Actually, it's Little Green Street in Kentish Town - a 300-year-old cobbled street, home to 24 adults and children and - if developers get their way - a gated community of 20 three-storey houses, ten apartments and underground parking. The Kinks' Dave Davies has signed a petition urging the council to refuse permission to drive heavy-duty vehicles down the little cobbled road. Little Green Street can be seen below - in the video to the Kinks' Dead End Street. Other celebrity campaigners are said to include Bill Nighy, Tom Conti and Ken Loach.
It's to be built on Doon Street, by the Coin Street Community Builders - a remarkable social enterprise group set up by local residents in the 1970s in order to buy much of the Coin Street district and save it from a planned blanket coverage by office space. The CSCB's mixed use happy ending now includes the Oxo Tower and Gabriel's Wharf. The new tower (designed by Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands) will rise 472 ft, and will - as well as office, educational space and possibly a new home for the Rambert Dance Company - include 329 residential apartments. It's not, however, without controversy. It's been criticised by English National Heritage for potentially ruining views from the St James' Park and Somerset House, and for looming over the South Bank arts buildings.
Monthly inflation is up, to 0.6% from last month's rise of just 0.1%. However, the annual figure has dropped slightly, from 9.9% to 9.6%... resulting in some confusion:
An ingenious post by Seattle-based bubble-blogger capturing a radio phone-in caller is scared of her husband returning home: "I actually had to leave with our kids because he was actually breaking things". Dr Laura asks if he was smashed. No. He doesn't drink. It's all about a house they bought, but couldn't really afford and, well, she kind of pressured him into it... a sorry tale. Read - actually, hear it - here.
Land registry statistics for July just released. The headlines proclaims slow growth but that belies the fact that prime SW is on fire, for example Chelsea is up 2.8 for the July (30.9% for year) and Fulham is up 2.2 (23.5% for the year). Westminster and Islington are also up by 2.3% (21.6%) and 1.9 (23.7%) respectively.
My personal theory is that hedge funders and rich foreigners are buying up K&C property driving bankers and rich Brits to buy in Fulham, Islington and Westminster as they can no longer stomach the prices paid in Kensington and Chelsea.
Those slow growth headlines: a 0.1% rise nationally (the lowest monthly growth in 13 months), leaving an annual inflation figure of 8.8%. In London, those numbers are 1% and 10.5%.
... now, according to the Telegraph, you don't. The issue is foreign buyers, picking up pukka properties and then holding onto them... slipping them into giant portfolios because... well... they can. It's tax effective, and their kids love a London playground. The paper also seems to have the scoop on the latest Knight Frank Prime Central London Index movement which, they say, will show an annual (July-to-July) inflation rate of 36.4% (the highest since 1979).
In an extraordinary Observer piece, a spokesman for an equity release firm appears to be advising people to get the cash out of their properties while they still can:
'Although we normally advise people to consider equity release once they reach retirement, if prices fall here it will restrict the amount they can release. So they should consider bringing forward that decision,' he says. 'I'm already finding that surveyors are valuing houses for less than people are expecting.'
He goes on to suggest he's expecting a 30% crash in prices and dark days ahead... which in itself signals a return to the dark days of 2005/2006, when a commentator could guarantee column inches by forecasting a crash of 30%.
According to this in the Telegraph, pricey West End commercial rents are proving too much for the estate agents. Savills might be considering downsizing in the Berkeley Square area, DTZ might be going, Knight Frank will be leaving Hanover Square in January. The culprits?
While hedge funds only take small spaces - up to 15,000 sq ft - the prices they pay drive up rents for other residents. As a result, agents have found themselves victims of their own success.
Two weeks ago, the 75 homeowners of Union Wharf, a trendy-looking block a stone's throw from Hoxton, N1, woke up to open an innocuous-looking letter from Hackney council.
Here's a very interesting piece in the Guardian. The letter apparently gave them 28 days to either apply for residential planning consent or clear orf. Nor is this a rare case. According to the piece, the council has sent 600 such letters, and has even filled a new council post - live/work Nazi - dedicated to tracking down and harassing people living, but not working, in live/work properties. The Rat and Mouse hadn't been aware of the obligations that came with these properties. Apparently - since the apartments are located in "employment land" - owners need to pay business rates, and capital gains tax when they move on. The result is an extraordinary reversal of every property priority readers will associate with our overcrowded, under-accomodated city: Londoners turfed from their homes to protect "employment land".
Yesterday's Hometrack figures showed a drop in the annual rate of house price inflation from 5.9% (July) to 5.4% (August). The monthly figures left London, alone, showing a rise in prices (0.1%). More here.
According to the National Housing Federation, and in the face of rising interest rates, slowing house prices in London and a market meltdown which is sure to hit City bonuses, the average UK house will rise by 40% in value in the next five years. In London, the average price of a home will be half a million pounds. The organisation is calling on the Government to put some money where Gordon Brown's mouth is, and act on social housing for key workers, before a crisis turns into a catastrophe.
It's been an accident waiting to happen for some time... the steady growth, improvement and influence of free-and-easy, Web2.0 online estate agents and their worsening relationship with the sole-agency agreement-loving high street agents. At some point, there was going to be either a big rumpus, with property bloggers standing around shouting "Fight! Fight! Fight!", or (preferably) a big fight, with property bloggers standing around shouting "Rumpus! Rumpus! Rumpus!". Clearly riled by recent comments made by Spicer Haart's Paul Smith, Brightsale (generally regarded as some of the property business's Web2.0 good guys) are doing the only sensible thing and - after seeing some of their own clients penalised by high street agents for signing up online - attempting to bring matters to a head. They've written to the Office for Fair Trading, demanding they look again into the issue of fair competition in estate agenting, making some specific recommendations, including "cooling off" periods for disappointed homesellers. Here's Brightsale's Andy Etches:
“For such a senior figure in the estate agency profession [Smith, above] to call for contracts which prevent the use of online agents is regressive to the development of competition and to the evolution of estate agency in this country. ‘Sole selling rights’ contracts are iniquitous and clearly not in the interests of consumers. We don’t see how any contract which allows an estate agent to claim a fee even when a home owner sells his property to his neighbour following a private chat over a garden fence can possibly be defended as fair to consumers.”
It's called IdealHome.tv, and it cleverly turns you existing particulars (floorplan, photos etc) into something that looks kind of like a movie. There are three options. A standard movie costs £99, and will give you two minutes of panning and transitions through 15 photographs, plus subtitles. Two hundred and fifty pounds buys the plus movie, adding script, voiceover and music. Add another £100 for the premier service, and your estate agent's looking at a branded player, floor plans, scene selection, maps and a rub-down with finely fragranced oils. It's an interesting technology. Whether it sells houses, I don't know... but it certainly gives the impression of movie-particulars (all externals shot on a very still day) without the crew turning up. There are examples on the website. See what you think.
As promised, I'll be dropping in a few choice properties that didn't make it into the Rat and Mouse's special ten days of property porn. This morning, a £9m, 3-bedroom (yes - those numbers are correct) house in The Vale between Fulham Road and the Kings Road, which I received by email (the particulars, not the house) just after leaving for my vacation. It's described as a studio house. I'm not entirely sure what that means. It's also described as spectacular. What do you think? Particulars, here.
So, first home condition reports were dropped because buyers/lenders couldn't trust the results... and a watered down HIP (energy performance certificate - search - evidence of title) came into force for vendors of homes of four or more bedrooms, supposedly speeding up the process and making life easier for buyers. Last night it emerged that the search might not be up to snuff either. Apparently, the personal (rather than full) search included in the packs is too unreliable to satisfy some lenders. Mortgage companies and (surprise, surprise) solicitors are advising clients to pay for a full local authority search. The upshot is that some buyers will be paying for both (a full search on the property they're buying, a flawed HIP on the property they're selling) and everybody involved in the transaction will still have to wait for the full search to be completed. So - for up to £500 - a HIP is now a piece of paper which (if you're lucky) will tell you how many energy efficient lightbulbs are in the house, and evidence of title. Bargain.
It's purely theoretical for now, but it's nice to dream. The X-Seed 4000 is a 13,123 ft (4 kilometre) tall skyscraper with a 6 square kilometre footprint, with room for half a million to a million residents. It's based on Mt Fuji, and designed for Tokyo by the Taisei Corporation, the same company who built Japan's first subway in 1927, and who are currently tunneling under the Bosphorus to link the European and Asian sides of Istanbul.
In an echo of the troubles gripping the US sub-prime lending sector, a Persimmon development in Thamesmead appears to be at the centre of a major mortgage fraud in London. According to this in the Times, four major lenders have lost money in a scam involving a property development company called Atrex, who appear to have either bought off-plan at a discount, created false identities and obtained mortgages at inflated prices, creating an immediate profit, or provided inflated valuations to genuine buyers. It's not entirely clear from the piece. But in either case, a series of defaults has revealed the price inflation, leaving lenders out-of-pocket. On its own, it won't bring down the UK sub-prime sector. As a taste of what's going on elsewhere, it's worrying.
a real estate broker named Becky Fatemi eases into her black Porsche Cayenne and heads for Connaught Square..." Now that's the way to start a London property story. It's an interesting Bloomberg tour of the London market, mostly - we're guessing - aimed at Americans (it explains phrases such as gazump, buy-to-let). But it's worth reading by anyone for its intimate look at Foxtons. Did you know this?
From his perch in Chiswick Park, manager Jean Jameson, a 37-year-old from South Africa in a gray suit and pink tie, plays a Foxtons version of Big Brother. He can peer into Foxtons offices across London via video camera to check up on brokers and see who's available for assignments.
Knight Frank's Prime Central London Index (July edition) saw a rise of 3.9%, the highest monthly growth since the Index began in 1976, leaving the annual figure at 36.4%, the highest (again) since '76. In the accompanying report, Knight Frank's Liam Bailey focusses on foreign ownership at the very top of the London market to explain supply constraint and increased demand. Foreign buyers are also, apparently, holding onto properties for longer.
Rightmove reports this morning... and, although the national trend is still up (0.6% for August, 12.8% on the year), the London market has dropped slightly (0.1%) in August. What does it mean? Past experience suggests it's probably too early to say. Rightmove's comment piece suggests that Miles Shipside sees the data as proper evidence that "we have now genuinely reached the limit of buyers' ability to afford higher prices in current market conditions". It's difficult to disagree. Click here to read the original PDF.
... from a very relaxing and enjoyable vacation, thanks to all (two) of you who asked. Hope you enjoyed the ten days of properties. Sorry if you tipped a place and I didn't feature it. I intend to slot a few more properties in during the coming weeks.
So what happened while I was away? Did I miss much? A few people emailed to say there was some kind of stock market turbulence related to irresponsible mortgage lending, but I think it's just an attempted wind-up. I don't believe a word of it.
A Grade 2-listed, five bedroom home on Firs Avenue, with a clever arrangement around a central garden with silver birch trees, an indoor swimming pool hidden beneath a removable floor, an emphasis on natural light. It's with Foxtons, at £2.95m, and you'll find lots of photos here. By the way - this one isn't courtesy of Rat and Mouse readers. This one's my choice.
Thanks to the Rat and Mouse reader with expensive tastes who sent us this. Old Swan House, at 32 Chelsea Embankment, is a £32m mansion, 19,000 sq ft and Grade 1-listed. You can tell it's the real deal because its staff bedrooms outnumber the guest bedrooms, adding up to 20. The dining room seats 20, there's a swimming pool, lift, ballroom, cinema and underground parking for five cars. Particulars, here.
I have friends in New York and, like Londoners, they like to talk apartments. But when it comes to property in our capital city, they just don't get it. A two-bedroom, one reception room, single floor home without a garden for... £1.85m. How does that happen? It's all about the quest for the original, the quest for character in a city packed with hidden gems. Lantern House is in Elvaston Mews, one of the last in London with an actual working stable. It's close to Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. There's nothing else like it. Particulars, here.
Pretty name, pretty house, colossal price tag. Vine and Bell Cottage is a 17th Century five-bedroom home on the corner of Fulham's Winchendon Road, and if it looks like a country cottage that's because it was a country cottage. Back in the day, this was countryside... an out of town residence for loaded Londoners. It comes with off-street parking for several cars, which, in this neighbourhood, is worth a mention. It's listed - clutch something sturdy - at £4m, with Lane Fox, here.
Tomorrow... a mews with a working stable.
Welcome back. One more week of interesting London properties suggested by Rat and Mouse readers.
Two bedrooms, one bathroom, in a converted mews house in Cricklewood, housing two further apartments. We like the way the conversion has retained so many original features. You get exposed brickwork, oak floors, original Victorian radiators, loading doors, vaulted timber ceilings, It's not a neighbourhood I know well... comments welcome (although they might take longer to appear than normal since I'm on vacation right now). Oakland Mews is listed at £549,950, with Urban Spaces, here.
Tomorrow... a country cottage... in London.
We can't comment on the area (Brunel Road)... other than rumours it can get a bit noisy down there. The Sausage Factory - submitted by a Rat and Mouse reader - looks stunning, even more so with a list price of £585,000. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, three levels, a balcony and large roof terrace. And lots of glass... if that's your thing. For particulars, go to CityScope (we can't find a direct link).
A 2/3 bedroom conversion in The Paragon - a Victorian school conversion on Searles Road, off the New Kent Road. This is a ground floor apartment, but with double-height ceilings and an unusual layout, plus distinctive design features. The Rat and Mouse reader who sent this in drew out attention to the oak staircase and glass banister. Well spotted. Looks like a cool home office at the top. It's with Urban Spaces, listed at £795,000, here.
Tomorrow... a sausage factory.
But you'll have to be prepared to spend £3.35m. This four-bedroom home in Bark Place comes with a mews house and garage at the bottom of the garden. Plus conservatory, proper wine cellar and planning permission to extend. Full details here.
Tomorrow... a Victorian school conversion.
Contemporary design and views across London, for £325,000... a top-floor two-bedroom apartment with modern styling, a 23x22ft living room and the opportunity for off-street parking. It's in a gated development, Chartwell Court, in NW2. Particulars here.
Tomorrow... buy one house, get one free.
Kicking the series off... a bright and arresting, love-it-or-hate-it three-bedroom modern townhouse on Kensington's Abingdon Road off Kensington High Street, with off-street parking, a huge reception room, conservatory, garden and innovative design. £3.9m, here Tomorrow, a budget penthouse.
So, I'm on holiday. It happens occasionally. Last year, as an experiment, I threw the blog open to readers - civilians and estate agents - and encouraged you to send in links to interesting London properties. Not necessarily expensive properties, but interesting ones. The experiment was a success... data (and feedback) suggested readers enjoyed it. So - a week or so ago - I started inviting readers to submit listings to appear on the blog during my 2007 summer break. So here we go - ten days of properties. All interesting... this year, mostly expensive, which says something about the London market. If you're an agent and you're not happy seeing your photographs on the Rat and Mouse, drop me a line here and I'll remove them. (It may take a day or two, because I won't have broadband on holiday.)
It's the story leading on BBC TV news... CML figures show repossessions in the first six months of 2007 up by 30% on the same time last year. But the reality is more complex. The CML has changed the way it counts repossessions, taking greater account of sub-prime lenders... which, I guess, tallies with the other figure, that the number of mortgages in arrears has dropped by 3% across the same period. More here.
Buyers in the capital would rather pay 63 per cent more, the equivalent of almost £200,000 in real terms, to live in an Edwardian house than settle for something built between the wars.
But that's not because of the build-era, that's because 1930s homes tend to be found further out of the city, in the suburbs. Susan Emmett is spot-on, though, to point out the advantages of a typical 1930s semi... space, a functional layout, a good build quality. Read it here.
[image of 1930s semis in Friary Road, Acton, by David Hawgood, here]
These guys seem to be little more than box-tickers. And unfortunately they haven't even managed to tick the right boxes.
The Rat and Mouse has already expressed a littlecynicism about the quality and competence of those moving into the EPC assessment racket. But I don't know how we could have missed this fascinating exposé in the Sunday Telegraph... the result of a (truly) hapless energy inspector visiting the home of columnist Jeff Howell. Howell had recently spent £30,000 upgrading the energy efficiency of his home, including underfloor heating, hemp plastering and proper insulation. Two out of two inspectors failed to notice the insulation...giving the property an extremely low rating, and over-estimating its energy consumption by 75%. According to the Government:
EPCs are a comprehensive assessment of the energy efficiency of a home.
According to one of the inspectors, when challenged:
The general message recently has been that the market's coming off the boil. No bad thing, either. However, today's Halifax figures are like a return to 2006... house prices up 0.7% in July, the annual three-month rate up 11.2% (from 10.7%). Not even Halifax are taking this too seriously:
"We expect the downward trend in house price growth to continue as the five interest rate rises since last summer have an increasing impact on household spending and housing demand." [Martin Ellis, Halifax]
I'm not sure the Rat and Mouse has written about PropertySnake before, which is pretty criminal since it's one of the property web's more interesting addresses. Want to know which listings are dropping in price? PropertySnake's the place to go. For now, anyway. They've just been constricted by the portals:
Unfortunately in recent weeks, several owners of property portal websites that we have previously linked to have requested that we remove their listings from our site for copyright reasons. We have of course complied with their requests when asked, but we were disappointed in their decisions as we had previously felt that they would be more than happy to receive the free leads from the traffic we were driving to their sites. Instead, we have replaced all the listings with a new batch which can be seen on the site today. Unfortunately we are unable to provide direct links or photographs anymore.
Hmm. Wonder where the new listings are from? Anyway, it's still a good browse... and recommended.
