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Entries in March 2008
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More in this Category - Linkage
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This time, it's Hometrack, reporting a 0.2% fall for March, leaving the annual rate of house price inflation, March-to-March, at just 0.4%. More here.
Market report - Nationwide, tide continues to turn [March 28, 2008]
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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A message from ITV1:
Have you developed with the intention of adding value to your property? This could be from scratch after buying a derelict house, or maybe you’ve added an extension or some other home improvement. Has the recent slow down in the market meant you’ve lost out financially – or even gone bankrupt? Perhaps you’re trying to sell now, but know that you’re likely to make a loss? If you’re interested in taking part in the programme, then please contact me on 084488 16453 / 07786 547227 or email toby.strutt@itv.com.
Technorati Tags: property TV
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OFT push ahead with Foxtons lettings complaints [Citywire]
Brent Hoberman talks about MyDeco [Guardian]
Americans on the British mean streets [Time]
South west - the new commuter belt [Times]
Property prices and railway lines [Times]
The Rat and Mouse - it's about your house
Foxtons' bad news day part one: OFT [February 27, 2008]
New interior design project from LastMinute.com team [May 29, 2007]
Technorati Tags: design, Foxton's, Foxtons, interiors, London, property, real estate, Web, Web2, web2.0
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House prices made it onto the agenda-setting Today programme this morning, after the Nationwide published its March figures. It's a fall - honest - of 0.6%, leaving annual house price inflation at just 1.1%, it's lowest since March 1996. The most dramatic figure, though, comes by looking at the last five months... over that period, Nationwide is seeing a 2.9% fall. Read the actual report in pdf here, but be patient, as the press appear to be hitting the server right now.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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Grand Designs have a week of live TV planned for May, during which they'll reveal their top 25 houses, picked from all the shows. You can catch up on missed properties, and vote, too, by going here. Vote for this one and you're barred.
Technorati Tags: property TV
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It's a reader find:
I came across a duplex apartment in Mayfair above commercial premises. Price: £7,500,000. I know that the stigma of living above commercial premises has become less of late, but I wonder if it's enough for someone to spend this sort of money.
He's right. It's pulling a whisker under £2,000 a square foot, but then it's Mayfair, and we think we've seen £3,000 a square foot in Belgravia.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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Sofie (no "p", no "h") Allsopp (two "l"s, two "p"s) is apparently doing like big sister Kirstie (no "y") and - after a stint as an estate agent, and a stint alongside Phil (no "f") when Kirstie was pregnant (no alcohol) - enjoying a bit of property TV... in Canada, no less. Any more Allsopp sisters out there? The Rat and Mouse is on the hunt for a guest property blogger, and I know for a fact the Guv'nor would be pretty thrilled if he could bag an Allsopp.
Technorati Tags: property TV
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Total lending's down a third between February 2007 and February 2008, but remortgaging - people seeking new deals to replace ones coming to an end - was up 5.5%, suggesting it must be harder than ever for first-time buyers. More here.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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HousemateHeaven.com - a housemate listing service for city sharers - is appealing for nominations for London Best & Worst Housemates. It's a competition, the nominations close on April 28, and if your nominee wins a category you'll earn yourself a bottle of wine. Which could - I guess - be seen as some kind of compensation.
I lick my cheese [November 29, 2007]
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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Hamptons complained to the Advertising Standards Authority about a Savills ad in which Savills claimed to show a significant lead over its rivals defined by number of offices and number of visits to its website. Hamptons suggested the numbers were awry and that Savills had deliberately left off Foxtons. According to this, Savills have come away unscathed, having defended their numbers to the satisfaction of the ASA. Is the current market notching up the tension among agents?
Technorati Tags: estate agents, Foxton's, Foxtons, real estate agents
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It's a first floor studio in an ex-council block on Rotherhithe Old Road. It's near a tube (Surrey Quays), it's not that small, for a studio, and it's £99,950. It's with Kinleigh Folkard & Haywood, here.
[via FindaProperty]
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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When the National Association of Estate Agents put out a press release yesterday informing us that softening house prices signaled a more favourable market for buyers, I thought the only striking thing about it was that anyone thought it needed saying in the first place. But the comments, at the bottom of this, did better... picking up on the idea of a "buyers' market", and pointing out how far we've come, and in what a strange direction, when average prices around the £200,000 are a playground for buyers:
Its not a buyers market at the moment, its no-ones market.
How on earth can anybody call this a buyer's market? The only people who can afford to buy are those who have already done very well out of rising prices and have the cash. First time buyers have been frozen out completely because of inability to secure a mortgage.
A Buyers market?
First time buyers are holding out for a price drop, or cant afford the current price levels.
Home movers have to sell existing house..
So who are the buyers who can afford this market?
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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For every method of skinning a cat, there are 20 ways of measuring residential property prices. Few of them will relate, much, to your house.
The publisher's column, over at Citywire.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate, theRatandMouse
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More in this Category - Linkage
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First-time buyers must - and I stress must - be treated with as much care and solace as ickle baby bluetits that have just fallen out of the nest. They have to face off not only the big bad birds that are already on the housing ladder, but the horrid estate-agent squirrels and the nasty tomcats of buy-to-let land, always ready to crush their hopes and feathery ambitions in their rapacious jaws.
Screw 'em, she says, life's tough. Read it, here.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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Numbers of unsold properties on estate agents' books are apparently at their highest level since Rightmove records begin... back in the Web1.0, Elvis in the charts (not kidding) days of 2002; and yet asking prices have risen by 0.8% in March. Rightmove estimates that prices have fallen 10% from their 2007 peak, and recommends vendors mix themselves a reality Martini, and chuck in a couple of green olives. (Just make sure you don't get those ones with anchovies in them by mistake... done that, not nice... )
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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That's it from me until Tuesday. Have a great extended weekend. Just don't go anywhere.
Technorati Tags: theRatandMouse
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We've been here before... back in 2004/2005, when developers would wine you, dine you, possibly get on their knees and unzip you, definitely pay your moving costs, throw in a car, an Arsenal season ticket if you'd only sign on the line that's dotted. According to this, in the Telegraph, it's incentives time again, including part exchange deals on your own home (careful), other chain-busting schemes, move in for £99 initiatives and guaranteed rental incomes for landlords. We're not at the plasma TV and all you can drink in an hour at the local Slug & Lettuce yet, but there's time. Rat and Mouse advice (based on 2004/2005): pay more attention to what the new-build might really be worth, and go for the (substantial) discount. That's if you want to risk buying at all right now.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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More in this Category - Linkage
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I’ve shown properties at 6am and helped other clients by collecting them from their offices at midnight and settling them into their new homes.
Blimey. He's over here, telling the Times's Career & Jobs supplement what it takes to succeed in the high-end London lettings business.
One of the great things about this job is that I’m not stuck in the office. I spend most of the day out and about, whether that’s getting new keys cut, organising a gas safety certificate, meeting clients or doing something deeply unglamorous – but obviously important – such as unclogging a lavatory. I’ll do whatever it takes to facilitate things for my clients.
Jeez, if that's one of the great things...
Technorati Tags: estate agents, Foxton's, Foxtons, London, property, real estate, real estate agents
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More in this Category - Linkage
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Our publisher, on sell-to-rent, over at Citywire:
Last September, my adventurous, high-achieving friend Kate (not her real name, just in case she Googles her name "+high-achieving") sold her period, three-bedroom house on the right street in Clapham. It was – she’s positive – the top of the market. She hasn’t bought another home yet. When she does, she’d like it to be a period, three-bedroom house on the right street in Clapham. Her ideal home is the one she recently sold. Except cheaper.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate, theRatandMouse
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The Independent talks to novelist Charlotte Mendelson about her Dartmouth Park home. Where? It's near Highgate; it's leafy and nice. Mendelson - who's a proper novelist - talks the property talk with surprising fluency:
We'd made offers on various houses in Tufnell Park, which is nearby, but our hearts hadn't really been in them. They were mostly compromises, or they were horribly overdeveloped – lots of downlighters and strategically placed tiny shower-rooms.
That's what they say... every novelist has one estate agent in them.
Technorati Tags: celebrity, London, property, real estate
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Property search engine Nestoria continues to innovate. Now property-related websites can display live property price information, drawn from Nestoria data, via a widget. More explanation here. Nice work.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate, Web, Web2, web2.0
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In addition to the Citizens' Advice Bureaux survey story - making headlines on BBC news today - there are figures by credit reference agency Experian offering a regional view of debt. The most indebted place in the UK is, apparently, Richmond-upon-Thames, followed by Putney, Kingston-upon-Thames, Windsor and Wandsworth... suggesting there's a bit of an issue over in south west London.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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More in this Category - Linkage
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Somebody over here is asking...
I seem to remember there’s an art collective somewhere who specialise in hijacking estate agent signs, but after Googling for a bit I can’t find who it is. Any ideas?
Technorati Tags: estate agents, real estate agents
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How do I know? Because an insurance company is about to launch a product which will pay out if your mortgage repayments rise as a result of base rate hikes. It's called MarketGuard, it's the first product of its kind, and it's due to launch in a couple of months. On the subject of hedging, MarketGuard gets a mention in this very interesting Guardian piece about Government plans to offer some kind of crazy hedge against house price falls. Not general house price falls. Just the kind that affect your house. Read this:
In the Housing Finance Review, a 93-page document issued with the Budget, the Treasury says it intends to investigate the possible development of insurance based on house price movements, which would be hedged against detailed house price indices. Such insurance would pay out if the value of a home declined by more than the value of equivalent property in the indices.
What the hell does that mean? And how the hell will that be possible, given that national indices reflect broad movements, not "equivalent" properties? Are there "equivalent" properties? How many "detailed house price indices" would you need? One for every street? And who needs such a product and why? I'm confused.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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... At, wait for it, in excess of £115m. It's an apartment at 8, St James's Square, currently an office block, but with planning permission for residential development... six very expensive apartments in London clubland. What's not at all clear is how much money has actually changed hands, or what this kind of off-plan agreement actually means. According to the Telegraph:
Only the most basic building proposals have so far been submitted. There will be large solar panels on the roof, a car lift to take vehicles to the basement parking – and cycle racks, to comply with regulations.
I'll believe this when it completes.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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It's not a place I generally frequent, but ToryDiary at ConservativeHome is worth a glance this morning, regarding a Freedom of Information request about cleaning costs at Admiralty House. The story is that it cost £3,320 to clean the place after John Prescott had occupied it. What the hell had he been doing in there? Did it involve Rizlas and alcopops? Was he made to forfeit his deposit? More here.
Technorati Tags: celebrity, London, property, real estate
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... where homeowners can smugly watch the rest of the country gripe and gazunder through the market correction. Ah, yes, west London... right? Where we fight for the right to walk more than six pooches at a time, and where are Range Rovers phone home if a chav looks at them funny. Right? Wrong. Where the hell's Tenby?
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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An interesting piece in the Tribune about the super-discreet property search agents who find homes for celebrities. Except, they're not so super-discreet we don't learn in the first sentence that...
Madonna likes to low-ball sellers. George Michael may not show up for meetings.
Apparently, in London you might have to sign a confidentiality agreement before viewing a property with a celebrity connection; and when the celebrity is the buyer, he or she only deigns to visit the property just before signing, letting trusted assistants nabe-scope instead. But their need for discretion isn't purely motivated by privacy...
"We all know what they are worth," said Carlos Riveros, a high-end specialist with Chesterton in London. "That's a disadvantage." Last year, the owner of a London row house did not even reply when Madonna, his neighbor, submitted a bid hundreds of thousands of pounds below his asking price, according to an agent familiar with the deal.
Read it here.
Fame costs - and right here's where you start paying [June 25, 2007]
Celebrity property addendum - exploit your fame [February 21, 2007]
Technorati Tags: celebrity, property, real estate
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More in this Category - Linkage
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According to a survey by TripAdvisor, we're the dirtiest city in Europe. And not in a good way. We're also the priciest, and second most unfriendly (those bastards in Paris won that one). However, we have the nicest parks.
[via The China Post, of all places]
Technorati Tags: London
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And it has nothing, whatsoever, to do with the £152m in bonuses due to be distributed among it's 5,000 staff. 2007 bonuses are said to be up 20% on 2006 levels, reflecting a 15% increase in profits.
Technorati Tags: estate agents, real estate agents
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Well I - for one - am impressed. Before yesterday, I didn't think it was possible for anybody to take so long to say so little. One MP leaked to the Rat and Mouse that Darling's aids handed out little doodling pads and pencils shortly before the speech. On the television coverage, I saw one backbencher with a PSP.
With the content, I was less impressed. Here was an opportunity for the government to look closer at stamp duty and, with house prices falling, really provide an opportunity to first-time buyers to jump on the property ladder. They didn't take it. Shared equity is just that... shared with the government... and the UK's key workers, while important, are only a small proportion of those struggling to buy homes or live near enough to where they work. It will be the failure to properly refocus stamp duty that will be seen as one of this budget's greatest disappointments.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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More in this Category - Linkage
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- Shared equity housing schemes announced to aid key workers
- Shared ownership (less than 80% of the home) means zero stamp duty
- More building
- Long-term fixed rate mortgages encouraged... at this point, though, it's not clear how
Many were expecting a more realistic movement on stamp duty. Expect disappointment. Back with more, later...
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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Why are we so bad at this? How have we managed to manoeuvre ourselves into an economic Catch-22, in which the giant price-drop necessary to guarantee affordable homes for our children will mean our own economic ruin when we reach pension age?
... our publisher's column, over at Citywire.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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The Independent get a guided tour. Cornelia Parker's an artist. Her home is on Old Nichol Street, Parker gives some interesting history about the neighbourhood's less salubrious past, before Shoreditch House and successful artists arrived. Apparently, it's:
... said to be the root of the term "nicked", due to the number of criminals working around here. In 1880, it was deemed so run-down they bulldozed these streets. If you look at maps from that period, there's literally a blank space around here! Even now, if you keep an eye on an abandoned car, you'll see it will soon get stripped and then you know not to park near it, as it will be torched next.
A little harsh? She lives in an old print works, with a solar panel on the roof, but worries that surrounding building will cut off the light. It's an interesting piece.
Technorati Tags: celebrity, London, property, real estate
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Love it! According to a survey by LG, more than 66% of British say their TV is vital to the "flow within their home". And so, because it's primarily men who choose TV sets (don't pretend you're surprised), men are having more of an influence on interior design decision, too, since the rest of the house needs to be in keeping with the television, obviously. More here.
Technorati Tags: property, interior design, interior_design, real estate, real_estate
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Apparently, there's just not the interest in £2,500 plus buy-to-let investment courses these days [This Is Money]
In Scotland, the £4,000 house. It's rubbish... literally [BBC]
The Dorset home that grew from £8,000 to £8m [Telegraph]
In the US, failed flippers live rent-free [HousingPANIC]
Home loans: down, down, down [BBC]
The Rat and Mouse - London's property blog
Monday morning linkage - second home-owners, angels in disguise [March 10, 2008]
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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RICS gloom levels reached record levels in February, equalled only by the great sigh of June 1990. There's more unsold stock in estate agents' windows than there's been for a decade. 64.1% more surveyors reported a fall than a rise in February, up from 54.7% in January, and the greatest percentage since June 1990, when the figure reached 64.5%. More here.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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Go to the Daily Mail page, here, for the photos. Basically... before: couple of spider plants, sofa, mirror; after: 50 ultraviolet lights burning through £100 of electricity to hot house £100,000 of cannabis.
Thursday morning linkage - cannabis factories issue profit warning, blame house prices [May 31, 2007]
You read it here first: Rent-To-Grow [April 3, 2007]
Merton's Mary-Jane farmers get smoked out [March 16, 2006]
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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According to the Sunday Times, they're a couple of Home Counties sisters called Fawn and India Rose... their names and locations symbolic of a successful movement of hundreds of millions of pounds from furtive masturbation to middle-class respectability in just two generations. The piece also tracks down a few other possible heirs.
London property tycoon and King of Skin dies [March 3, 2008]
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate, real_estate
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More in this Category - Linkage
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More in this Category - Linkage
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Last summer I reported the appearance on the market of the Solent's landmark No Man's Land fort. It turns out things haven't exactly gone smoothly. Knight Frank were instructed to market the remarkable property for £4m, after the owner's financial backers went bust. However - according to this - the said owner isn't prepared to move out without a fight. He's attached upturned tables to the helipads and locked the doors. If Knight Frank want to conduct any viewings, looks like they'll have to bring the Navy.
Technorati Tags: estate agents, property, real estate, real estate agents
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According to the Daily Mail, Bruce Willis has been viewing a £30m penthouse in Park Lane. The rumour is he's about to settle down with his girlfriend, and Mayfair is where he wants to do it. Good choice, although exactly what Willis sees in the 29-year-old lingerie model he's dating we just can't work out.
Technorati Tags: celebrity, London, property, real estate
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Bank base rates remain at 5.25%. More here.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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Halifax is reporting a 0.3% fall in UK house prices in February, leaving the annual inflation figure at 4.2% (from 4.5% last month). Stay tuned for this afternoon's interest rate decision.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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... by refusing loans? New figures from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors show buy-to-let mortgages shrinking, the availability of new rental properties slowing, demand and yields growing. Gross yields in the last quarter of 2007 rose at their fastest in two years. And it's possibly due (partly) to this that the big btl fire sale hasn't happened... with the percentage of landlords selling their properties after a tenancy ends dropping to 4.6% from 6.5%. More here.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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The Rat and Mouse's publisher begins a new series of columns for investment news website Citywire today... which is fresh and beautiful from an exciting expansion and redesign. Check out the site, and read about interest rates, lenders, borrowers, Mervyn King and Dale Winton here.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate, theRatandMouse
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The Mirror reports on Kate Moss's interior design makeover, which is said to include life-sized skeletons in the missionary position (and not this missionary position, apparently). [Note to personal assistant... order three skeletons first thing tomorrow, one of them a transsexual. Anything she can do, The Rat and Mouse offices can do better.]
Technorati Tags: celebrity, design, interiors
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According to this, young professionals - disinclined to buy when we might be sitting at the peak of a house price roller coaster - are leading an unprecedented run on London rental property. Agents are seeing as much as a 25% rise in interest in lettings, compared with this time last year, with new occupants paying as much as 20% more, and renewals coming in 5% to 10% higher.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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OFT was due to launch a scheme from April 6 that would make membership of an ombudsman service compulsory for UK estate agents. Accordingo to the BBC, the start date has been delayed, and no new date has been given.
Technorati Tags: estate agents, real estate agents
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More in this Category - Linkage
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According to Knight Frank, the index on London homes costing £2m+ rose 0.6% in February, leaving the annual rate of posh house price inflation way down at a disappointing 24% (I know!), its lowest level since September 2006. More here.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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You know how it is. You really like a pub, you go there with your mates for a good old fashioned knees up, a bit of a Lambeth Walk, and then you think - sod it, it's only £5m and it's so convenient, just around the corner from my Mayfair home - I'll buy it. Madonna and Guy are now landlady and landlord of The Punchbowl in Farm Street. They bought the pub from Greg Foreman, son of London gangster Freddie Foreman.
Technorati Tags: celebrity, London
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Work began yesterday and will continue until March 8, when the Newspaper House - in Gillett Square, in Hackney - will stand for a day before being sent off for recycling. The idea is to draw attention to the daily waste caused by London's free newspaper racket. More here.
Technorati Tags: London
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Paul Raymond - owner of Raymond's Revuebar, swathes of property in Soho and west London and a host of upmarket magazine titles such as Razzle and Men Only - died yesterday, according to this. Born Geoffrey Anthony Quinn, he is rumoured to have been a billionaire. A devout Catholic, according to his Wikipedia page, he invested his considerable wealth in a series of important cultural achievements, starting with Carry On Sergeant in the late 1950s.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate
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More in this Category - Linkage
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It's a five-storey home in Kensington's Upper Phillimore Gardens, rumoured to have exchanged for £80m, the deal done by a Ukrainian businesswoman and friend to Elton John. If the rumour's true, it's something of a triumph for Mike Spink, who bought the property (number 17) in June 2006 for... £20m, and has spent a further on it £10m since. Hey, is somebody going to tell the super-prime market, there's supposed to be a price crash happening here...
Technorati Tags: London, property, real_estate
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