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Area: N6
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This time... a house that was being renovated, until the owner ran out of money, and a bunch of Polish squatters. The Telegraph takes exception with one squatter's comment that they couldn't afford the rent in Highgate, so just "moved in".
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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Nothing to do with a riot... Zoopla's newly updated heat maps are available, illustrating average property price hotspots. Informative and addictive.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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It's a blue plaque property - former home to Coleridge and JB Priestley - and Kate Moss's plans for a satellite dish, security cameras, basement kitchen and gym/steam room aren't delighting her neighbours.
The details plans are online here.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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They made it into the papers earlier in the month when Latvian squatter Jason Ruddick painted a picture of Eastern European squatter tours... Latvians heading for the amazing city of London where mansions came rent-free. The right wing press loved it. They're in the papers again today, having been moved forcibly from their Highgate "home" by bailiffs, and pictured here cheekily scanning a London property magazine. Apparently, they're moving onto bigger and better things... nearer to The Bishops Avenue. Anyone know where they are now?
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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It's in a few papers... the story of Jason Ruddick, the Latvian who hitchhiked to London after being told it was a city in which you didn't have to pay rent, and who now lives, rent-free, in a 10-bedroom Victorian house on Highgate's Broadlands Road.
He admitted that in Latvia, squatters were routinely arrested and hauled before the courts, but said Britain was an “easy touch”, adding: "It's really expensive to live in such a big house if you have to pay for it."
This should wipe the smile off his face. Seriously, is this interview for real? He sounds like a Daily Mail plant.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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She's a 44-year-old woman who's rented council house was taken over by contractors and eventually turned into a site office while significant work was carried out on a neighbouring leisure centre. In the meantime (a long meantime, it turns out, of about two years) the woman and her family have been housed in a Grade II listed Victorian lodge by James Pennethorne, in a neighbourhood inhabited by the likes of George Michael and Sting, on the edge of a 29-acre park. The press is enjoying pointing out that this is a £2.5m property which would cost in the region of £2,000 a week to rent. What's an ordinary person like this - who hasn't even made a single hit record - doing in it? The council responds that the property was empty, and it would have cost more to house her in a B&B. Okay, she's been living rent-free, but let's consider the fact she's been put to considerable inconvenience. She'll be back in her council house just as soon as it's been restored to a habitable state.
Mother lives rent free in Britain's costliest council house
Family lives rent-free in £2.5m home
Mum gets £2.5m council house rent-free for 2 years
etc etc
Technorati Tags: property, real estate |
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According to this, they've got their eyes on a 6 bedroom, £4m period home in Highgate. Which property? We're not sure. Maybe this? If you know, please get in touch.
Technorati Tags: celebrity, London, property, real estate |
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We don't have particulars or an asking price yet, but the news is that Patsy Kensit's about to chuck her four-storey home, near Hornsey Lane, onto the market. More here.
Technorati Tags: celebrity, London, property, real estate |
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He's Doug Potts in Emmerdale... and he's also been Clifford on Acorn Antiques, Stan in dinnerladies, and a stalwart of many Royal Shakespeare Company productions. He's a terrific actor, but he's leaving London for Yorkshire, and his very nice (and very very nicely situated) two-bedroom Highgate apartment, with views over the heath, is for sale with Litchfields. The guide price is £799,950. Particulars here.
Technorati Tags: celebrity, London, property, real estate |
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Plans submitted to Camden Council reveal ambitious basement plans for the Highgate mansion and star of Fame Academy, including an underground swimming pool, cinema, car park (for 24 cars), and living/dining room for servants. It's believed to a be a record-breaking project, and the Highgate Society is described here as cautious here about setting a precedent that could see an underground building spree around Hampstead Heath. Interestingly, the piece, in Camden New Journal, describes the owner as "currently anonymous". Does that mean Elena Baturina has flipped the property already?
Witanhurst - flipped, but slowly [July 16, 2008]
Witanhurst - ready to flip? [September 4, 2007]
Plans for London's most expensive home [July 19, 2007]
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate |
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The recession here is a mere mouse-squeak in the roar of fame and infamy that rolls round these megalithic houses.
Blimey. The Telegraph's Caroline McGhie is in Hampstead, visiting a few properties that start at £25m on Courtenay Avenue and The Biships Avenue. Nor - apparently - is it just journalists visiting... the developers say they're getting viewings, and lots of them.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate |
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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 |
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The news, almost exactly a year ago to the day, was of Marcus Cooper's £32m purchase of Witanhurst, Highgate's 65-room West Hill mock-Georgian mansion, and plans to do it up and sell it on for an estimated £150m. By September, the talk was of a flip, for £75m. You see, those were the days... the days of 234% profit in less than two months. How things have changed. In the current market it takes an entire 12 months to make a measly 156% profit on a property. The news, today, is that London's second largest gaff - after Buckingham Palace - has, at last, found a buyer, and has been picked up, for £50m, by Russia's first richest woman, Elena Baturina... who according to the Telegraph is so rich she's actually married to a construction company.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate |
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Almost a year ago, the Rat and Mouse reported on squatter Harry Hallowes' £2m windfall, after a judge awarded him squatters' rights to a little parcel of land on the edge of Hampstead Heath.
He was back in the news on Saturday, in a piece about the problems he's creating for a local developer, who has plans to build an unpleasant-sounding pile of tack on land shared by Mr Hallowes and grand 19th Century home Athlone House. The plan was to bulldoze both. The Highgate Society is opposing one; Hallowes the other. But the squatter can at least comfort himself with the knowledge that - according to a valuation in the Daily Mail - he's made a 100% profit in just 11 months:
His small plot is now worth a staggering £4million.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate |
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According to figures from Mouseprice, Kensington & Chelsea's glory days are over, and it's Courtenay Avenue, a road running parallel to The Bishop's Avenue, in Highgate that's now paved in the thickest gold and lined with the bushiest money trees. The average property price necessary to achieve this? Just £6.8m. Last year, the winner was Kensington Square, with an average price a whole 23% less than this year's... an example of what's happening in the prime-and-above market. Go here for some interesting analysis from Bloomberg.
Tumbleweed blowing down Millionaires' Row [February 18, 2008]
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate |
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In fact, if all goes to plan, it will beat the UK's current most expensive home - Updown Court - by a full £75m, to become the country's finest and most beloved symbol of excess. Currently, though, it's where they make Fame Academy.
According to this in the Telegraph Witanhurst - the mock-Georgian, slightly dilapidated mansion on West Hill, in Highgate, has just been bought - all 5.5 acres and 65 rooms - by developer Marcus Cooper for £32m. The plan is to restore the 1920s building, which you might have seen starring in Nicholas Nickleby and/or Tipping The Velvet (it played a house), to its former glory and then sell it for £150m. Sounds like a lot of money? It is - of course - a lot of money. But Witanhurst is also the second largest private house in London after Buckingham Palace. Whoever buys it will be able to look down their nose at considerably poorer neighbours George Michael and Sting. The Rat and Mouse would like to offer its congratulations to Knight Frank for their involvement in the sale.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate |
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Seventy-year-old Harry Hallowes was evicted from his Highgate council flat back in 1987 but, keen to remain in the area, he moved onto the heath, building a little shack and squatting there ever since. Recently he's been in a court battle with developers Dwyer, pitting his own squatter's rights (which kick in after 12 years) against their plans to build houses on the disputed plot of land. He won; which may mean (and this isn't yet confirmed by the Land Registry) that he also wins deeds to the piece land, with an estimated value of £2m. A happy ending? A prime plot of land saved from an evil developer by a nature-respecting freedom-lover without a thought for the lucre? Don't hold your breath:
[Hallowes] added: "I won't be having a bird sanctuary or anything like that. Maybe I'll build myself a house to live in – everybody else around here seems to love building houses!"
[via the Telegraph]
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate |
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So the Highgate Society, in its ongoing campaign to banish the estate agents from the "village", thinks a survey will do the trick, and so polls the residents. We're not so sure it's helped. According to this, only 16% wanted to see fewer estate agents on the High Street. What's more, the overall response to being given a say has been less than charitable... and resulted in the selection of a brand new target for a brand new hate campaign. This time? Charity shops.
Luke O'Toole, a volunteer at the Cancer Research UK shop in Highgate High Street said he was very surprised by the finding. He said: "Business here is going very well, so it seems a bit strange. I certainly don't see why there should be fewer charity shops. Most people seem very happy with what we are doing and we offer a good service."
Parkheath estate agents - Highgate's final straw [January 9]
Evict the estate agents of Highgate [December 16] |
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In the last days of 2005 the Rat and Mouse pointed readers to some comments by novelist Andrew Martin in the New Statesman, in which he nominated the estate agents of Highgate for eviction (part of an ill-spirited column in which various thinkers were given the opportunity to put the boot in wherever they liked). He's back... this time in the Telegraph... and with an interesting tale of a Highgate Society petition to limit the number of estate agents in the area. There's a suggestion that the final straw came when Parkheath got around a retail lease requirement by opening a shop selling scented candles on the ground floor and doing their business in the basement. According to Martin, not only have most of the agents themselves have signed the petition... as each tires of competing for business with 15 others... but Chris Underhill (of the venerable Prickett, Ellis and Underhill) was one of the petition's co-originators. Surely, logic suggests that when business is too thin on the ground and competition has driven down commissions to a point at which they no longer make renting premises in Highgate economical, the market will do some natural culling. In the meantime, I wonder if vendors are profiting from vastly reduced commissions? If you've a tale to tell, we'd love to hear it. |
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Shameless surfing for property porn turned up the fact that London's second largest house (after Buckingham Palace) is up for sale through Knight Frank. A snip at £32M, This cosy little pied-a-terre boasts 25 bedrooms and 5.5 acres of garden. |
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