominated by Rat and Mouse readers)

How about an ex-bakery... high ceilings, giant spaces, exposed timber, massive windows and some real talking points, including an original (but out-of-use) goods elevator? What's nice about this place is that they've kept the good stuff (original radiators, flooring, windows), and what they have brought in is high-spec (free-standing cast-iron bath, rock basin etc). It's on Morrish Road, off Brixton Hill Road, and priced at £895,000. Go here for more details.

(As nominated by Rat and Mouse readers)

And now for something completely different. And it's the period features that make this Georgian home in Camberwell so interesting: a panelled entrance hall, a cast-iron range in the dining room, a full-height cellar reached via a secret door, beautiful fireplaces and lots and lots of Georgian symmetry. It's a four-bedroom four-storey property, with three reception rooms and a garden, situated on Camberwell Grove, and it's listed at £899,950. More here.

Thanks to everyone who sent in listings. From today - for a couple of weeks which just so happen to coincide with my holiday - the Rat and Mouse will be given over to showing London properties that are appealing or interesting in some way... and for sale. They're your choices... feel free to comment, I'll pick up and approve comments whenever I have access to the internet. See you in a fortnight.

We're kicking off with this open-plan loft, just off Tower Bridge Road. Why's it "special"? Apart from the fact it's very pretty... it's classic open-plan living (check out the screened off bedroom area), it's in the very nice Jam Factory development, complete with all its internet community magic, and it's listed at £475,000. I know - that's still a lot of money - but by London standards it's an entry into this kind of designer home. Find out more at CityScope.

A survey by credit information company Equifax reveals that more than 40% of over-60s still have a mortgage to pay, and, of those, a million still owe £50,000 or more, and 700,000 owe more than £100,000. I don't know about you, but I find those figures startling. I'm officially startled. Re-mortgaging (otherwise known as "equity release") is the main culprit, with one in five borrowing against their properties in the last year. More here.

Apologies for yesterday's various blips. Thanks for sticking with us.

New July figures from the British Bankers' Association show net mortgage lending rose at a rate that matches May's two-year high, up £5.7 billion. But it will be August's figures that will be most interesting, coming, as they will, after the Bank of England's recent rate rise. More here.

... we want your property porn. Thanks to everybody who's responded so far. Please keep them coming.

Due to the combination of some unexpectedly necessary tinkering at the server/database end of things and the loss of my broadband service here at home (what timing, eh?) I've been experiencing what's technically known as a headache. The server's sorted (thanks Tag4!) - but my broadband isn't (thanks BT!)... so I'm still struggling a little. Normal service will resume shortly.

A bizarre question - maybe - but one that's resulted in a writ, issued by her former landlords. She's been accused of willfully damaging a £1.5 million Chelsea Crescent apartment. She's said to have caused £10,000 worth of damage (including - and this is truly weird - some "blackened spoons") and is said to owe almost £6,000 in rent. More here.

The minutes of the last meeting - the one that resulted in the surprise interest rate increase, the first in two years - was apparently a lot less controversial inside the room than out. The vote went 6-1, with new member David Blanchflower the only dissenting voice. More here.

And what they're saying about interest rates... [August 4]

I have to admit, I hadn't come across the expression before, but according to the Future Foundation (who have been conducting a survey for Direct Line) it's a home "bought by one person for the use of a dependent", and there are 327,000 of them in the UK. It's bad news, argues Direct Line, for first-time buyers... which is ironic, since the majority of the people who live in handout homes are would-be first-time buyers. The overall picture is of property market increasingly "dynastic" in nature. At the moment, it's a smallish proportion of the UK's 2.6 million second-homes (the majority of which are let), but it's a proportion that may well see the biggest growth in the coming years. Why? Well, ironically because of the difficult market for first-time buyers. Catch 22.

So, following yesterday's DCLG house price report, it's the turn of the RICS today... and they're a bullish bunch. House prices, they say, climbed in the three months to July at the fastest rate since the crazy days of double inflation in 2004. What's more, they don't expect the recent interest rate rise to do anything to slow house price inflation in the short term. They're looking to another rate rise, which they expect to kick in next year. Some comment, here.

Boris Johnson's sister, Rachel, on Notting Hill [Guardian]
Colin and Justin - Scottish heroes [Sunday Mail]
When renting is better - a guide [MSN]
Another interest rate rise likely [Independent]
The Chelsea Effect and The King's Road Swagger [Telegraph]

The Rat and Mouse - it's about your house

Tuesday afternoon linkage - princess of sandals coming to London [August 8]

They date back to June, but they're based on completions, so they tend to carry a little more weight, and they're saying the annual inflation figure was 5.2%. It's less than the figure for May (5.6%), but the all important three-month average rose to 5.3% from 4.7%. Click this to download the report as a pdf.

At the end of this week I'm taking a fortnight's holiday... heading, with family, to the coast to celebrate the onset of autumn in style - gusty wind, drizzly sand, stone-grey skies, the traditional British holiday. My internet connection will, like the answer, be blowing in the wind, so I think it will be the perfect time to do something that's been at the back of my mind for some time. I'm looking for extraordinary London properties currently on the market, and I'm appealing for your help. I want listings that tug at the heart strings. They don't have to be expensive, or big, or in a grand location. They just need to have a uniqueness about them, a sense of character, that makes you imagine living in them. Over the next five days please send me links, and (if you like) some comments about the property, what it is that appeals to you. And if you're an estate agent, you're very welcome, too. No names or email addresses will be published. Send your tips here, and please try to get them to me by Friday.

Apparently, you've been "shopping for houses, not holidays".

This time - East Sheen, and a plan by developers to replace a World War 2 air-raid shelter in St Leonard's Court with a couple of apartments is not going down well with either local residents or Richmond Council.

Bunker battle in Barnet [April 13]

The Times carries the fascinating story of Graham Hudson's house of trash. Hudson - an artist - had been renting in Hackney, but thought he could do better. So he blurred the distinction between domestic and work life in order to get permission to build within the grounds of the new Chelsea College of Art & Design buildings, and set to work building a house out of old rubbish and the odd piece of wood paneling, a stone's throw from the Commons. The Times's Adam Barnard brings a couple of estate agents from Douglas & Gordon, and asks them to value the £1,500 home. They like it, and value it at a quarter of a million... assuming he can meet building regs. Which he probably can't. Great piece, though. Read it here.

Regular Rat and Mouse readers might remember me getting into this tussle with somebody promoting one of those home lotteries I love so much. We argued, I pointed out the poor value of his scheme, he pointed out my lack of adventure, I published the entire correspondence on the Rat and Mouse and left it for you to decide... was I being a git? Well, I was recently contacted by another Rat and Mouse reader keen to point out my original correspondent has turned up and is involved in a much nastier tussle on the MyNottingHill forum. He's been promoting the same lottery from a number of different angles (owner, friend of owner, somebody who just happened to hear about it on the radio), [apparently] following up on cynical responses with racist insults (find the thread marked "Building wanted in W10/W11"), and getting involved in a series of very strange threats with some people who sound like extras from LOCK, STOCK. What's more, his memory of our own little discussion is a little strange:

The guy from rateandmouse [sic] loved the idea... and if you were intelligent enough to interpret the article properly you could see he is just goading the readers for reaction.

Would I ever do such a thing? The guy claims he's made some significant sales from Rat and Mouse readers. Jeez... next time send me your money. In the meantime, read some of the forum flak over at "Building Wanted in W10/W11" and "An enterprising idea". Sorry I can't give you links direct to the exact threads... the site just won't let me.

Can things really be this bad? Apropos of nothing, an email:

Dear Potential House Purchasers/ Sellers (why else would anyone else read this?) my biggest piece of advice is: DON'T... unless...

10) you have run out of dinner party horror stories, a horrendous house move will keep them riveted, and secretly thanking God that it isn't them.

Ah - what can I say? I've been there myself. Email with more information if virtual tea and sympathy from other Rat and Mouse readers might help.

A year-and-a-half ago the Independent took a trip to Kilburn High Road to look at an extraordinary house - a modern, architecturally uncompromising structure overlooking Kilburn Grange Park and on the market for £2 million. Okay, they said, the High Road's a tip, but the house - cedar-clad, flat-roofed, underfloor-heated, glass-walled - is a "gem". Read more (although not the original link, which has died) here. Or just don't bother, and instead head over to today's Independent, where you'll find a strikingly similar piece, which also calls the property a "gem", and points out it's currently on the market, this time with our friends at CityScope, and priced at £2.1 million. This time round, though, the emphasis is on the High Road... is it up-and-coming enough for such a serious investment? And has the house been bought and sold since it was last featured? Or is it just hanging around? Read it here.

More real estate stigma. The human remains factor [ThisIsLocalLondon]
LondonBuddies - the website for Australians who've lived in London [PRWeb]
Seven acre Covent Garden site development to include residental space [Herald Tribune]
Princess of sandals, hot-footing it to London, soon [Times]
Top designer calls London "filthy and lawless" [24dash.com]

The Rat and Mouse - it's about houses, and London

Nationwide ended 2005 with a 0-3% forecast. They've just - and despite last week's rate hike - raised that forecast to 5%. More here.

Relating to the second quarter of 2006, the headlines for London are: two-thirds of properties selling for £1 million sold in the capital; annual inflation was 8.3%; the number of sales rose by 26% (compared to the first quarter). The last two figures - based, as they are, on actual completions - are significant, and certainly confirm existing reports of a lively 2006 market. What effect will the recent interest rate hike have? Possibly not very much at all.

Penelope Cruz, planning to buy in Belsize Park, next year.

Jeweller Fiona Knapp shows the Daily Mail around her nice west London triplex, and things get personal:

Fiona's jewel-coloured underwear is housed in a 1960s Lucite and glass dressing table.

Good job it was a female journalist. Everybody wants to know this kind of detail, but coming from a male journo it could have seemed a little creepy. Me, I keep my "Foxtons, but no mini"-logo underpants in a similar piece of furniture. Read the whole article, and learn how to get the look, here.

There's an interesting piece, here, that I think ran first in the Wall Street Journal, about the effect of tabloid story stigmatisation of real estate. Apparently, if a celebrity dies in your house, it isn't a landmark, and it might even make your house hard to sell. The article goes on to lay out a kind of league of shame:

There are different degrees of stigma, of course. Appraisers and brokers say murder - in particular, multiple homicides and cult killings - is by far the toughest kind of notoriety to minimize. Suicides and hauntings come next, followed by illicit sex and celebrity infidelities. When bold-face names aren't involved, hanky-panky appears to have little impact. "If real-estate values were hurt for every house where the owners were unfaithful, we'd have a fire sale out here," says Steven Gaines of East Hampton, N.Y., author of 1999's "Philistines at the Hedgerow: Passion and Property in the Hamptons."

I was on the road - well, the train, actually - between here and Manchester yesterday when the news came through that, contrary to recent experiences, interest rates can actually move. The decision went against virtually all expectation and analysis, including political analysis of the new committee membership. In some way, it looks something like a warning shot... rates remain historically low, so there's little danger of any real harm being done, but the sound of it might just resonate enough to cool the over-heating markets. Here's what other people are saying:

It will curb spending [Times]
Hah! Told you so! {First Rung]
Housing market expected to slow [FT]
Borrowers should be wary of fixed rate deals [Reuters]
Why this is all good for the ftb [First Rung]

First Rung's coverage has been particularly interesting, which is why I've included two links. If you have time to read just one piece, make it the last one... which includes a forecast of further rises bringing rates up to perhaps 5.5%. How this squares with today's headline hysteria about insovency I don't know. It's in neither the borrowers' nor the lenders' best interests to force debtors beyond the scope of repaying a loan. And if First Rung is right, and ftbs will profit from special deals in the short term, what happens when the deals run out? Will First Rung then be calling for rate cuts, before the market topples and those very same ftbs find themselves, three or five years down the line, dealing with negative equity?

Rams Brewery sale - details finally out [Reuters]
The dog's basements - lower ground, upper class [Telegraph]
One-in-ten Londoners leave front door unlocked [Money News]
Pre-Excel Property Investor Show tips for would be property barons [City Wire]

The Rat and Mouse - sniffing the property market

Friday morning linkage - HIPs and endowments, expensive cock-ups [July 28]

Prices in the Notting Hill neighbourhood rose by an astonishing 3.7% in July, according to Knight Frank's latest Prime Central London (apartments priced at £1.5 million and up; houses priced at £3 million and up; all situated in seven swanky postcodes) survey. It's the 19th consecutive month of PCL gains... and Knight Frank explain July's extraordinary rise on Middle Eastern money, swelled thanks to high oil prices.

There's little doubt about it, video ads are the way of the future when it comes to property marketing. The latest specialist to join the market is Real Property Tours, who will shoot your "PodAd" for between £200 and £600, depending on the size of the property and the ambition of the film (there are examples on the website). The result will play on websites, iPods and 3G phones, in emails and show in estate agency windows.

Australian estate agents couldn't give a XXXX for old-fashioned particulars [April 19]
Rat and Mouse trendspotter - video viewings [April 11]
Play that funky music [March 14]

News reaches us of a nifty new feature over at the property search page/Googlemaps mashup site OnOneMap. They've partnered up with HousePriceReports (the latest website to repackage Land Registry completion details) to offer actual factual local selling prices alongside homes for sale. Useful.

Or at least, that's what Simon Osborne, Managing Director of Residential Moves at specialist removals firm Cadogan Tate, says. And, let's face it, he'd know:

"Relocations that used to require three vehicles now require five – for homes of the same size!"

According to Osborne, minimalism - at least in the prime sector - is truly a thing of the past:

"Home owners are now displaying items that represent their families and people are rediscovering collecting! They are also pulling decorative items out of our storage facilities and back into their living rooms. Minimalism sacrificed luxury for style. Maximalism means not compromising one for the other."

See how he does that?! Maximalism He's even invented a new word. We'll forgive him that lapse in taste for the intriguing story, and the very interesting facts and figures that accompany it. For instance, the typical sofa has grown in depth, since 1978, from 50cm to 65cm. I bet you didn't know that.

Go visit the Telegraph for the extraordinary story of Christopher Howe's Belgravia box... a tortoise called Joey and an outside toilet.

News just in that architect Cezary M Bednarski has secured planning permission to build two house - one on top of the other - in the Colville Conservation Area of Notting Hill Gate. The site's at the corner of Westbourne Park Road and Basing Street. Interestingly, Bednarski plans to move from his current Oxford Gardens home, to occupy the upper building. The lower 3-bedroom home will be for sale.

Wembley redevelopers Quintain have kicked off their campaign to turn Arena Square in London's equivalent of LA's Grauman's Chinese Theatre, by unveiling Madonna's handprints at their Square Of Fame. They hope Madonna's handprints will represent "a major attraction for visitors to London".

One of the few drawbacks of this flat is the dust that comes in through the window from industrial sites. I have to wipe down the kitchen three times a day... Because it is a factory building, it doesn't work that well for heating or ventilation. There is a huge ceiling window in the living room, which at this time of year allows in too much heat. In the winter it can be freezing... I have two huge freezers stuffed with dead animals in my studio, everything from mice and small birds to rats and foxes. Also I have taken up most of the deep freeze in the kitchen with my animals.

Taxidermist and artist Polly Morgan striking out on an original approach to writing particulars. Actually, her east London ex-factory home sounds fascinating, and the whole piece, in the Independent, is a sad story of what's going to go, to make way for the Olympics.

Jan Hatzius, economist at Goldman Sachs, said: "The risk is rising that nominal US home prices may be headed for an outright decline in 2007. It would be the first decline in national home prices ever recorded, at least in nominal terms."

More comment, via BlackEnterprise.com, here.

Today's report is about a 0.8% rise for July, bringing the annual increase to 5.9%, and no doubt fueling more fears of an interest rate rise (although there seems little concern about one coming this Thursday). Whether July's gain was all about London (as was the case with yesterday's Hometrack report) isn't clear, since Nationwide didn't differentiate the regions. Click here to download the actual pdf. Meanwhile, Bank of England figures are showing record highs for mortgage approvals in June. The Independent makes the point that increased borrowing usually means increased purchasing a few months later, and so predicts an ever-heating property market running right into Autumn.