Award for the most eye-catching headline of the morning goes to the Sun.

It's the story of two "gypsies", their twelve kids, one five-bedroom £1.2m Muswell Hill semi, Haringey Council and some very angry neighbours, collapsed ceilings, used toilet rolls used as weapons, and kids wandering naked in the street. There's a dossier on the family, which appears to have been passed on to the Sun by someone from the council, which may (should) result in repercussions. The neighbours have formed a special neighbourhood watch team charged solely with monitoring the family. The Sun article is a lesson in journalistic provocation ("Children run amok everywhere, riding shiny new bikes around the corridors", "The chain-smoking couple", "Tanya, who lives off benefits"), but i wouldn't want to live next-door to them. The final word, however, goes to the neighbour who commented thus:

"A house like that one should be worth around £1.2million. But with the state it's in at the moment, it might only be worth £700,000."

Because this is, after all, London.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Woodland Terrace is a development of nine houses on Twyford Avenue, with their own tennis court right next door. But who cares about tennis, when you're a GCSE certificate's throw away from the popular Fortismere School? According to the Telegraph, the Woodland Terrace is proving crunch-resistant... the homes going on sale for between £500,000 and £800,000 above local average. Yet, no matter how many times I read the pertinent paragraph, the Rat and Mouse is struck by the fact that the homes are for sale, rather than sold. Fortismere's headteacher's funny, though:

"Some have suggested that this [premium] may run to hundreds of thousands, depending on the property. It would be interesting to speculate on what we could do at the school if all of these families, and the building developers, returned the favour by donating, say, five per cent of the value the school has added to their houses."

The Rat and Mouse bets you that won't happen.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

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.

The Particulars - what's this about?

It's Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko's place, of course, and it's still boarded up. As rumours mount that a full scale nuclear winter has broken out in his breakfast nook, Haringey Council has been engaging in an unseemly row with billionaire owner Boris Berezovsky about who should pay to extract the radioactive badness from the Osier Crescent house. Berezovsky refused, arguing that Litvinenko's killers should pay. Clearly, that would be the gentlemanly thing to do, but something tells me the rules of this particular game have already been proved pretty lax. Now, the council have announced a u-turn... at least partially. They've agreed to pay £15,000 for a survey. The Rat and Mouse considers this a waste of money. Surely Polonium-210 will show up on the HIP?

[via BBC]

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate