Extended right to buy scheme could cost London councils just shy of £50m each May 4, 2016 Councils in London will need to fork out £49m a year on average to fund government’s planned extensions to the right to buy scheme, a report out today by Shelter has warned. Under the right to buy extension, local authorities will be forced to sell off a proportion of their vacant council house stock on the open [...]
Failure to tackle the scourge of rising rents will undermine London’s startup renaissance May 3, 2016 Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales once said that “in the US, Washington is politics, LA is Hollywood, San Francisco is tech, New York is advertising and finance, but London is all of those things.” If anything, he is selling our city short; throw in the culture of the city that shaped creative geniuses such as Charles [...]
UK house prices: Bank of mum and dad ranks among UK’s top mortgage lenders as parents spend £5bn helping children onto property ladder May 3, 2016 Parents will lend over £5bn this year helping their children get a leg up onto the UK's slippery housing ladder, placing the "bank of mum and dad" firmly in the ranks of the top 10 mortgage lenders in the country, a new report today reveals. The study – by FTSE 100 insurer Legal & General and Cebr, [...]
London house prices: Growth in prime postcodes has declined to lowest rate in more than six years May 2, 2016 Annual house prices in prime central London areas grew at their slowest pace in six and a half years in April, as the economic uncertainty and recent tax changes continued to unsettle prospective buyers. Knight Frank's latest monthly sale index released today shows that although viewings are up by a quarter over the year, the number of prospective buyers [...]
Beautiful Things: The items on our shopping list this month, from fetish cakes to copper plated shot glasses April 29, 2016 SCP Armchair £1,508, scp.co.uk Luxury furniture retailer SCP unveiled its new collection at this month’s Salone del Mobile in Milan, including this quietly stunning chair from Reiko Kaneko. It features a steel frame, walnut or oak arm rests, an upholstered backrest and a feather seat cushion on an upholstered pad. Its minimalist aesthetic and small footprint [...]
Richard Desmond is moving from porn to property as Northern and Shell plans to build homes and a school April 29, 2016 Struggling to find a good school for your children in East London? Richard Desmond to the rescue. Shortly after selling off its pornographic network, Portland TV, Desmond's Northern and Shell has announced plans to move into property development. And as well as building 722 homes, the publisher of the Daily Express and Daily Star is also [...]
“We were the first ever agents to sell a building through Twitter” – Meet the social media moguls dragging commercial property sales into the 21st century April 29, 2016 While residential estate agents have been dragged into the internet age, their commercial counterparts have – mostly – continued to resist such a move. There’s no Rightmove for office blocks, or warehouses. And it was this inherent conservatism that seemed to offer a great opportunity when three young surveyors decided to set up shop in [...]
Property of the Week: The three-bed Chelsea penthouse of the Sex Pistols’ visual designer April 29, 2016 Most property developers start out with a humble investment and move on to create homes that superstars want to live in. But Margaret and Michael Stanford began with icons, largely thanks to their job as visual designers – of album covers, videos and stage sets – for some of Britain’s most revered artists, including Queen, [...]
New Builds: From Notting Hill to Battersea, here are the hottest new developments on the market this week April 29, 2016 Alto, Wembley From £715,000 High rise apartments have gone on sale at Alto, a development by Keystone and Quintain, which is part of the 83-acre regeneration of Wembley Park. The two and three bedroom apartments sit in the Pienna building, the 19-storey ‘crowning glory’ of the scheme designed by Flanagan Lawrence Architects, which worked on [...]
Bank of England: Yes, there was a mortgage stampede in March April 29, 2016 The final – and perhaps most definitive – proof that mortgage lending surged in March has been published by the Bank of England this morning, showing just how much tax changes distorted the property market. After a string of industry reports said that investors and landlords rushed to snap up houses before the three per cent [...]