According to Winkworth, there's no sign of London's top-end boom market ending soon, while wealthy Eurozone and Middle Eastern buyers continue to plough money in. Prices in Knightsbridge, Chelsea and Belgravia rose 17% in 2011, with 41% of those sales involving figures above £2m (up from 33% in 2010). London's safe haven status is behind the demand, and a shortage of available properties is pushing prices ever higher. More here.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Property. According to this, her well-connected father-in-law (Francois Pinault, founder of PPR) has just paid £20m for Uncle Monty's pad, a two-bedroom property with famous triple-heigh ceilings (in case Hayek needs to lie down) in Glebe House, Glebe Place, Chelsea.

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It's this that's caused the fuss. A double space in an underground car park on Basil Street, Knightsbridge, with a guide price of £200,000 and currently under offer. The price of an average UK home? £163,049, according to the latest HBOS index, which actually surprised everybody by rising 1.2% on the month, still leaving the three month average down 3.5% on where it was a year ago.

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And they wonder why the Brits are obsessed with property investment. It's Gilston Lodge, last on the market in 1958 when it sold for £5,000. Now, this detached six-bedroom house with garage right in the heart of Chelsea is one of the area's hot property's, creating more than a little excitement and expected to fetch in excess of £8.5m. Whoever buys it will need even deeper pockets, though, as it will need a few more million spent on refurbishment. The house has received 50 viewings in three weeks, and will go to sealed bids. Particulars here.

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Upper-crust reality TV show Made In Chelsea may be over, but the party goes on in London’s good-looking postcode... A trust fund clearly offers an advantage when it comes to buying into the Chelsea lifestyle. However, says Nicholas Ayre of buying agent Home Fusion: ‘If you are prepared to compromise, a budget of £300,000 is realistic.’

So... a fifth-floor studio flat for £350,000 anyone? Or how about a two bedroom apartment for £250,000, with four years remaining on the lease? (Both properties are featured in the piece.) Don't all shout at once.

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Think again. The former Wonderbra model is apparently locked in a dispute with her Chelsea neighbours over plans to gut and rebuild her five-storey property. She's apparently had planning permission for extensive ground floor work and a giant basement, but she's pushing for a complete interior rebuild. The plans were previously rejected because of the disruption to the road, but she's an appeal scheduled for mid-May. Her neighbours - according to this - have clubbed together to hire a QC to represent them, and delivered a petition with 80 signatures. She appears undaunted. If the work does go ahead, let's hope she's planning on selling, because I doubt she'll be in a position to pop next door for a cup of sugar.

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The Independent reports on the £25m nine-bedroom Chelsea mansion that Roman Abramovich has apparently bought as a kind of temporary home while his proper gaff is being done up. The article also questions the wisdom of buying a Cheyne Walk property so close to Lindsey House, whose garden will be opened to the public in September's Open House event. The suggestion is that there'll be as many football fans as garden enthusiasts.

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It's 12ft by 23ft, it's located in Knightsbridge and it's securely managed by Harrods Asset Management. You'll have to pay a £710 annual service charge, and it's available to local residents only. Mind you, only local residents could afford it. More here.

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According to this, NIgella Lawson and Charles Saatchi's neighbours shouldn't expect an invitation to one of her lovely but just-elegantly-informal-enough dinners any time soon. An Egyptian couple, occupying the floor above their £10m Belgravia home, have offended the pair by erecting some unsightly scaffolding and spoiling their view. When their neighbours refused to remove it, Saatchi apparently took the matter into his own hands, or rather into the more calloused hands of some hired labourers - and oversaw the scaffolding's removal himself, apparently damaging some tiles in the process. Police were called, no less.

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Zoopla's revealed the UK's most expensive postcodes, and it's topped - less than surprisingly - with W8, where average property prices are in excess of £1.5m. The most expensive street? Kensington Palace Gardens... at £18m a house, on average. Other £1m+ postcodes are SW7, SW3, W11 and SW10. Virginia Water, alone, represents the rest of the country in the top ten list.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

There's a Press Association piece here about Ocean... this extremely striking houseboat moored at Cadogan Pier, and currently marketed by Foxtons, at £1m (illustration, above). They're saying it's the most expensive houseboat they've ever had on their books, and it comes with a swimming pool, a sunken (literally) utility room, three bedrooms with bathrooms and that kick-ass location. It's not, however, the most expensive houseboat currently on the market. Check out this Putney-moored four-bedroom extravaganza, with a 30ft reception room and a guide price of £1.3m (illustration, below). I've always thought there was a real romance to the houseboat, but that may well be because I've never lived on one. Anyone have any London houseboat experiences, good or bad?

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The London market's set to blow up in an extravagant excess of top Capital property values, according to London Central Portfolio, a property search and management company. Expect - according to LCP chief Naomi Heaton in conversation with the Standard here - Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea prices to rebound 80% from recent lows.

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Let me introduce you: Rat and Mouse reader, 68 Old Church Street; 68 Old Church Street, Rat and Mouse reader.

Regular readers will know the Rat and Mouse has a penchant for things modern. When I say "modern", I mean Modern... and this three bedroom flat in SW3 has proper Modern credentials. The property is a part of a larger house, commissioned by playwright Benn Levy, and built by Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius himself in 1936. It shares cutting edge construction material with the Empire State Building. The flat itself was separated off shortly after the war, with additional work by architect Jane Drew. It's with Chesterton Humberts, at £1,500 a week. Particulars here.

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They cause flooding, they effect the "architectural balance" of properties, they put tall trees at risk, according to the preservationists, who - after a little local flooding - hired consulting engineers to look have a look. (No evidence... they said.) Anyway, the news is that after a last super-ambitious underground development, the council has announced a moratorium on future burrowing.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

According to Jonathan Russell in the Telegraph it could. An acre of prime Chelsea, bought for £20m in 2002, about to hit the market after a receivership, will test the confidence of the property pros.

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Today, Richard Rogers demands a public enquiry into the constitutional issues surrounding Prince Charles' scuppering of his Chelsea Barracks plans. For those who don't know... the site of Kensington's old Chelsea Barracks has been a development battle ground for a number of years - with skirmishes over a listed chapel, finances coming and going as the economic crisis hit. Things have recently looked more positive... a Richard Rogers design, funding by the Qatari royals... until Prince Charles apparently used his influence to persuade his Qatari pals to remove their support for the Rogers plans. Prince Charles famously despises modern architecture; and this is the third time he's intervened in a project by Rogers (Paternoster Square; Royal Opera House). We can forgive Rogers for feeling sore, and we should lend our support in his campaign to stop this unconstitutional architectural bullying. Unless, of course, we want London to look like Trumpton.

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Down from £700,000 to £500,000 since it hit the market in March... a modern and refurbished first-floor studio on the King's Road. Particulars, here.

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Remember this, a 2008 casualty of the property slump... when a tasty £35m deal on Khan's Chelsea Square property renovation fell through, costing her £15m? There's apparently not been much action since, either, and the latest is that she's given up, removed the property from Aylesford's listings, and moved in.

Was Jemima Khan really "robbed"? [September 15, 2008]
Whoops - just bought another house... [May 3, 2006]

Technorati Tags: celebrity, London, property, real estate

An eight-bedroom semi-detached house with parking, in The Vale, off The King's Road, owned by the estate of Severin Wunderman, the man behind Gucci watches and Corum, and a man with unique taste. Giant gold-leaf ram's head? Check. Gothic hobbit house guest accommodation? Check (and pictured). Skulls on shelves? Check. Wunderman, who described himself as being fascinated with death, died last spring. The house was originally being marketed at £15.5m. It's guide price is now £10.5m. It's with Hamptons. Particulars here.

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Okay, PropertyWeek.com's on the side of the deal, and there's nothing wrong with that, but was Jemima Khan really "robbed" after her buyers pulled out of their deal and cost her £15m of profit? The story concerns this purchase, made a couple of years ago, and her subsequent renovation and extension of the Chelsea Square property. She was about to sell, apparently for £35m, when the buyer developed cold feet.

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We're talking about Lord Cadogan, the toff previously known as Viscount Chelsea, one of SW3's premier landowners, who according to this, just earned a much needed £30m in dividends from the Cadogan Group.

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No, not Kevin Rowland, Kelly Rowland - one of the other ones in Destiny's Child and a different prospect all together. Apparently, she was seen at Mamilanji on Saturday night, where she tested the piano and a DJ pal tested the decks. All were in order, and so she's now testing property in Chelsea. Estate agents... scramble!

Technorati Tags: celebrity, London, property, real estate

The Evening Standard reports on falling asking prices here and there across the capital, including many of the top postcodes. According to Rightmove figures:

Average asking prices in Kensington and Chelsea have fallen £33,000 to £1,458,558 - down more than 2.2 per cent between March and April.

Oddly, though, asking prices rose (by 3.8%) in Hackney.

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The Evening Standard has the scoop... and a picture. It looks impressive... not least how the Candys have managed to squeeze 638 housing units, a boutique hotel and spa, a community hall, sports centre and a landscaped public park into less than thirteen acres.

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Interior designer Richard Adams bought it in 2004 for £250,000, and set about scraping the snails off the damp carpet. Now, it's all silk wallpapered, Venetian chandeliered and juxtaposing Baroque with Modern in a way designers pull off and I don't. And it's on the market for £650,000 (the furnishings to be sold separately). Where? Cheyne Court, in Chelsea. Particulars, here. Interesting piece in the New York Times, here.

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As promised, I'll be dropping in a few choice properties that didn't make it into the Rat and Mouse's special ten days of property porn. This morning, a £9m, 3-bedroom (yes - those numbers are correct) house in The Vale between Fulham Road and the Kings Road, which I received by email (the particulars, not the house) just after leaving for my vacation. It's described as a studio house. I'm not entirely sure what that means. It's also described as spectacular. What do you think? Particulars, here.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Thanks to the Rat and Mouse reader with expensive tastes who sent us this. Old Swan House, at 32 Chelsea Embankment, is a £32m mansion, 19,000 sq ft and Grade 1-listed. You can tell it's the real deal because its staff bedrooms outnumber the guest bedrooms, adding up to 20. The dining room seats 20, there's a swimming pool, lift, ballroom, cinema and underground parking for five cars. Particulars, here.

Tomorrow, silver birches in Muswell Hill.

The Particulars - what's this about?

How about some good news to take with us to the weekend? In January, the Rat and Mouse called on its readers to write in protest at plans to demolish Joseph Rykwert's last remaining London building to make way for a luxury residential development by Foster & Partners.

The planning inspectors have moved to save Inner Court (Old Church Street, Chelsea), and criticised the Foster plan as "inward-looking", "monolithic" and potentially resulting in "a poor neighbourly effect".

[via Building Design Online]

Technorati Tags: architecture, design, London, property, real estate

So property price increases in Prime Central London might have taken a hit, but the same can't be said for rental growth which, according to Knight Frank, reached its highest point in eight years... 12.2% June-to-June. If you're a landlord, how did you do in the postcode lottery? Here are the winning numbers... SW1, SW3, NW1, SW10, W8, and the bonus postcode is W14. This month's jackpot isn't as high as you might expect. Although house prices in these postcodes have slipped slightly in the last quarter, they've still, historically, outstripped rental growth, meaning that in a lot of cases yields aren't actually that impressive. If you own the property, though, and you bought it in time... who cares?

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

You've just been looking at Swan House, down the road at 17 Chelsea Embankment. Sixteen bedrooms, views of the Thames, swimming pool, lift, theatre, plasma TV (just kidding)... it's listed at £32 million and it's one of a handful of London properties in a special Forbes feature about how the fabulously rich are forming fabulously long queues outside fabulously happy London estate agents' offices because multimillion pound superhomes with for sale signs are fabulously rare here right now. Which is, of course, all correct. Except it's interesting that the slide show starts with Updown Court and Toprak Mansion, both of which have been on the market for, well, forever...

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

It's 12ft by 6ft, an unconverted cleaner's cupboard in the basement of 18 Cadogan Place, and it's still, apparently, full of rubble. The property has already received three offers. Interviewed in the Times, a Lane Fox director suggests someone might want to use it as a place to store their housekeeper or au pair.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

If you're one of those people who are particularly sensitive to interest rate moves at the moment, now might be the time to be afraid... very afraid. Rightmove's latest house price report suggests the latest upward movement wasn't nearly enough to dampen the current surge. This month, the annual inflation rate has reached 11.5%, and prices rose 2% in the month. Rightmove's Miles Shipside comments on an interesting Catch 22:

"Supply of houses coming onto the market is dropping as prices increase, because fewer home owners can afford to trade up."

More here. Meanwhile, other news sources are choosing to focus on one specific area... Kensington & Chelsea, where the Rightmove report suggests an average house price of just under £1 million. £999,087 to be precise. Rightmove claim Chelsea's annual inflation figure has reached 65%, and Westminster's 53%.

The New York Times's Great Homes section runs a special Knightsbridge feature. Mentioned in the doomsday book, close to Harrods, close to Harvey Nicks, village atmosphere, old Bentley's parked in the street, tall ceilings, big rooms, communal gardens... the Americans love it. There's an entertaining little slide show; and they focus on a Lowndes Square home, on the market at just over five and half million dollars. The lounge is lovely. The kitchen, too. But look at the bedroom... wouldn't you think about clearing some of the rubble of the tables? Opening the curtains? Removing the weird wall decorations? Come on, it's not like it's cheap.

It was only a few days ago that Hugh Grant was complaining he had London properties coming out of his ears, and now a City financier tells the Evening Standard that he's just sold his Chelsea home to Grant and Jemima Khan for a reported £18 million - making the property the most expensive per square foot in London. We don't have an address (which makes sending our moving in card difficult). But apparently it's in a square off the King's Road, has three garages and nine bedrooms, and a quarter of an acre of garden. Oh yeah, and it looks like this.

... The bronze handles on all the major doors were handbeaten in Italy from designs moulded in clay by [Mauro] Perruchetti...

It's not your ordinary Chelsea mansion... this is The Courthouse, an historic 18th Century judicial building and holding tank for prisoners destined for the colonies, recently gutted and refurbished to astonishing levels of detail, and for sale, with Aylesford for £10.6 million. The whole, amazing story is here, courtesy of the Telegraph.

With a children's slide shooting down from the attic, a pair of beds that look like space pods, blue rubber floors and pink walls -- not to mention a museum's worth of contemporary art and design -- one easily could mistake the London home of Kenny Schachter and Ilona Rich for an avant-garde playground.

The Schachters' Chelsea townhouse - celebrated here in the Chicago Tribune - was designed by Ab Rogers, whose own home the Rat and Mouse looked at recently. Ab clearly believes children should sleep in pods (his own kids do; so why not the Schachters, for Christ's sake?). The Rat and Mouse isn't going to generalise about that kind of thing, but we've got nothing against pods per se. Or children. Or architects. In this instance, however, it appears the Schachter children themselves have had the last say regarding the pod arrangements. They apparently prefer to sleep on a large mattress on the floor. Ah, "Shanty Town Chic", know it well.
Wimbledon Zip Up [January 11]

Prices are soaring, apparently, in Merton, where prices rose 0.9% in January - way above the 0.1% national average (all figures courtesy of Hometrack). Merton was equalled only by Kensington & Chelsea - where prices, aided by six months of City bonus chatter - were almost certain to rise. More, here.

The minute I walk through the door of my £3.5m Chelsea penthouse, I feel very much at home. The white piano, the Oriental-style gold wall-screens, the silver lobster on the dining room table, the rooftop views over the houses of people poorer than myself - these are me to a T.

But the Independent's Christopher Middleton never really finds out whether it's him to a T, although he does spend a night at 35 Benham House in the King's Chelsea development (on the King's Road). It's a kind of try-before-you-don't-buy experiment. But being a journalist (or perhaps the bed was just so damn comfy) he finds all his neighbours have gone to work by the time he gets up, and he spends his day wishing the show flat's bread was edible and the TV tuned in. Seriously, though... it reads like a bit of a wasted opportunity. Those of us who can't afford to live in these kind of pads tell ourselves they're soulless and lacking in community spirit. But, apparently, the gym is packed from 6-8am. Pity he didn't get up a bit earlier. I wonder what a packed 6am gym is like when it's attached to King's Chelsea? Competitive iron pumping? Friendly financial markets gossip? Anybody out there know, and want to spill the beans?

God, not another did you know you could by an entire grid of four-bedroom homes in Glasgow for the price of a single garage in central London stories... (like you can park your car in Glasgow and duck over to Quaglino's... like you can park your car in Glasgow and expect it to be there when you return...). Actually, this is the mother of all expensive London garage stories, because the Sunday Times have put together a little guide to garages currently for sale, from a £300,000 single garage behind Egerton Crescent in Chelsea (features: "in addition there is a rainwater drainpipe..."), to an underground parking space off Kensington High Street on the market at £95,000. More, here.