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Entries in March 2007
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More in this Category - Linkage
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Here's an interesting new site. UmYup (the FAQ is unfortunately missing an entry about their name) is a social network for people thinking about moving. If you're a homeowner, you sign up, share some (anonymous) information about your home, register interest in anybody else's that might suit your moving needs, and sit patiently while a waiting list of potential buyers register interest in your house. Interestingly, if it's a second home you're thinking of offloading, UmYup doesn't want you:
UmYup users are both buyers and sellers - they are looking to move house from one place to another. This need is shared by all UmYup users and it means that everyone is in a similar position. If you wan to sell your second property (and therefore you will not be looking to move home as a result) then UmYup is not for you yet.
That makes sense.
The basic service is free. But there are limits to what you can do... you can't view "extended" details, make contact with other users using the secure system or store more than one search. The "advanced" services cost £14.99 for six months, £24.99 for 12 months.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate, Web2, web2.0
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The International Herald Tribune turns its attention to the (always, we thought) competitive market for historic homes, and writes about a Mayfair house formerly belonging to America's second president (and the first to eventually occupy the White House), John Adams, when he was spoiling us as ambassador. There's a brief chat with developer Ben Carson, about how he's protecting the period features while installing Lutron lighting, electric curtains, under-floor heating and connected up audio-visual systems. Clearly, nobody's going to find a rough draft of A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States under these floorboards. I believe the house is 9 Grosvenor Square. If you're as nerdy as I am and want to read some fascinating detailed history of the building - its former owners, and even how much rent they paid - have a look at this.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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More in this Category - Design
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 Did anybody else catch So London, during its short life? The Rat and Mouse was approached by the magazine shortly before launch, and was involved in a discussion about possibly supplying property news... now we hear that - after only three issues (surely some kind of a record) - the magazine's been pulled.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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More in this Category - Linkage
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Now here's a strange one. Remember when we heard that Bowater House was being replaced by this super-luxury block, overlooking Hyde Park and topped by penthouses so fine the super-rich were going to be asked cage-fight just for viewings? The talk, then, was of penthouses reaching £20 million. But soon, the talk was of offers of £84 million. Then, news emerged the development was receiving funding from Sheikh Hamad. Well, the latest is that one penthouse has broken all records for an apartment sale anywhere in the world and has been picked up for no less than £100 million. Who's the proud new owner? It's Sheikh Hamad, who appears to have guaranteed himself a record-breaking profit by buying the apartment himself. Man, I bet those negotiations were weird. Did he hire two lawyers? Or did Candy & Candy hire an entire army of them? Anybody out there have any idea of how the financing worked on this?
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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Hot on the heels of yesterday's comments by Hampton's comes Cluttons with a slightly different view of the market. Yes, London's seeing record level rental value growth. But no - it's not about demand... it's about landlord expectations. The basic numbers are: rents up 13.8% in the 12 months to March 2007, the first time in 20 years that number's crept into the double figures. Supply is a little low - but then, according to Clutton's - so is demand.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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 If you're any way near as sad as me, you'll have on thing and one thing only on your mind today: The Apprentice. First, let's get the property porn out of the way. This year, they're shacking up in Notting Hill, in a £12 million townhouse close to Kensington Gardens. According to a nice piece in the Evening Standard, the BBC is being fleeced £6,000 a week to rent the property and replace the antique decor with something more suited to a bunch of reality TV tarts with 3rd class degrees in business science, full marketing and middle-management babble vocabularies and lifetimes spent aspiring to more expensive cufflinks. Sadly, there's no property developer or estate agent to root for this year. There is, however, an entrepreneur with a proven track record in bankruptcy, not one but two car salesmen, and an impressively overqualified quantum physicist who's pissed off with herself for not inventing the iPod. Yeah! Stupid!
Technorati Tags: the apprentice
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Here's the story of Eli Jansen Van Vuuren - winner of Lorraine Kelly and Jerry Hall's Top Model contest. She's still to take to the catwalk, and she's already setting up her interior design business.
Technorati Tags: interiors
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According to Hamptons International, there's such demand for rentals in London that one-bedroom flats are being let within hours, there's bidding among potential tenants, and rents have increased across the capital by 18%. The drivers? A glut of first-time buyers unable to get on the ladder and corporate tenants being relocated to London.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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Supporting Mervyn King's comments yesterday, Nationwide reports a tiny average house price rise of 0.4% in March. The annual rate dropped to 9.3%, down almost a percentage point on the February-to-February figure. More comment here.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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This Is London reports on new figures by the British Bankers' Association that show the average home loan taken out by a first-time buyer has passed the £150,000 mark for the very first time. That leaves someone on an average UK salary paying 70% of their income to fund their mortgage. In June 2003, the figure was £100,000. In March 1994, it was just £50,000.
UPDATE - Interestingly, Mervyn King's take on the new BBA figures emphasised something different. He was talking to a parliamentary committee yesterday, pointing out that new mortgage approvals were at their lowest level since July 2005 - and claiming that three interest rate rises were at last slowing the property market down. More here.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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She's jewellery designer to the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Kylie Minogue, she likes fairies, crystals programmed by Buddhists, things from Java, and she is environmentally-friendly enough to not fill up the bath, even though:
I have a day-bed in the sitting-room that I got shipped over from Bali - it actually cost more to ship than it did to buy... My friends and I like to chill out on it, listening to music.
The Independent visits.
Technorati Tags: celebrity, London, property, real estate
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More in this Category - Linkage
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Go to Building Design (subscription might be necessary, but it's free) to enter their match the waffle to the architect competition. Five architects, five passages of "pretensious [sic] twaddle, impenetrable jargon, grammatically-challenged drivel" - match them up to stand a chance of winning a £15 iTunes token. Our favourite?
Growth-simulation processes have been used to develop spatial representations into a set of basic geometries and then superimposed with programmatic diagrams into a series of repeated cycles.
Great stuff. I've entered. And so should you. (Of course, only if you know the answers.)
Technorati Tags: design, architecture
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More in this Category - Linkage
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According to PropertyFinder, it's tripled in a decade to a stupid average of £9,500. The breakdown:
£5,009 - Stamp Duty
£3,027 - estate agency fees
£1,000 - legal fees
£450 - removal costs
 The biggest increase since 1996 is apparently Stamp Duty, which has risen a criminal 825% from £543. Now, look at the way other figures have increased in the decade. Estate agency fees have risen by 141%. Okay, it's a lot, but it kind of reflects house price movement. It's directly geared and - although some of you are going to want to argue with me for suggesting this - in the vast majority of instances, and especially if you choose carefully, you're getting something for your money. Removal fees have risen 20% since 1996, and still strike me as good value. Think properly - for a moment - about the overheads and risks involved in the business, and you'll be amazed they can make a profit for twice that. Legal fees have risen by 17%... they started expensive and remain expensive... conveyancing is a job shrouded in unnecessary voodoo and tends to attract the bottom rung. A well-trained chipmunk could have out-performed my last London solicitor. But it's still a minor irritation compared to the 825% increase in Stamp Duty... that's come from a Chancellor who claims to care about homeowners and first-time buyers. It's a crippling, brutal tax levied by a faux-Socialist grace-and-favour Government.
Surely it's time to call MPs to account [May 8, 2006]
Blunkett's South Eaton Place days numbered? [March 10, 2006]
Government's freebie housing round-up [May 9, 2005]
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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Is this, courtesy of the Sunday Telegraph, perhaps the pick of the weekend's property-related news? The mortgage is for £200,000, the repayments are £958 a month, and he sees the property as a little nest egg that should pay off nicely when he's 127.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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The Sunday Times has got its hands on planning documents lodged with Westminster Council that outline the Blairs' plans for their Connaught Street home. Apparently, they can look forward to enjoying a rooftop sun terrace (with four solar panels and views towards Hyde Park) and a giant ground floor kitchen. The plans also include details of how they intend to knock the main house and the mews house into one, and locations for two new CCTV cameras. More here.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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Lord Patten - Margaret Thatcher's housing minister - is, according to the Independent on Sunday, harassing ministers to force the closure of the homeless people's soup kitchens inconveniently close to his Ashley Gardens flat.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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March has - apparently - seen the single largest increase in London house prices in four years, with the average property gaining 1.8% in the month. Eighty per cent of London postcodes saw a rise... and the rate of increase is picking up particularly quickly in the 'burbs, where a shortage of family homes is creating intense competition. Sutton saw a 3.5% rise in March, Merton 3%, Brent 2.4%. Nationally, prices rose 0.8% (but remember, that's a mean figure, taking into account London's dramatic market).
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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It's about time for a little linkback... thanks to some of the websites and blogs that have sent readers to the Rat and Mouse recently... (and if I've missed you out, let me know):
The Guardian
Darnell International
City Slicker
Curbed LA
Renthusiast
Metroblogging London
Orioren.com
Gold and Finance
Jonas Superblog (although I've absolutely no idea what this means)
Page 132
The Konsortium
Curbed
WorkinProperty
Elemental
Luxist
Londonist
Celebrity.LoveToKnow.com
Bloggerheads
Thanks!
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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More in this Category - Linkage
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It's an old Daily Express blog post... it's been around since March 5... and in all that time nobody's commented (despite its purposefully inflammatory nature), nor has anybody sent it to the Rat and Mouse. So perhaps it's worth a link:
... I'm fed up of whingeing would-be first-time buyers complaining about property prices... these prospective purchasers don't want to borrow, they don't want to save and they don't want to spend. They do want spacious homes in trendy areas near to where they work. They want to live in Notting Hill, in London, or Chorlton-cum-Hardy in Manchester. They want to live in the centre of Bath or in a penthouse along the newly-refurbished canals in Bristol. They want, they want. But lets get real here...
Mmm, attractive.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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According to research by mortgage comparison site Mform, there will be 400,000 "cash purchases" of UK homes in the first half of this year... that's 13%. The figure appears to be the result of older homeowners taking advantage of the current market by downsizing and paying off the mortgage and/or walking away equity. More here.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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Henry Pryor - head property honcho behind PrimeMove - has a question:
In his budget, the Chancellor announced that until 2012 all new zero carbon homes up to half a million pounds will be exempt from stamp duty”. Does anyone know how many of these properties currently exist?
Something tells me he's a little sceptical.
UPDATE: HENRY, HAVE YOU SEEN THIS?
A semi-detached house in St Albans, Hertfordshire, has been billed as Britain's greenest house, with wind turbine, a roof covered with grass-like plants to keep heat in, and other environmentally friendly measures. However, even this £140,000 project has not made claims to being a zero-carbon property.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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The Daily Mail thinks so, pointing to evidence in the mortgage market... a sudden flood of attractive fixed-rate deals, off the back of market expectations that rates will peak at 5.5%. More here.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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The swelling ranks of struggling, failing first-time buyers could be among the swelling ranks of buy-to-let landlords profiting from the swelling ranks of struggling, failing first-time buyers, according to research by Mortgage Trust. More than a quarter of new investers with a single buy-to-let property are aged between 26 and 35. That's 16% of all buy-to-let landlords with up to three properties.
[via CityWire]
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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Sometimes the Telegraph can seem a little Thames Gateway-obsessed - but, you've got to hand it to them, they know how to do these redevelopment features. Here's Sheila Prophet with a very nice state-of-play piece, looking at Brent Cross Cricklewood, Paddington Basin, King's Cross, Elephant & Castle, Convoy's Wharf Deptford, Silvertown Quays, oh, okay, and Greenwich Peninsula. She also asks, "Should you invest?" Elephant & Caslte, King's Cross (above) and Silvertown (below) get something of a thumbs up.
Ah smell that? That's the smell of money, Mrs Turveydrop... [October 3, 2006]
Technorati Tags: design, London, property, real estate
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More in this Category - Linkage
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More in this Category - Linkage
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Apart from an exemption on purchases of zero-carbon homes up to £500,000 until 2012... is there anything else? Here's a HouseFund summary.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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It's 10 Park Street - pool, five bedrooms, an adjoining two-bedroom mews house and, oh yeah, use of the Rolls Royce Phantom thrown in. A Russian oligarch is apparently due to move in soon, but in the meantime, landlord Paul Davies doesn't think he's asking too much:
"We're close to a number of hotels and the top suites there are more much smaller than this and they sell for about £5,000 to £6,000 a day."
[via ITV News]
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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OneMove have announced they're making their gazumping insurance available to all house buyers in England and Wales. Previously it was available to registered OneMove customers only. Sixty-nine pounds and nine-ninety nine pence will buy cover for up to £1,500 expenses, including £750 conveyancing costs, £250 lender's fees and £500 survey costs, assuming a buyer registers within seven days of their offer being accepted. The situations in which the insurance will pay out include a property being withdrawn and a vendor accepting another offer at least £1,000 higher, plus a range of technical issues arising from a search or valuation. There's small print... but we haven't received it... and we don't know what the excess is, so - as always - we urge caution. But it might be worth a look. Especially in the current market.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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James Trollope, writing in the Telegraph, worries about neighbours, and admires a French system of neighbourly privacy in which closed shutters mean "do not disturb". The piece is open to comments, where you'll find, from one Telegraph reader, a particularly blunt approach to relations:
We moved into a bungalow in the late 90's and found from day 1 that the couple next door (in their late 60's) especially the husband wanted to be part of our life! Whenever we went to the garage he would always pop out of his house (sure he had a warning device) and interfere. It came to a head when we had building work done and I asked them not to speak to us again.
Rude? Or just firm?
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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A Rat and Mouse reader whom you might remember making an urgent appeal to the Rat and Mouse back in February has been back in touch this morning with news that she has finally - after working almost full time on the problem since her last communication - tracked down a photograph of a topless Phil Spencer for her chest hair fetish calendar. Is she in the least bit disappointed? It doesn't sound like it:
DAMN FINE MATTING! Mr November may have to be bumped to a summer month.
She sent me a copy of the photograph (Mr Spencer relaxing in a hot tub), but discretion and the fear of legal action prevent me from posting it.
Technorati Tags: celebrity
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There's a new feature... a "more like this" button, next to all listings. Click it - and through the magic of a secret search-voodoo formula - Nestoria reorganises your results, bringing properties with descriptions similar to your selected listing up to the top. We've tested it, and it's good.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate, web2.0
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One hundred and seventy-two signatures so far, and a deadline of May 20. (A word of explanation for our overseas readers: e-petitions are online petitions facilitated by the British Government and designed with a nice mixture of sharp and rounded corners giving an impression of faded Web2.0 cool. They're also more convenient than old-style petitions. Citizens can sign them in a moment; and the Government can delete them and forget about the whole thing just as soon as the deadline's past.)
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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More in this Category - Linkage
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The long expected crash in the housing market has begun... How I fantasise about reading that headline. I have, alas, come to accept that the only way I will see it in print is if I write it myself. I found it quite therapeutic actually. Might try it again. "The value of property is expected to fall by as much as 20 per cent over the next week." Mmm. Negative equity. Lovely negative equity....
Just copying and pasting that made me queasy. Nigel Farndale is sore because he dropped out of the London market to rent while he found a house with a bigger garden for his children, and while he was renting the market carried on without him. So... he's not sore because houses cost too much and first-time buyers can't get on the bottom rung. He's sore because houses cost too much and he doesn't own one anymore following a tactical error possibly (although this is pure conjecture) caused by an attempt to beat the market by renting through a crash. It's a good read, though... especially for the bizarre Evan Davis coincidence... that must have hurt.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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The Rat and Mouse is reaching out. From now on, some Mondays (not including Bank Holidays Mondays, Black Mondays, or Mondays when the sheer pressure of my other work means I simply haven't got it together) will feature an interview. And I'm delighted to be kicking off this series with Lockhart Steele - founder of New York's powerhouse property blog Curbed (currently in rapid-expansion mode and centrepiece of the Curbed Network) and editorial director for Gawker Media. Curbed is great, and if you've any interest whatsoever in the changing shape of Manhattan you should be reading it. Here's the interview:
Could you could give a little background about Curbed? When? Why? How? And what about that name?
 Curbed grew out of my personal blog, LockhartSteele.com, which I started in 2001. I ended up blogging a lot about the Lower East Side, the neighborhood in downtown Manhattan where I lived. As people in the neighborhood came to read the site, I figured it might be fun to broaden things a bit and try to tell the story of all the city's neighbourhoods. That's how Curbed came about.
No great story behind the name. I came up with it during a brainstorm session, and our tech genius Eliot Shepard told me it was the best of an otherwise pretty shitty list.
Was there a business plan behind the website right from the start? If so, how has it (and the nature of the site) changed since you launched it?
Well, I'd say I had the hope that if all went well with the site, it would generate some income down the road. But that wasn't the primary reason for doing it - I really thought it would be fun. I ran the site the entire first year without advertising, but a dear old friend of mine, Alexis Palmer, was a partner in Curbed from Day 1 for the day when advertisers came calling. That started to happen in the spring of 2005.
Besides adding ads to the site, not much has changed on Curbed New York, though we've expanded to Los Angeles and San Francisco, and added spinoff sites including Eater (restaurant news for NYC, LA, and, soon, San Francisco), and The Beach (a sort of combo Curbed-Eater for the Hamptons), plus a new NYC spinoff launching later this month.
Lock answers the tough ones, after the jump...
Technorati Tags: blogging, Curbed, New York, property, real estate, Web2, Web2.0
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Sub-prime in the UK [Market Watch]
British Gas to sell solar panels, customers get council tax deal [Reuters]
Why the Congestion Charge is encouraging one man to drive more [The First Post]
The catchment area lottery and house prices [FT]
That's us for this week. Go out and do something cool this weekend, and check back on Monday when we'll be kicking off the week with the first in a series of new Rat and Mouse interviews...
The Rat and Mouse - it's about your house
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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According to this, reported in the Gulf Times (but first printed in the Evening Standard), London home-buyers are gazumping themselves, in a new tactic known as super-gazumping:
The practice involves buyers topping their own offers after a sealed-bid auction to make sure they end up as the winners. The increased offer, which the agent is obliged to put to the vendor, is sometimes accompanied by a large sum of money to demonstrate the bidder means business.
The story is one of hysterical cash buyers, panicking that the longer they wait the more their cash is being devalued against a rampant property market. Suzanne Gary, of Ludlow Thompson, says the agency has 27 buyers chasing each available property. But the Rat and Mouse award for the most elegant comment on super-gazumping goes to Douglas & Gordon, Chelsea's Ed Mead:
It is the opposite of buyer's remorse.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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The Guardian compares house prices increases in privileged commuter belt Gerrards Cross and under-privileged derelict belt Ferguslie Park (Paisley, Scotland) and discovers house prices have risen quicker in Gerrards Cross. Probably something to do with there being more demand... I don't know...
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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A court in Reading has been audience to the incredible story of Jean-Pierre Verard, a real-life Frank Abagnale, who conned his way into expensive homes in Richmond and Kew by arriving in a rented Porsche Cayenne and posing as a location photographer for the movie business, TV and advertising. Homeowners - presumably not satisfied by the fact they got to live in multi-million pound homes and attracted by the idea of showing lots of other people that they lived in multi-million pound homes - let him in, and later found him rummaging through their wardrobes. Apparently, he even managed to convince an estate agent to give him keys to a £2.5m property, made an offer, had a spare set of keys made, withdrew his offer, and was caught inside the property some time later with a team of builders, discussing his plans for alterations.
[via Your Local Guardian]
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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More in this Category - Linkage
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According to the Daily Mirror, she's already received £50m in property, including the family's £18m Sussex estate and two Belgravia apartments totaling £19m. She doesn't get Chelsea, though.
Technorati Tags: celebrity, London, property, real estate
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... or her entourage:
"It's just so much easier to have all my clothes and my stylist next to me. Plus my nanny, my manager, my trainer. It's a whole team of people."
Tell me about it...
[via PR Inside]
Technorati Tags: celebrity, London, property, real estate
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According to the upmarket estate agency, the sector reached its highest annual growth rate last month in 28 years, leaving it 31% higher than in February 2006. What's a luxury house? Well, if you have to ask, darling... actually, it's defined by Knight Frank as a house worth more than £3m or an apartment worth more than £1.5m. More here.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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More in this Category - Linkage
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 The London Development Agency have just launched a database - aimed at property developers - listing all the Thames Gateway sites currently available, as part of its scheme to build 100,000 homes in the region. The database includes sites small and large, and details their planning stage and lists the property owners. The idea is apparently to draw foreign investors. If you fancy a nosey... the website's here
.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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A few questions:
Are you part of a family with more than two generations living under the same roof?
Would you like the opportunity to show others how your unique family works?
Have you ever wanted to experience a different way of life?
If so:
A Channel 4 documentary series looking at family life would love to hear from you.
CALL MELISSA ON
020 7013 4514
melissa.waterson@rdfmedia.com
In an accompanying email, Melissa writes: "The documentary is primarily about people learning from the way others lead their lives. It's an opportunity for families to open their doors and share their culture, way of life and family values."
If it's you... drop her a line.
3G families [June 13, 2006]
Technorati Tags: property TV
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There's a nice little tussle over at the BBC website between the Centre for Economic and Business Research's Jonathan Said and Chartered Financial Planner Jonathan Davis, who's described as "a spokesman for www.HousePriceCrash.co.uk". Said falls back on the old supply-and-demand argument (also, see comments here). Davis cites the 900,000 buy-to-let mortgages as evidence that demand is over-inflated and could very quickly transform into supply. Are landlords bailing? Not yet.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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According to a report by the Centre For Future Studies, commissioned by Alliance & Leicester, a combination of a growing traditional rental market and an increasing social acceptability will see buy-to-let grow by 40% over the next ten years. There's also be an increase (from 21%) in the number of landlords making the equivalent of the national wage from their holdings. More here.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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The National Institute for Economic and Social Research's Martin Weale is widely quoted in today's press calling for an interest rate rise to 8%. Now there seems to be some confusion concerning the 8% figure, and where it came from. In a press release, mailed to the Rat and Mouse, Weale is very quick to clarify:
Today I was reported as calling for interest rates to be raised to 8% p.a. to control booming house prices. This note sets out briefly my view on the housing market and the problems to which it gives rise.
1. High and rising house prices pose an economic problem because they discourage saving and impose a burden on young people and those not yet born. The effect is similar to a high level of government borrowing.
2. The fundamental causes of disequilibrium in the housing market are that housing is tax-favoured relative to other capital assets and that supply is growing only slowly. House-building rates are much lower than they were in the 1960s.
3. Interest rates would probably need to be very high and for a fairly long time, as they were around 1990, in order to have a marked effect on the housing market.
4. In any case the problem of rising house prices should be addressed by reviewing the tax treatment and addressing the supply side rather than through interest rate policy.
5. Furthermore and very obviously, the Bank of England is asked to set interest rates with reference to inflation and not with specific reference to house prices.
Martin Weale
Wonder how that happened, then?
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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In yesterday's trading:
Directors have bailed out of property website Rightmove (LSE: RMV.L - news) following the expiry of the terms of the lock-up agreement entered into when Rightmove floated in March 2006. Managing director of Rightmove.co.uk Nick McKittrick sold 479,562 shares at 480p each to bag £2.3m, leaving him with 900,000 shares. Ed Williams, group managing director, disposed of 300,000, also at 480p. He is around £1.44m richer, but still has 2.4m shares in the group. The pair were joined by commercial director Miles Shipside who sold 779,562 for a haul of over £3.7m, while finance Director Scott Marshall pocketed just under £100,000. Both sold at 480p.
Well if Shipside thinks he'll be able to purchase any meaningful chunk of the Rat and Mouse with that kind of chump change, he can forget it. Seriously, though. If you've shares in Rightmove... how 'ya feeling right now?
Rightmove - soared like an eagle [March 10, 2006]
Rightmove - making the right moves [July 6, 2006]
Technorati Tags: property, real estate, web2.0
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The number of potential buyers registering to view property apparently dropped to a two-year low, and the number of estate agents and surveyors reporting increases in home values outnumbered those reporting falls by the smallest figure since May. More here.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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And the headlines are... the annual rate of house price inflation rose to 10.9% in January, leaving the cost of the average UK house at £205,286, up 2.1% in the month. More here.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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Well, don't say the Rat and Mouse didn't warn you. This... from the Rat and Mouse, May 2006:
There's been some confusion about the £60,000 home... with some people believing that the figure represents a magic number for affordable housing. If it costs £60,000... hey, I'll have two. Just a reminder - the £60,000 is how much it costs to build. Which just could end up meaning happier developers, not happier ftbs.
And this... today, in the Daily Mail:
John Prescott's flagship scheme to build affordable homes for just £60,000 has been exposed as a sham after the first properties went on sale - for at least £175,000 each.
This is what John Prescott had said about the scheme:
By separating the cost of the land from the construction price, we have shown that it is possible to build a home that first-time buyers can afford.
It's possible. Or one could just squeeze a few tens of thousands of pounds of profit out of the whole experiment.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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More in this Category - Linkage
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More property porn from the property porn specialists at Forbes. See where Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Lakshmi Mittal, Paul Allen, Michael Dell and co. live... here. Actually, Buffett, with a net worth of $52 billion, still lives in the modest Omaha home he bought in 1958 for $31,500. I don't know why that makes me like him more. (The illustration is Dell's pad in Austin, Texas.)
Technorati Tags: celebrity, property, real estate
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According to this in the Guardian, Gumtree is claiming that it's seen a 38% rise in ads placed by homeowners looking to rent out a room. Of course, that could be due to growth at Gumtree (and it would be interesting to know how those figures stack up with other advertising on the site), but the Guardian puts it down to stretched finances and increasing interest rates, and quotes research by the website supporting their view.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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Paul Hawkins writes in the Times about the shooting of 15-year-old Billy Fox Cox, no more than a few hundred yards from "speciality bread shops and estate agents advertising million-pound houses". For Christ's sake, stop the madness, she demands:
The Fenwick estate may not be an attractive place to live, but Clapham is no Peckham.
Too right it's not. It has organic food merchants and an independent bookshop. It's young residents shouldn't be shot. The article might not have too many words of comfort if you're reading this from your home in Peckham. But if you're a Clapham resident, the message is clear. Don't panic. The value of your home is unlikely to be affected by a few dead teenagers.
At the corner of Clapham High Street and Lendal Terrace, graffiti reading “RIP Remer”, a reference to Billy, the third South London teenager to be shot and killed in the space of two weeks, remains, but the disturbing violence is unlikely to affect house prices in what remains a sought-after location.
We'd like to have read Hawkins tackle the issue of the graffiti itself... because we all know how graffiti can instantly negate the added value of a well-constructed side return with all relevant planning permission. But unfortunately the rest of the article is devoted to the attractions of living in Clapham if you're young a minted.
Posh Peckham [April 6, 2006]
More for your money in Bellenden Road [March 14, 2006]
Peckham in the sky with diamonds... [September 23, 2005]
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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More in this Category - Linkage
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In the three months to the end of February, HBOS's figures point to a 9.9% rise on the same period last year. More here.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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Remain the same... 4.25% 5.25%. [No time for a typo, was it? Thanks for the comments...]
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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More in this Category - Celebrity homes
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Properties coming on to the market are being snapped up within a matter of days, sometimes hours, and buyers are finding it increasingly difficult to secure their first choice of property.
That's Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward MD Lee Watts on the February market. The rest... the number of buyers per property is up 58% on February 2006, the number of properties for sale is down 39% on February 2006.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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More in this Category - Linkage
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Plans for every development in Dubai over the next 10 years put into a huge video by avid fans who seem to have a taste for late 90s techno music. One development has over 200 towers alone. Does it make you want to get in quick and buy everything you can now before these developments are built? Or is this a disneyesque nightmare of bland tower blocks, "fun" theme parks and traffic chaos?
Warning: 71 minutes of property porn. Very weird.
Thanks, Mark!
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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Because a lot of people still don't seem to know. This, from an interesting thread over at the Channel 4 4homes forum:
We have found that the estate agent often acts in the best interests of the buyer and themselves - rather than the seller (who is the one paying their wages).
No, no, no, no, no. The estate agent is always employed, acts for and is eventually paid by the vendor. And although it's much easier to direct frustrations directly at the agent, if they're doing their job their behaviour just reflects the wishes of the person whose property they're selling. Were they to start acting in anybody else's best interests... now that would be a problem.
Technorati Tags: estate agents, real estate agents
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There's a massive Louis Vuitton trunk in the hall beside the front door and next to it is a Chanel surfboard - I saw it in a shop in St Tropez and had to have it for the hall. As you walk up the stairs you pass a pink fluorescent light that spells out "bollocks" in curly writing.
Not exactly a "welcome!" mat, is it? Venture up the stairs to find an Acqua di Parma-themed bathroom, with celebrity photos and a celebrity guest book, a black bedroom with skull wallpaper and an Edward Hopper knock-off painted by a Thailand beach artist. Oh yeah, her interior design service is available here or here.
[via the Independent]
Technorati Tags: celebrity, design, interiors, London, property
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Figures from the Association of Residential Lettings Agents show how London landlords favour older properties that might need work, whereas outside of the capital, new-builds are the preferred route for buy-to-lets.
[via Real Estate TV]
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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More in this Category - Linkage
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Buying abroad, renting in Britain... apparently.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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More in this Category - _Other
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More in this Category - Linkage
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The magazine for leaseholders, now at Issue 32, and completely redesigned, apparently. Who knew? More here.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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Savills' Yolande Barnes' comments are being reported as a "soft-landing prediction"... but since when is a 7% national rise any kind of landing at all? She admits the figure doesn't take into account a rise in rates to 5.5%, but seems to dismiss the effects of another rate rise anyway. We can't work it out. Can you? Read it here.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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No, not a firm of solicitors, but John D Wood, Fulham estate agent Anne Sutry's appraisal of the current cut-throat market in a fascinating Sunday Telegraph piece. It describes a market so oversubscribed that gazumping's the equivalent of a handshake. Now, there are two new evils for buyers to contend with. Sealed bids have filtered down to the more modest end of the market. And this:
Once a house goes on to an estate agent's books its details are sent to a select band of serious registered buyers. The agent sets a date for the house to be viewed and each prospective buyer gets a 20- or 30-minute slot to see the property on that day. Then it's a free-for-all.
it's called a "private treaty", and it has the potential for ugliness. Sobering too is the description of Lane Fox, Chelsea's Lulu Egerton, a highly experienced agent often quoted by the Rat and Mouse, as she sold and bought her house. Bidding wildly above asking price, she ended up feeling "deranged" by the experience, and suggests all agents should move house once every five years so they can understand their clients better.
Technorati Tags: estate agents, London, property, real estate, real estate agents
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More in this Category - Linkage
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The FT reports on a new RICS survey showing (or at least, suggesting... RICS surveys are anecdotal in nature) tenant demand rising at its fastest in nine years. The theory is that household income's increasing enough for tenants to start to demand larger homes, but not enough to bridge the affordability gap between renting and buying. As an explanation, I'm not sure I buy that. Anyway, more here.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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For those with a taste for that kind of thing... Sunday March 4 is Midcentury.Modern day at Christison Hall, Dulwich College. Expect a mix of classic design by the likes of Eames, Jacobsen and Day from the last century and cutting edge offerings from some of today's up-and-coming names. But don't expect bargains. These days Midcentury.Modern is an event... complete with celebrity-spotting and hand-distressed trainers.
Technorati Tags: design, London
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It's on Great Cumberland Place, it's a Grade 2-listed house with ten bedrooms, four bathrooms, five reception rooms and a balcony, it needs complete renovation after being used as a clinic for a number of years, it's priced at £5.75m and... oh yeah... it shares a party wall with Madonna. Particulars here.
Technorati Tags: celebrity, London, property, real estate
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Radio 4 are trailing a new show - starting next Tuesday morning at 9 - about "the rise and rise of the home-owner and the growing influence of the property market on every aspect of life in Britain today". It's to be hosted by Evan Davis. More here.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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