Tony Benn MP has put his weight behind a campaign to stop Kensington & Chelsea council selling off Holland Park School's playing fields to developers (who plan, apparently, to knock up a bit of luxury housing). The school's being rebuilt, and the council's looking to raise cash. Benn - who sent his own children to the school, and whose wife was chair of the governors - clearly has an emotional attachment to the institution.... the first purpose-built comprehensive in London. More here.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Except, only by the Standard. Mittal's people remain silent.

Mittal seals giant Kensington Palace Gardens deal? [May 23, 2008]

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Rumours are surfacing that Lakshmi Mittal has bought another gaff in Kensington Palace Gardens, this time for his son Aditya. The property was on the market for £117m. Mittal's apparently denying all knowledge of the deal. We'll come back with confirmation should we find it.

Technorati Tags: 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.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

It's a five-storey home in Kensington's Upper Phillimore Gardens, rumoured to have exchanged for £80m, the deal done by a Ukrainian businesswoman and friend to Elton John. If the rumour's true, it's something of a triumph for Mike Spink, who bought the property (number 17) in June 2006 for... £20m, and has spent a further on it £10m since. Hey, is somebody going to tell the super-prime market, there's supposed to be a price crash happening here...

Technorati Tags: London, property, real_estate

Kicking the series off... a bright and arresting, love-it-or-hate-it three-bedroom modern townhouse on Kensington's Abingdon Road off Kensington High Street, with off-street parking, a huge reception room, conservatory, garden and innovative design. £3.9m, here

Tomorrow, a budget penthouse.

The Particulars - what's this about?

A two-bedroom, two-bathroom let, on Pembroke Road between Kensington High Street and Cromwell Road... apparently rented by Sir Elton John and David Furnish during 2005 when their usual Holland Park pad was being refitted. It's 2,450 sq ft, and rents for £2,000 a week. For more details, go here.

If these walls could talk... 17th Century hooker edition [June14, 2007]

Technorati Tags: 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

It's always a shame when an interesting comment comes in way at the back of the blog where it's unlikely to be seen. So you'll forgive me if I occasionally drag the more interesting little snippets of London residential life to the front? Recently, we had this interesting thread on the subject of the Ferrier Estate. Now - in contrast - life on what was - at least in 2005 - London's richest street.

I live in Earls Terrace, W8, and the place is like Fort Knox: I can not do a thing without CCTV cameras and the Gorillas (security people) watching everything. I will have to escape from this prison.

Posted by rebel child at May 8, 2007 10:56 PM

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

The Times reports that well-heeled Londoners are waking up to the fact that, although period features and location are always advisable, nothing feels more like luxury in the Capital than a bit of space. As news of Barratt's first downloadable home, the iPad, reaches the papers, some new Kensington residents have proved that they're prepared to pay up to £12 million for a few thousand square feet more than the average, over at Phillimore Square, a new luxury development in W8. The Times' Anne Ashworth calculates you could fit as many as 23 iPads into the largest of the Phillimore Square apartments.

Westcity, the developer, says that the homes sold unexpectedly quickly without publicity, despite not being ready for occupancy until mid-summer. This is a further indication of the buoyant state of the City- bonus-driven London property market. What some agents call a "feeding frenzy" among buyers is being exacerbated by a shortage of homes for sale, especially really large ones.

Read it here.

Size matters [March 3]

The International Herald Tribune tells the story of property developer Mike Spink and his choice to build a giant, 5,200-square-foot family house in the Holland Park Avenue district, in a space in which he could have built a row of mews houses. He says part of his reasoning is that he wants to produce a property that can't be compared (in terms of value) with anything else... because there isn't anything else remotely like it in the neighbourhood. Is it a good plan? Well, his record so far is pretty good - they say that none of his developments have remained on the market for longer than 24 hours. The new one is due for completion in the summer, and he's talking about £9 million. You can read more, here.

Kensington & Chelsea has the highest concentration of private security in the country, with fearful residents paying £1,000 each to club together and have their residential streets patrolled by the ex-police and ex-military. But the borough also has a historically low crime rate. And, according to this, it's not only unwelcome visitors who end up feeling intimidated by the area's private police.

His name's Jonathan Hunt (yes, rhymes with shunt), he's known in the trade as the hardman of London property, but we know him as the man who, back in 1981, founded Foxtons. And the news is that the Sunday Times has been digging around in the Land Registry files and discovered he's recently become Lakshmi Mittal's new neighbour, spending £14,073,287 on 10, Kensington Gardens. It's a seven-storey, Grade II-listed mansion, and plans are afoot to build an underground sports complex, including a pool under the garden, which will be accessible via a sliding tennis court surface. Hmmm. The full story, here.

The Sunday Times isn't the only broadsheet to focus on London carparking. Here's the Telegraph, wondering aloud (okay, in print) whether the big future development profits are going to come from carparks. Ross Clark talks to John Law, of York House Developments, about the 86 parking spaces he's almost entirely sold (for £132,000 each, apparently) under a tennis court off Kensington Church Street. It's a question of planning. Years ago developments sold with parking... now they don't. And councils are granting many times more permits than there are spaces.

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.

First it was Dickens & Jones, now ThisIsMoney reports on the imminent departure of another much-loved London department store. Barkers is going... leaving the residents of Kensington with a journey to Knightsbridge if they find themselves in need of expensive French kitchenware or a Crombie coat. Expect, apparently, a giant American health food shop to take its place. But, in the north west, the news is better. According to this, Brent Cross is to get London's second Apple Store. Why's that good? Okay, I'm biased (the Rat and Mouse is produced on one of a number of Macs in my own little Mac Museum), but the Apple Store on Regent Street is about as entertaining an experience as any computer store could be (and the best place to go for a bit of free WiFi).