"What downturn?" asks Jasper Conran. His Chiswick Mall (those nice ones by the river... occasional flooding, a few good pubs, huge bay windows, views over an island) house has recently sold for £12.5m, breaking its own record (£7.25m) as the biggest Chiswick deal ever. Walpole House is set back from the road... it's an ex-home for vagrant girls and an ex-boys' school (the model, apparently, for Miss Pinkerton's Academy). Conran bought it just two years ago. Asking prices in Chiswick have been hit harder than most. According to Land Registry documents Conran sold the house on May 30.

Technorati Tags: celebrity, London, property, real estate

The Telegraph takes a peak inside Chiswick's Oddfellows Hall... a Victorian building, built by the masons, and featuring four entrances and four addresses. It's been used as a wedding venue and an artist's studio, before the current owner - an estate agent/property developer - snapped it up for £385,000 in 2002 (I know, I know) and gave it a radically modern re-fit. Now it's all plasma screen in the bathroom ceiling, under-floor heating and cinema rooms. What's it doing in the Telegraph? It's for rent... £3,900 a month, from Featherstone Leigh. I can't find Japanese water feature nor wet room of it on the FL website, but luckily you can see more pictures here.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

According to this, from Australia, Williams is considering leaving LA to move in with his best friend and former housemate actor Jonathan Wilkes, plus Wilkes' wife and son. Apparently, Wilkes has been spotted house-hunting in Chiswick.

Technorati Tags: celebrity, London, property, real estate

Remember this?

Dec has bought a £1.9 million house just 150 yards away from Ant in Chiswick. It's a mock-Tudor mansion, which style-icon Dec intends to demolish as soon as possible and replace with a mock-Edwardian mansion, identical in every way to Ant's home. And to achieve this, he will be employing Ant's architect, Stuart Hemingway.

Looks like his neighbours have spoken...

Technorati Tags: celebrity, London, property, real estate

Everybody wants to live in Chiswick right now. Have you ever wondered what one of those flats above the shops on the High Road is like? Here's a new conversion, on the market with Featherstone Leigh, comprising four bedrooms, one reception and two bathrooms... 1,948 square feet of space. It's listed at £595,000, and it's very convenient for Superdrug.

Chiswick is "an area that's been coming up, but no one talks about it very much," said Dalton, of Knight Frank. "But it's an area that needs to be spoken about and shouted about.

That's Knight Frank's Tony Dalton talking to the International Herald Tribune about W4 - home to Dennis Waterman and Ant and Dec. The Trib's hyping Chiswick like it's just invested in property there... insisting it's both the new Notting Hill, the better Belgravia and family-friendly Ealing rolled into one. Which I guess it kind of is, if restaurants, organic food shops and Nick Jones's plans for Fouberts are the criteria. But I lived on the border of Chiswick (in other words, Hammersmith) until very recently (and always liked the place), but I'm just finding the whole hoo-hah hard to buy for one reason and that's geography. Call me a spoilsport, but once you get past Fulham isn't there some kind of inescapable cap on coolness? Especially on an area dominated by the sounds of the A4? I hope I'm wrong. It would be nice to see some money filter out away from what the agents like to call "prime central" London... the Rat and Mouse will be paying particular attention to Chiswick house prices throughout 2006. What do you think... let us know.

Platform romance [May 6]
Bedford Park - sanitory [March 24]
Ant and Dec are buying Chiswick [March 18]

Colette Browne, who set up Chiswick estate agency PropertyGarden.com has told the Sunday Telegraph that she believes rival estate agents are targeting her with a dirty tricks campaign. She claims local agents have wasted her time by posing as customers and are stealing her for sale boards. You can read the full story here. You can also earn yourself a £200 reward by photographing the board rustler in action. Make sure you get a clear shot of the vehicle, and its registration number, so Browne can round up a posse and run the varmint out of town.