Building magazine was there:

All day yesterday and well into the evening, Londoners partied and indulged in credit card frenzy in the face of global financial meltdown.

Proving there's still time for one last consumer orgy.

Technorati Tags: development, London

I drive past these regularly, and love the look of them. The Times' Anne Ashworth pays a visit to one, and asks why it's not selling. There's apparently no traffic noise, no Talgarth Road grime; the big windows were designed for the young artists who originally lived in this row and apparently do just what you'd imagine... let in loads of light. My own guess? The price. The owners apparently bought the place for £458,700 in 2000. Admittedly, it seems they've done a huge amount of work on the house, but an asking price of £1.75m now is probably doing them few favours. Still... it's lovely.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Current events might be making the housing market look a little rough around the edges, but it's having no such effect on Kirstie Allsopp, who's looking particularly zesty in her Sun photo. She's there for a Q&A about the current crisis, answering a series of questions that include Will prices ever go up? and Is now a good time to buy? She describes living in Battersea, in negative equity, during the beginning of the 90s and not being able to afford to visit her friends in west London. I'm assuming she means her friends were inveterate champagne-swiggers, rather than she couldn't afford the bus fare, but others in the Rat and Mouse office disagree. Her advice is sensible and conservative, including:

You can’t go out there in this market, where there is very little available, and say, “Because everything is so cheap, I should be able to find my perfect home” because it just doesn’t work like that.

A lot of people can’t make the most of the falling prices because the mortgage they have been offered means they will end up paying more over the 25 years than if they had bought a more expensive house with a cheaper mortgage.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

According to the Standard, even the fabulous Candy boys are feeling the crunch. The story goes that they're pulling out of their Noho redevelopment plans, and they've defaulted on a $365m loan on a Beverley Hills project. However, the facts aren't at all clear, given a recent report in the FT, claiming that the brothers had taken advantage of falling land values and Icelandic chaos, to buy out their Kaupthing partners on the cheap. Back then, Nick Candy was quoted as saying he expected to extend the terms of the loan. Now, it's a different picture. UPDATE, OCTOBER 31, SOME CLARITY, PERHAPS, FROM THE LA TIMES

Technorati Tags: property, real estate, development, London

The Intermediary Mortgage Lenders Association has criticised the media for sensationalising FSA repossession data which showed a year-on-year rise of 71%, describing it as "a 71% rise over what was a relatively low base".

We already know possessions are increasing and we expect to see around 40,000 this year compared to 26,200 in 2007 - but this will still be well under 1% of all mortgages outstanding.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Seventy-four lots, 100 attendees... err... three bids, and no sales. Welsh estate agents Peter Alan have been blamed for overpricing the properties, but reports suggest that apartments that had at one time seen valuations of £200,000 were offered at £30,000; yet, still no takers.

The auctioneer was despondent throughout and said, ‘Look, have you got any bids at all?’

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

It's a 1.4% fall in October, leaving house prices 14.6% lower on the year. Completions are at their lowest level since 1974.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

... ENORMO. A better name for an international property search portal? I can't decide. It says less about property, more about size... in a porn name kind of way. And on that subject, can you ever imagine this on the Tube?

[via Future of Real Estate Marketing]

Technorati Tags: property, real estate, Web, Web2, web2.0

It's been around a full week and so far it's managed to find just seven signatures. Perhaps the strength of feeling among estate agents was exaggerated.

Rightmove's sacking [October 23, 2008]
Is Rightmove calling the agents' bluff? [October 22, 2008]

Technorati Tags: estate agents, real estate agents, Web, Web2, web2.0

Lloyds TSB underfire for blocking interest-only mortgage switches [Times]
A week in online property [Zoomf]
What crunch? London's £403,000 crapper... [Times]
Sinitta can't sell Putney house... who's Sinitta? [TheMoveChannel]
Madonna's divorce... the property angle [International Herald Tribune]
Slump hits London's rich [FT]

The Rat and Mouse - it's about your house

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

The Land Registry's completions data shows house prices in September 8% down on the year, and volume in the second quarter (compared with the same period a year ago) down 48%. Regional variation? You betcha. Welsh house prices are down 10.7% on the year. In Hartlepool, they're up - yes, that's up - 4.7%. London prices are down 1.5% in September, and 6.1% across the year.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

One Hampshire land agent looking for a house to buy realised he could rent a five-bedroom Georgian vicarage with a paddock, stable and outbuildings in a village for the same monthly cost as a mortgage on a Victorian terrace in the nearest town. He took a five-year lease on the vicarage.

The Telegraph jumps in the the latest renting v buying state-of-play.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Buyers walk away from 40% of new home deals [Scotsman]
1.2m face negative equity [Telegraph]
The great fixtures and fittings swindle [Telegraph]

The Rat and Mouse - with a little morning linkage

Technorati Tags: property, real estate agents

We've written before about the dangers of the property lottery, as private vendors have turned to ticket sales to shift bricks and mortar. Now it's the turn of the developers, and they're going to some extreme lengths to disguise what (were it deemed to be a lottery for private gain) would be illegal. Step up... buy an MP3 player, get a free lottery ticket... proceeds (minus expenses, ie, the flat) go to charity. More here.

Houses raffled [October 2, 2008]
A post revisited - now look what's gone and happened [August 10, 2006]

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Innovative online estate agency Brightsale have announced a new partnership with north-west group Thornley Groves. How's it working? TG buys a 25% stake in Brightsale; Brightsale lists all its 650 properties, bringing its total listings to more than 900 (note that Brightsale isn't a search engine or portal... it's an agency that exists online).

It's an interesting development - you'd think hardly surprising at a time when agents are struggling to cover astronomical, 20th Century costs in a frail 21st Century market. But British estate agency is famously conservative. Watch this space.

Technorati Tags: estate agents, property, real estate, real estate agents, Web, Web2, web2.0

A consonant, a vowel, a cononant, another consonant... Voderman's forced to slash price of London flat [Daily Mail]
Fire at actor's Hampton Court Road home [BBC]
Want to sell to an oligarch... how to Russian it up [Sunday Times]
High end rents heading less high end [Sunday Times]
Another year of house price falls [Times]

The Rat and Mouse - London's property blog

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Hometrack's figures now suggest a 7.3% fall on the year to October, leaving prices at March 2006 levels. In October itself, prices slid back 1.3% (compared to a 1% in fall in September). Properties took an average of 11.9 weeks to sell, and people are paying an average of 89% of asking prices.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Over at the Daily Mail, they're livid:

Millions of pounds of taxpayers' money is being spent housing homeless people in some of the most expensive streets in London, a new investigation has found. Private landlords are routinely being paid as much as £1,800 a week to house families in Kensington and Chelsea - the most expensive borough in the country.

That's it... I'm going to grab myself a cup of tragedy and get myself some of that homeless action. Where could I expect to end up? According to the piece, there's a family in a £1.5m Kensington mews house, rented from a dentist for £1,125 a week.

London's most expensive council house [October 13, 2008]

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

It's Capital Economics again [Daily Mail]
How safe is your bank? [Yahoo!]
Burglars Top Twenty Fave Postcodes [FindaProperty.com]

The Rat and Mouse - it's about your house

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Once described as “holding the key to London's future growth” by Ken Livingstone, East London is at risk of falling from grace. The promised Olympic revival is already suffering from funding problems, while the collapse of some of the world's biggest banks has left Canary Wharf and the Docklands, often described as “soulless” by nonresidents, feeling eerier than usual.

Actually... no. If you want to know what a ghost town looks like, you should have visited Docklands back in the early 1990s. I can remember standing somewhere near Canary Wharf and wondering why I was whispering. Those flats will eventually fill up, just slowly, and not at 2007 buy-to-let prices.

Little Detroit, Thamesmead [October 20, 2008]

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

I know, we did this whole thing yesterday, but I couldn't help wondering at the logic of this headline from the Site of the Year 2008.

Instead of what? Buying a new one?

Technorati Tags: celebrity, London, property, real estate

Now it's legal fees, on the table and being dissected. Currently, two-thirds of mortgages come with a free valuation and legal fees covered. Woolwich were first out of the traps to stop paying the solicitors. Soon - according to this - others will follow, as lenders recoup costs.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Deripaska's £50m Belgravia crash pad [Daily Mail]
Arsenal's residential property developments still on target for profit [Bloomberg]
How to dump your partner without injuring your assets [Telegraph]
Expect tough love from the agents [Sky]
Negative equity needn't be stressful [This Is Money]
London squalor [24 Dash]

The Rat and Mouse - London's property blog

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

I've got to be honest... here at the Rat and Mouse we were of the firm belief that Paris Hilton's move-to-London chat was worth about as much as a handful of salt. There's nothing like babbling about a possible house purchase to make Londoners love you. But - according to this - she's done it... a £850,000 east London property that was once a Chinese restaurant, opium den and brothel... presumably at different times, but not necessarily. We haven't an address, but we're hopeful.

Meanwhile...

The U.S. Embassy on London's Grosvenor Square, the scene of riots in 1968 in protest against the Vietnam War, has been put up for sale following the decision to relocate to a site south of the River Thames.

If these walls could talk... Cold War edition [October 17, 2008]

Technorati Tags: celebrity, London, property, real estate

A message from the National Association of Estate Agents' Peter Bolton King:

Propertylive.co.uk has already been inundated with enquiries and properties for listing; we anticipate a further upsurge in activity in the coming weeks. I would, however, like to ask that our members remain patient and allow Propertylive.co.uk a few weeks to get up and running. No other property portal has ever attempted to upload such a large number of listings in such a short space of time, therefore we will all see the site evolve substantially over the next few weeks and months.

Is Rightmove calling the agents' bluff? [October 22, 2008]

Technorati Tags: estate agents, property, real estate, real estate agents, Web2, web2.0

An independent report, commissioned by the former housing minister Caroline Flint will be presented to her replacement Margaret Beckett today. The Rugg Review will look at residential rentals, and is thought to contain proposals for ways local government can work with private landlords for social housing, plus tax incentives and other ways to grow private letting.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Breaking early morning news... Rightmove is apparently waving goodbye to 20% of its workforce, as the housing slump bites, and agents get increasingly antsy with listings charges.

[via Reuters]

Technorati Tags: property, real estate, Web, Web2, web2.0

Do estate agents have a collective "bluff"? In any case, online agents Brightsale suspect it's being pulled, in a missive to members warning them that if they don't like current listings charges, they'll just have to, well, not like them. Meanwhile, the National Association of Estate Agents' own rival, PropertyLive, is finally available. So far (it's a beta), no mashups (other than a simple map), no fancies, just listings. Not many of those, either, but a pop-up tells us they're feverishly loading properties as we speak and, after all, you have to start somewhere.

PropertyLive goes live on Tuesday, bad news for Rightmove [October 10, 2008]
What's the story with PropertyLive? [October 14, 2008]
PropertyLive on track for end of week [October 16, 2008]

Technorati Tags: estate agents, real estate, web2.0

Photos by Seety, map integration by Earthware, as seen on the NovaLoca commercial property search site. and available to residential property agents. I've played with it and it's good. The photography's sharp and it's very easy to navigate. Seety, an Italian company, must have been over here surreptitiously snapping while Google were still planning. Enjoy your walking tour of London.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate, Web2, web2.0

Furthermore, according to Steve Cox, operations director at Spicerhaart Financial Services and, for the purposes of this column, the man with the interesting, contrarian statistic, buy-to-let’s been picking up in recent weeks. Monitoring mortgage activity through the brokerage, he’s seen a 58% rise in buy-to-let mortgage business in September, the biggest increase in over 12 months. Should we be surprised by this? The buy-to-let sector comes with a built-in hedge. When house prices fall, yields rise.

Our publisher examines a contrary view of buy-to-let, in his weekly guest column for Citywire.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate, theRatandMouse

... courtesy of the BBC. How quickly the mortgage culture is changing. Does the sound of this not already make you wince?

My wife and I bought the £195,000 house in Norwich in October 2006 with a 75% mortgage, paying interest at 7.25%. At the start, we were able to keep up the payments between my wife's job as a classroom assistant and mine at Norwich airport, where I was earning £14,000 a year.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Meet the neighbours... online [Telegraph]
Nationwide tracker deals... feel the pain [Times]
The Fool defends mortgage fees [Fool]
Somebody's predicting a giant 35% house price crash... guess who? It's the CE bunch... [Daily Mail]
Now the bankers are selling [Monsters & Critics]

The Rat and Mouse - it's about your house

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Figures by The Tax Man show UK residential sales for September at 59,000, the lowest figure since they began keeping records in 2005, and down from 126,000 in September 2007. More here.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

It's the Aylesbury Estate, Elephant & Castle... due for a radical redevelopment that will see the 1960s block replaced with housing association and private homes. Residents have apparently hired Hill & Knowlton. But is the message already getting across? Here's the BBC's blunt picture caption:

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

On October 13, it was all about under-supply propping up house prices and saving the UK from ultimate housing market catastrophe.

Britain's housing market should recover quicker than those in other countries because too few properties have been built recently, the prime minister has said. Speaking to a City audience earlier today, Gordon Brown said that not enough UK property had been built in recent years - unlike in the US and Spain, who had "overbuilt" during the property boom.

A week later...

Brown is planning a 1930s-style programme of public works, spending billions on new schools, homes and transport projects. He has urged senior colleagues to increase expenditure on big capital projects – despite forecasts that tax revenues are about to collapse.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Advice for struggling mortgage payers [Independent]
Brokers broken by lenders [FT]
Shared equity... confusing [Mortgage Strategy]
Aga, not so hot [Telegraph]
The Telegraph finds happy property people [Telegraph]
How are the estate agents surviving? [BBC]
Actor Nat Parker - at home in Acton [Sunday Times]
Madonna to remain in London [ShowbizSpy.com]
London - the state of the market [Bloomberg]

The Rat and Mouse - London's property blog

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

You've heard the stories of those US ghost-towns, hardest hit by the sub-prime crisis. But what about London? Welcome to Hill House, Thamesmead, a riverside new-build apartment block where all but two of its 84 flats have been repossessed, and where - according to reports - the crackheads and vandals are moving in. Just two years ago, these were sell-out prospects. Now, they're bargain bucket. Take Flat 54. According to Land Registry data, it achieved £274,995. Now, it's about to be picked up for £88,000.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

How does this happen? House prices rise 1% on the month. The answer is... it's a seasonal thing, there's a traditional bounce at this time of year but it's normally much greater, which is why Rightmove's annual asking price inflation figure has dropped further into the red, at -4.9%.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

A disused underground network of tunnels, running a mile under central London, from Chancery Lane tube station, is for sale with Farebrother. It was built in the 40s as a bomb shelter, but came into its own during the Cold War, where it housed secure telephone communications.

Particulars (pdf), here.

If these walls could talk... Women in Love edition [October 6, 2008]

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

The Rat and Mouse has taken a fairly consistent view of property raffles over the years. To sum up. Don't organise them. Don't buy into them. Don't go near them. Don't believe them. Recently - a small rash of raffles led the mainstream media to assume they were a new thing, crunch-related and caused by the tough property market conditions. One particular raffle - of a nice country house in Devon - got a lot of publicity, even an appearance on Radio 4's Today programme, and so seemed like the first property raffle in the Rat and Mouse's experience to achieve successful enough sales for some deeds to change hands. (Normally, too few tickets are sold, and the prize reverts to a share of takings... after generous "expenses".) But wait... the draw was meant to take place yesterday, and yet...

A RAFFLE to sell a £1m house near Crediton was put on hold this week after the Gambling Commission stepped in to investigate.

Here we go. The problem is that - under British gaming law - lotteries for private gain are illegal. Organisers have tried to get around the rule by setting entrants very simple questions... but it appears the questions might be so simple they're not performing their function... to turn the competition into a game of skill and, thus, not a private lottery. Statement, here.

Houses raffled [October 2, 2008]
The real estate competition business [November 21, 2006]
A post revisited - now look what's gone and happened [August 10, 2006]
Have I been a git? The Rat and Mouse gets in a fight [July 11, 2006]

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Past visitors include Casanova, Crippen, Abu Hamza, Pinochet and the Krays. Future visitors could include you. Bow Street Magistrates'
Court has been acquired by Edward Holdings, with permission to turn it into a hotel.

The historic façade will remain but that there will be an ‘interpretive centre’ inside incorporating the existing cell block at ground floor and basement levels.

Its Grade II listing doesn't even come close to representing the building's historical importance. Let's hope they don't screw this up.

Technorati Tags: architecture, London, property, real estate

Northern Rock - recently nationalised - is coming under scrutiny for its aggressive repo-policy. It poses a wider a problem for the Government, which has even more recently negotiated a 60% stake in RBS and a 43.5% in the new Lloyds/HBOS. Now, there'll be a direct chain of responsibility from the single parent kicked to the curb and Gordon, fat and (increasingly) happy in Downing Street.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

A reader Rat and Mouse reader has just received this email from Lauristons in Wimbledon:

We are delighted to announce that for all instructions received before 31st December 2008 Lauristons are offering you the opportunity to sell your property for an unbeatable 0% selling fee. If you are interested or if you know anybody who may be interested in this unique offer please contact Danny Hicks, Sales Manager at your earliest convenience.

Our tipster adds:

What on earth is the thinking behind this? Maybe it's the old "yeah, we're losing money on each customer, but we'll make it up in volume!" approach....

I don't know... maybe it's a questions of dominating the area with boards in preparation of the upturn. Maybe it's about making sure that - if there is a sale - it's theirs.

Technorati Tags: estate agents, London, property, real estate, real estate agents

A Rat and Mouse tipster has forwarded a new message from the NAEA to members. The new portal will, apparently, "be delivered on time at the end of this week". And if it isn't, it will presumably be delivered on time at the end of next week. Interestingly, it's the uptake that has apparently slowed things down, with "2,500 office applications to date". There's a reminder, too, that what we will see at the end of the week is, strictly, a beta. No mention of the pretender.

What's the story with PropertyLive? [October 14, 2008]

Technorati Tags: estate agents, real estate agents, Web, Web2, web2.0

Let's be realistic [Telegraph]
Beckham can't sell, but thieves help themselves [Goal.com]
They're still spending seven figures on flats in Swansea [WalesOnline]
A bankruptcy an house, 104 repos a day [OneStopView.com]
Highest restaurant in London planned for Pinnacle tower [Colliers Cre]
Just hang on... until 2023 [Guardian]

The Rat and Mouse - London's property blog

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Mouseprice's ten fastest falling residential streets in the UK include a couple of London roads. Erebus Drive, in SE26, close to the river in Greenwich, is heavy on new-build apartments, but Russell Road in Barnet (NW9) looks like a fairly average residential road. You can see the full top ten on Mouseprice's actual report by clicking here.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

It's an apartment "in a house near Regent's Park"... and it cost in the £4m region, that's all we know. The Standard found another connection. It's...

... close to flats designed by the real-life Goldfinger.

Technorati Tags: celebrity, London, property, real estate

When I bought my house, the vendor threw in a ride-on lawnmower. In comparison Hill’s Lamborghini looks a little more incentivising. But now that the market’s in decline a 13% discount on the asking price (and the associated reduction in stamp duty) might be more attractive than a second-hand car.

Our publisher asks "when's an incentive an incentive, and when's it a cashback?"... in his regular guest column for Citywire.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate, theRatandMouse

Nationwide cuts mortgage rates: Nationwide, one of the country's largest mortgage lenders, has passed on three-fifths of the Bank of England's recent cut in interest rates to customers with variable-rate mortgages... about 500,000 people will benefit from the change, which takes effect on November 1.

Alternatively:

Fresh blow to homeowners as UK's biggest building society fails to pass on emergency cut in interest rate: Britain's biggest building society has failed to pass on the rates cut in full, depriving homeowners of a much-needed boost as they struggle to cover their mortgage.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Now the people don't buy or sell houses anymore, estate agents are looking elsewhere to exercise a bit of their sales magic, specifically...

Recruiters are being inundated with applications from estate agents looking for careers as consultants... Jonathan Mullin, associate director at rec-to-rec company Holland & Tisdall, told Recruiter he had noticed a massive increase in the number of estate agents approaching the company. "The number of estate agents we have placed has gone up by around 50% in the last six months," he said.

Technorati Tags: estate agents, real estate agents

Cass business school professor Andrew Clare is painting a picture of a highly and long-term depressed UK housing market.

Using futures contracts based on the Halifax house price index, he has calculated that, in 2010, house prices will be 40% lower than their peak of £199,600 in August last year. "Worse still, according to these prices, the Halifax index will not recover to its August 2007 level until 2023," he said.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

August? Yes... the figures are based on completions, and so take a while to filter through. What's more, completions are up to two months after exchange, so - really - this is a snapshot of the June/July market. It was a 2.7% monthly fall, leaving the annual inflation figure at -3.4%. More here.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

All our information suggested that today was the day when the National Association of Estate Agents' Rightmove-killer, PropertyLive.co.uk, was due to become functional. As yet - no sign of anything other than a static welcome page... and a bit of visible code on Google:

There is - however - a cheeky pretender, hovering above in the Google Sponsored Links banner - a PropertyLive.me, planning on catching a ride on the NAEA's coattails, perhaps?

It's an odd site... seemingly consisting of a handful of Knight Frank listings, and not much else. Where's the plan?

[thanks to the Rat and Mouse reader who alerted us to this]

PropertyLive goes live on Tuesday, bad news for Rightmove [October 10, 2008]
On the NAEA's portal challenge [August 27, 2008]
National Association of Estate Agents "weeks away" from launching Rightmove-style portal [August 18, 2008]

Technorati Tags: estate agents, real estate agents, Web, Web2, web2.0

Buying and selling property might be so 2007, but renting it while you wait-and-see whether you can get a mortgage/find a buyer [delete as appropriate] is bigger than ever. Upad is one of a number of businesses launching to capitalise on the changing face of the UK property market. It's a rental-specific search engine, which matches renters (directly) with landlords. Search criteria include parking, broadband, transport links (via the slightly unsavory-sounding "spec up your pad" menu). Landlords have to pay to list their properties, but they pay once, and the property remains in the database until it finds a tenant. Upad also claim to have deals in place with Gumtree, Nestoria, Zoomf and others. So far, it's London-only, and beta, but worth a look.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate, Web, Web2, web2.0

Sales are their lowest levels in 30 years, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, who said that, in the three months to September, the average agent saw less than one completion a week. It is - of course - all about the mortgage market.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Following this, the Telegraph goes in search of London's most expensive council house, and finds a £2m Highgate lodge... temporary home to a woman and her 22-year-old son, who can now count George Michael, Sting and Tessa Jowell as their neighbours. There's a picture of it over at the Telegraph, and it's certainly very beautiful. I'm not sure I enjoy this kind of snidery and snobbery, though:

A local authority source said: "This must be the most expensive council house in Britain. The place is dripping with history and there are a lot of wealthy people who would give their eye-teeth to live there. To hand it over to a council tenant is extraordinary. It's like they made her lady of the manor overnight."

I mean... you could say the same about Tessa Jowell.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

I am sitting in our £5million chateau in Megeve in the Alps. I will sue anyone who says that Imagine Homes is in financial difficulty. We are 20 per cent owned by HBoS and we have huge profits that have yet to materialise.’

(But making them "materialise" is a big part of the game.) Anyway... the words of Grant Bovey, before finally being forced to give Imagine Homes back to the bank, who - in turn - will pass a chunk on to all of us.

[thanks to the Rat and Mouse reader for pointing this one out]

But is he Bovered? [August 20, 2008]
Bovey and bank to realign their relationship [July 4, 2008]

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Vauxhall Sky Gardens - tall eco tower [Skyscraper News]
Halifax responds to rate cuts by removing tracker mortgages [Telegraph]
How to cope with negative equity [Telegraph]
Cool prefabs [Telegraph]
London's commercial deals falling through as fast as residential deals [PropertyWire]
Economics finally catch up with baby boomers [Sunday Times]
Not all homes suffer equally [Independent on Sunday]
Barnet fatties costing a fortune [This is Local London]

The Rat and Mouse - it's about your house

Friday lunchtime linkage - at home with the Pooters; don't even think about raffling your home [October 10, 2008]

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Despite Government money and a big interest rate cut, the number of available mortgage deals continues to shrink, to 3,281, according to Moneyfacts.co.uk, it's lowest figure since credit crunched. And according to Chase de Vere Mortgage Management's Aaron Strutt, quoted in a BBC news piece, borrowers approaching the end of their current deals might want to check the small print pretty carefully.

Some borrowers... are finding their repayments rising with an interest rate of as much as 10%. This was because some deals, rather than reverting to the SVR, instead go to a margin above Libor - the rate at which banks lend to each other.

Holy Moses. But even in these difficult times, there are some bargains to be found. How about a Northern European country, for sale on ebay, with a 99p start price and no reserve.

That's it from us for the week. Have a great weekend.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

At Foxtons' expansive offices on Islington Green, most of the brightly coloured chairs remain empty although it's a good place to get a free Coke. A couple of customers wander in over 20 minutes.

More tales of empty chairs and locked doors.

Technorati Tags: estate agents, Foxton's, Foxtons, real estate agents

If you want to buy a house agented by Cluttons:

1. you'll need to instruct a solicitor the same day your offer's accepted
2. your survey will need to happen in seven days
3. you'll need a written mortgage offer in 14 days
4. you've 21 days from receipt of contract papers to sign
5. even after the surveyor's report, don't expect to negotiate

The point, clearly, is to give the vendor a little more power and reduce - if you'll pardon the expression - some of the piss-taking and time-wasting currently in the system. We say... ambitious but laudable.

[via EstateAgentToday]

Technorati Tags: estate agents, real estate agents

The Pooters' Holloway house... found! [Spectator]
Andrew Gilligan looks on the bright side and waves an early goodbye to Foxtons [This Is London]
The big 2012 shortfall [Guardian]
Don't even think about raffling your home. More here [Reuters and Citywire]
Reasons to remortgage your equity release [Fool]
Russian interior design demands [Times]
Candy Brothers swoop on Kaupthing property stakes [FT]
There's a storm coming [Time]

The Rat and Mouse - London's property blog

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

We're hearing that October 10 14 is launch day for the National Association of Estate Agents' own property portal, PropertyLive. It couldn't happen at a worse time for market leaders Rightmove. An independent survey conducted by EstateAgentToday suggests that 75% of agents won't be renewing their Rightmove subscription. If this isn't a bluff, it's a very serious development for Rightmove.

On the NAEA's portal challenge [August 27, 2008]
National Association of Estate Agents "weeks away" from launching Rightmove-style portal [August 18, 2008]

Technorati Tags: estate agents, real estate agents, Web, Web2, web2.0

We don't know how popular PropertyADD is with London's agents, but its claims are impressive... a hosted solution that can be accessed anywhere, on any machine. It sends out automatic property updates to leads via email, SMS or MMS, tracks performance and exports data to the property portals. We're not making any recommendations, but equally we don't feel we'd be doing our duty in this time of need if we didn't let agents know... there's a new free version, a kind of PropertyADD lite, called Match. More here.

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The Halifax index is at January 2006 levels, and posts the eighth consecutive monthly fall (in the 1990s slump, the run ended after seven months). The September fall was 1.3%, leaving the three-month on three-month annual rate down 12.4%. Interestingly, much of the media offers a 13.4% figure as an alternative annual decline, derived from a straight September-to-September comparison, despite having their knuckles wrapped for this last month. For HBOS's actual release, in PDF format, click this.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

It's become apparent that some UK councils have been banking Iceland-side. Hundreds of millions of pounds are potentially missing. In London... so far the damage looks limited to:

• Brent £27m
• Westminster £17m
• Sutton £5.5m
• Havering £12.5m

More here.

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Crystal Palace rebuild good for south London [HotProperty.co.uk]
Another developers goes bust [Director of Finance online]
Could rates drop to 3.5%? [MortgageStrategy]
Miracle... rate cuts passed on to borrowers [BBC]

The Rat and Mouse - London's property blog

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Private landlord Ajit Panesar is not going to argue with that. He's receiving £12,000 a month from Ealing Council to house a family in Acton.

Estate agents Foxtons said similar properties in Acton command rents of up to £6,000 a month. Mr Panesar says he checked the price with the Rent Service, part of the Department of Work and Pensions, which agreed the rate was acceptable.

Somebody man the phones while I go and get me some of those "acceptable" rates!

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We were expecting an announcement tomorrow (Thursday's are traditional for interest rate fun), but news is out that seven central banks - including Canada's, China's, Switzerland's, Sweden's and the Bank of England - are cutting rates by 0.5%. That leaves our own rate at 4.5%... and, with inflation still way above target, it's another sign of how seriously close to a shattering recession we must be.

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The BBC has a live page, filling up with responses, interviews, comments and questions as they happen, from across the BBC network. You don't need to refresh, it updates itself... It's worth seeing.

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Not just Reese Witherspoon but her partner Jake Gyllenhaal. They're apparently viewing in Mayfair.

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In the north... rent dodgers shamed publically by agents [Daily Mail]
Crazy home sale tactics [BBC]
More family sharing [MSN]

The Rat and Mouse - it's about your house

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In high-foreclosure areas, agents are desperate to differentiate their auctioned property from the one next to it. The Greener Grass Co. sprays brown grass and weeds with a vivid green dye, which lasts three or four months.

Our publisher looks at who's profiting from the crunch, in his weekly column for Citywire.

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A surplus of available property is causing rents to fall in the luxury London sector, according to Knight Frank.

Rents for luxury homes in London fell 1.8 percent in the third quarter as declining property prices encouraged owners to seek tenants rather than selling.

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[click to enlarge]

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Just because the stock market's dropping faster than a Geordie consonant and the future of the entire financial system is in doubt, it doesn't mean there isn't time for another aspirational mega-property piece from Forbes. Because that's what makes London great. Today... the UK's most expensive postcodes in exciting reverse order. I won't spoil your fun. Actually, I will. The top ten are all in the capital, and the top five are SW3 (Chelsea), SW1W (Belgravia), W1K (Mayfair), W8 (Kensington) and SW1X (Knightsbridge), where the average house price is £1,870, 354.

So what's it like up there? Top Ten super-expensive London sales so far this year [October 6, 2008]

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Coombe Cottage, in Borrowdale (the Lake District), is being sold by Vivian Russell, garden photographer and ex-wife of Ken Russell. The house has apparently been graced with the presence of Cliff Richard and Felicity Kendall, and if that's not enough it's also where KR developed Clouds of Glory and Mahler. It's an interesting cottage, dating back to the 1860s, and it's with Cumbrian Properties, listed at £625,000. Particulars, here.

If these walls could talk... Ronnie Barker edition [September 16, 2008]

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Down here, it's a bit quiet. But what about up there, where the super-rich pay £10m and up for their London properties? According to our friend Henry Pryor, it's not bad at all, thank you.

"Looking at sales so far this year we can see that there is still a market for properties over £10m with more than twenty six sales in London alone so far in 2008. Last year we counted just thirty eight in the whole year."

I can feel a Top Ten coming on.

1 14/03/2008 £16,800,000 Gainsborough House, Winnington Road, Barnet, N2 0TS

2 8/07/2008 £15,000,000 10, Chester Square, City Of Westminster, SW1W 9HH

3 25/04/2008 £13,500,000 34, Hans Place, Kensington And Chelsea, SW1X 0JZ

4 30/05/2008 £12,500,000 Walpole House, Chiswick Mall, Hounslow, W4 2PS

5 04/04/2008 £12,250,000 6, Chester Square, City Of Westminster, SW1W 9HH

6 27/05/2008 £11,990,000 14, Upper Phillimore Gardens, Kensington And Chelsea, W8 7HA

7 06/03/2008 £11,500,000 18, South End, Kensington And Chelsea, W8 5BU

8 03/06/2008 £11,500,000 199, 801 Apartment, Knightsbridge, City Of Westminster, SW7 1RH

9 24/06/2008 £10,324,725 21, Flat 2, Chesham Place, Kensington And Chelsea, SW1X 8HG

10 03/06/2008 £10,000,000 26, Phillimore Gardens, Kensington And Chelsea, W8 7QE

More from Mr Pryor:

"In March, Gainsborough House in Barnet sold for £16.8m and in May Thames-side Walpole House in leafy Chiswick for £12.5m. In both cases, agents say they would expect these mega homes to sell for similar sums if they went on the market today. To be honest, people with this kind of money tend to be rich because they understand the markets not despite them. As such, I'm not sure that this would be the case and I see no reason why these homes would not have lost up to 15% of their value as have many others in west London since the peak of the market 12 months ago."

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Remember these guys? They're the two former maths teachers who serviced the kids twice... first they taught them how to work out annual rental expenditure plus deposit, then they rented them property. Now - after buying more than 900 properties, sometimes as many as several a day - they're starting to sell. Not surprisingly, it's the cost of credit that's the deciding factor. The couple's mortgage total?

Fergus is cautious about precise figures, but reckons his properties are worth "around £250m" and that the typical loan-to-value is around 65%. That suggests they have an equity cushion of some £90m - and a mortgage of about £160m. While some householders joke they have a mortgage the size of a small country, in the Wilsons' case it's actually true .

In the interview, they state that they're not behind on their payments. Nor do they intend to crush the Ashford market by unloading everything at once. Still, can't be comforting reading for any Ashford locals struggling to sell homes right now.

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Does she sound bovvered? [Sunday Times]
Meanwhile, Instant Access Properties - buy-to-let boomers - look very bovvered [Mail on Sunday]
So what exactly is a house price crash? [This Is Money]
Ooh, nice find... one-bedroom mini-penthouse in Stokey [Mirror]
Tips for crunched landlords [Sunday Times]
2012... an expensive year for the taxpayer [Observer]
Gazundering tips from the Fool [Fool]
In the north, pub landlords claim squatters' rights [Northern Echo]

The Rat and Mouse - it's about your house

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Earlier, there was news that Guest Invest, the hotel room property investment brokerage, had been placed in administration following the collapse of its HBOS funding. Now, Guest Invest boss Johnny Sandelson is apparently trying to buy the company back. Despite the general property malaise, Guest Invest appears to be doing okay.

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I wonder if any Rat and Mouse readers are heading to the Excel this weekend for... Property Magic Live? If - like me - you thought the days of these get-rich-quick-from-property conferences were kind of, well, over, think again. PML - organised by Simon Zutshi and featuring Dolf de Roos (heard of him!) - will be about seeing the crunch as an opportunity and buying at the bottom, and will cost around £500 a pop. Which is what I call seeing the crunch as an opportunity. For a preview of what's likely to go on, go here (potential freakout warning: Simon will also pop up at the bottom right of your browser, like a strange property-addicted ghost). Don't be surprised to discover weirder stuff at the conference itself. This, from Simon's entry on the Aha! Academy of High Achievers (I swear I'm not making this up):

Simon opened the 5th Annual European Speaker Convention by producing an 8ft metal step ladder out of a briefcase!

If you are going this weekend, we'd love to hear your thoughts afterwards.

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The BBC have uncovered a new (as far as I've heard) and clever fraud aimed at conning London tenants out of thousands of pounds... (as opposed to simply the London lettings market, which is, of course, an old fraud aimed etc). Prospective tenants drawn to unusually cheap lettings advertised in Gumtree are being asked to prove their ability to pay by transferring money, via Western Union, to a friend of their choice, and then sending a scan of the receipt to the "landlord". It's a clever scam... there's always a reason why the property's going so cheap, and the fact that nobody's asking for actual money lulls the prospective tenant into a false sense of security. The scammer then prints off the scanned receipt, takes it to a Western Union office, pretends to be the intended recipient, and takes the money. Gumtree tell the BBC that they're working to combatting the fraud, but that's going to be an uphill battle. What the Rat and Mouse finds disturbing, is how apparently easy it is to scam Western Union. In the meantime, if it looks to good to be true, that's because it is.

***UPDATE*** A useful link courtesy of a reader... thanks, Jim!

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Inman News founder and publisher Brad Inman will be in London on October 16, and will be attending an informal event, from 6pm, at Mayfair's Windmill Pub. Inman News is the US's number one news source for the real estate industry... a powerful brand, respected voice, and, of course, the organisation behind the twice-yearly Real Estate Connect conference. Any industry professionals interested in meeting Brad (and others from the world of property online) for a beer and a chat should put October 16 in the diary right now. For more about Brad and Inman News, read Nestoria's interview here.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate, Web, Web2, web2.0

According to research by mortgage advisers Impartial.co.uk, baby boomers are far from debt-free as they approach retirement. More than a million 55s and over have more than ten years left on their mortgages, and even those with a shorter term still have an average outstanding debt of more than £55,000.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Tesco to launch mortgage products? [Economist]
Locals kick up stink about Colney Hatch Lane "eyesore" [Muswell Hill Journal]
The World's Most Powerful Property People - Top 100 [GlobalEdge]
A homeowner struggles to sell [BBC]
McCain urges Bush to spend a trillion dollars on buying up mortgages [Huffington Post]

The Rat and Mouse - London's property blog

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

According to a poll by Principality Building Society, here's your list of celebrity neighbours from hell, or heaven.

Neighbours from hell:

1. Amy Winehouse
2. Pete Doherty
3. Naomi Campbell
4. Heather Mills McCartney
5. Kerry Katona
6. Ozzy Osbourne
7. David Guest
8. Paris Hilton
9. Gordon Brown
10. Paul Burrell

I know, I know... the houses I've rejected because Paris Hilton's gaff's next door. For your favourite celebrity neighbours, click to keep reading.

***UPDATE: WHY'S GARY GLITTER NOT ON THAT LIST?!***

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As a development, the future of Pan Peninsula is assured. Work is said to be several months ahead of schedule and the towers appear to be almost finished. But as an investment, the immediate future is far less rosy. A local estate agent revealed that a client bought a one-bedroom flat two years ago, off-plan, for £420,000. So far he has paid two deposits totalling 20 per cent of the price, just over £80,000. Now the flat is thought to be worth only £375,000. He is trying to sell for that price. If he can sell, it will limit his loss to £45,000. If he cannot, he faces losing his deposit of more than £80,000.

This is what the expression "crunch time" was invented for. We say... if the buyer has the cash (and that's not inconceivable considering the kind of investor who was eyeing up flip possibilities when the Pan Pensinsula project was launched)... go ahead, finish the deal, live in it or get a tenant, and wait. You've only lost money if you sell at or near the bottom.

"Several months ahead of schedule", though... interesting, isn't it, how falling prices can focus a developer's mind?

Pen Peninsula - details emerging [December 5, 2008]

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If you believe the wider media, the credit crunch is directly responsible for this novel approach to property sales, and behind the Wilshaws of Devon and the Bawtrees of Cheltenham are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of desperate vendors, with barely a sniff of a viewing to show for months on the market, kneeling on the lounge floor, hugging each other and cutting lottery tickets.

But, the property raffle wasn’t invented during the credit crunch. Over at the Rat and Mouse property blog, we watched with interest as several schemes, came, talked the talk (‘a house for a fiver’, ‘a really great way for first-time buyers to get a foot on the rung’… really!), failed to sell enough tickets to meet the minimum figure necessary to release the deeds (always check the small print), and went… a portion of the takings handed over to the winner, the rest pocketed to cover ‘expenses’.

Our publisher tackles the numerical and legal uncertainties of the property raffle, in his guest column over at Citywire.

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Later than we expected, Nationwide have published their house price figures for September. It's another 1.7% fall in the month, leaving the annual figure down 12.4%... a number that's getting a bit of press this morning since it's the biggest annual fall figure since 1991. Meanwhile, accompanying literature from Nationwide's Fionnuala Earley points out that the rate of fall is beginning to stabilise, and draws on the company's 50 years of house price measurement to suggest that these boom and bust cycles might mean alot at the time - if you're in a hurry to sell, or you've borrowed at the top on a demanding loan-to-value ration - but what they say about the long-term house price trend is negligible.

Recent trends are interesting, too.

These graphs are important, if we're to put current trends in perspective. But with volume at such a dramatic low, who really knows what a house is worth? If you want to read the Nationwide report yourself, click this for a pdf.

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Northern Rock's new mortgage range [Housefund.co.uk]
Home improvement craze sparks rogue trader boom [Channel 4]
In Cheltenham, developers sell remaining houses for social housing, private residents angry [Western Daily Press]
Can Mervyn survive? [Telegraph]
How bad could it really get? [Citywire]
Free car; buy now, pay fees later... desperate estate agents [BBC]

The Rat and Mouse - it's about your house

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... propped up by oil and commodity prices, according to Reuters, and a scarcity of London homes in the £10m-and-over band. Above £20m, according to Savills, deals were up 200% in the first six months of the year.

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(Offer good in selected regions only.) The story is that City analysts Dresdner Kleinwort have seen documents traced back to Barratt's Yorkshire East offices offering discounts of up to 43%. More here.

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