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Homes&Property

Wednesday 16 October 2013

LONDON’S BIGGEST AND

MOST-READ PROPERTY

GUIDE

Strictly ballroomNicky Haslam on why size matters Page 31

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This week: homesandproperty.co.uknews: ‘now our flat is too posh to sell’

Read Ruth Bloomfield’s full story at homesandproperty.co.uk

Visit homesandproperty.co.uk

hot homes: under £600k for second steppers

THE new phase of Help to Buy is already creating a buzz among the capital’s first-time home hunters.

However, the scheme aims to get the whole of the UK housing market moving again by also

helping existing home owners to trade up — known as second stepping — to homes priced up to £600,000.

We take a property tour across London and the commuter hot spots to find ideal larger homes.

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VISIT homesandproperty.co.uk/rules for details of our usual promotion rules. When you respond to promotions, offers or competitions, the London Evening Standard and its sister companies may contact you with relevant offers and services that may be of interest. Please give your mobile number and/or email address if you would like to receive such offers by text or email.

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Editorial: 020 3615 2524 Advertisement manager: Mark WoodAdvertising: 020 3615 0527Homes & Property, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, Kensington, London W8 5TT.

Ticket giveaway for a very merry Ideal Home Show — plus 2 for 1

Ideal Christmas

£700,000: getting to the art of the matter in Herne Bay, Kent, is this Arts & Crafts beauty. The four-bedroom home remains true to its decorative roots with oak floors and panelling, brick fireplaces and walls papered in William Morris-style designs. The kitchen/breakfast room and both bathrooms have been refitted and a garden room has been added.Through Geering & Colyer.

Visit homesandproperty.co.uk/swapherne

£720,000: this beautifully refurbished West Kensington flat in a smart mansion block spans more than 1,000sq ft. It has two good-size double bedrooms — both with fitted wardrobes — an über-chic reception room that wouldn’t look out of place in a plush hotel, and a

bright kitchen/diner that, with the party season almost here, is perfect for entertaining, plus direct access to a communal courtyard and garden. Through Faron Sutaria.

Visit homesandproperty.co.uk/buyoftheweekwestken

TO ENTER For a chance to win a pair of tickets, visit homesand property.co.uk/offers before the end of October 20.

The usual rules apply, for full details, visit homesand property.co.uk/rules

London buy of the week refurb looks like a plush hotel

Out of town buy of the week true to its design roots

Life changer this could be the start of something big£750,000: a former pub is for sale in the Suffolk village of Lindsey that would make a fantastic B&B or part-holiday let. The character, five-bedroom home has almost 4,000sq ft of bright living space, with beams, Tudor fireplaces, a bespoke kitchen and a stunning

45ft family room with a wood-burning stove and doors to a sun terrace. There are outbuildings, too, that could be converted into workshops or studios. Through Strutt & Parker.

Visit homesandproperty.co.uk/lifechangerlindsey

THE Ideal Home Show at Christmas brings you everything you need to prepare your home for the festive season. From November 13 to 17 at Earls Court, this annual shopping event is packed with ideas for decking your halls, filling stockings, trimming turkeys and much more.

There will be more than 650 exhibitors across seven sections, plus celebrity and expert demonstrations, exquisite restaurants and bars to enjoy — and you can even try a spot of ice skating.

The show’s spectacular Christmas Ice Rink will be one of the first in London

to open this year and is sure to get you into the festive spirit. Book your show tickets now and take advantage of a great two for one offer. Get two weekday tickets for £16.50 or two weekend tickets for only £18.50, plus

for every two tickets get one free skating voucher for the ice

rink. To book, call 0844 209 7330 or visit idealhomeshow christmas.co.uk and quote the code ESS13.

We also have 50 pairs of tickets to give away. To enter, see side panel.

All the answers: experts and celebrities will be on

hand to offer Christmas tips

TWO first-time buyers who bought a shared-ownership flat in upmarket Clapham claim the property has risen so much in value that it has become too expensive to sell on.

Under a council stipulation, the flat must remain “affordable”. But the pair say that since they bought in 2006, the value has grown from £235,000 to £395,000, so it no longer qualifies as such. Meanwhile, an annual income of £72,000 is needed to buy their share, when the limit for shared ownership is £66,000.

Clapham: “No place for first timers”

£535,000: step up to this family house in Fulwell, near Teddington. Visit homesandproperty.co.uk/yorkrd

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Enrique moves just two doors away for four times the price

Got some gossip? Tweet @amiranews

CELEBRITY hairdresser Royston Blythe, whose A-list clients include chart star Katy Perry, right, and Hollywood couple Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas, has lost a bid to build a four-bedroom house in the grounds of Wightwick House, his Grade II-listed West Midlands home.

Wolverhampton city council rejected the plan, saying it wouldn’t exactly enhance next door Wightwick Manor, a Victorian Arts & Crafts house owned by the National Trust, with William Morris interiors and a collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings by Rossetti.

Blythe, whose London salon is at The Dorchester hotel, said there would be no effect on the manor but the plan outraged The Victorian Society, which campaigns for historical buildings.

ON THE top two floors of Albert Hall Mansions, next to the home of the BBC Proms and across from the Cambridges at Kensington Palace, a 4,200sq ft, five-bedroom duplex is listed for £13.95 million with Strutt & Parker.

Visit homes andproperty.co.uk/albert

Homes gossip

ENRIQUE IGLESIAS has moved into a stunning new Miami mansion. The Hero singer splashed out £16 million on the waterfront home in the celebrity district of Bay Point, which is also home to singers Cher, Ricky Martin, Gloria Estefan and Bourne Identity actor Matt Damon.

Though there have been reports that Iglesias’s relationship with retired tennis pro Anna Kournikova, pictured with him below, is on the rocks after 12 years, he has had a court built in the grounds for her.

The 20,000sq ft house is every inch the celebrity palace with a sapphire-tinged pool and a pier where the 38-year-old heart-throb can moor his speedboat. It is only two doors away from his previous home which he sold last month for £4.1 million.

Neighbour noise? Bring it on, Maestro

Katy’s crimper in brush with planners

FANCY owning Oprah Winfrey’s furniture? On Friday the American chat-show queen will reveal what she is putting up for sale online at kaminskiauctions.com.

She is inviting a worldwide internet audience to view antiques and contemporary and fine art that grace her residences in Indiana, Hawaii, Chicago and Santa Barbara in California, before they go under the hammer on November 2.

The media billionaire is a avid collector of original Shaker furniture, successfully bidding hundreds of

thousands of dollars to buy pieces at auction. All the proceeds from her own sale will go to help graduates of her leadership academy for girls in South Africa attend universities around the world.

Winfrey, 59, is having a declutter before her 60th party in California in January, when it is rumoured Beyoncé and Tina Turner will sing, while Tom Cruise, John Travolta and

Julia Roberts are on the guest

list.

By Amira Hashish

Bid for a bit of Oprah’s home style

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New homes are the brightest stars of the West EndAs the curtain falls on tourist-tat shops, Regent Street goes centre stage in Theatreland’s residential renaissance, says David Spittles

THE West End is not just for clubbers, theatregoers and tourists — owning a home there has become a status symbol among rich young

Londoners who would rather splash their cash on a sophisticated lifestyle in the heart of an international city than on an old-school country pile.

The Crown Estate, ever alert to the market, this week launches the biggest batch of new homes in Regent Street since the road was built 200 years ago — an initiative that is helping to nudge neighbouring locations into action.

The aim is to rid the West End of its shabby tourist-tat shops, smartening its streets and raising its place in the residential pecking order with imaginative architecture and glamor-ous cutting-edge design.

The Crown Estate’s new launching features 24 flats converted from office space, part of a £1.5 billion investment programme spreading into neighbour-ing St James’s. The flats, at Albany House and in nearby Mortimer Street are for rent from £500 a week. Call Knight Frank on 020 3641 9968.

Another notable launch is The Saint Martins Lofts, a splendid conversion of the former Central St Martins School of Art and Design that includes a new Foyles bookshop. Relocation of the Charing Cross Road college to King’s Cross has freed up the Thirties build-ing, whose long list of famous alumni includes Terence Conran, Peter Blake, Gilbert and George, Antony Gormley, Alexander McQueen and Jarvis Cocker. Punk rock legends the Sex Pistols played their debut gig there in 1975.

Lofts are being created behind the prized Arts & Crafts-style façade with

its huge Crittall windows, up to 21ft high. Double-height sculpture and painting studios have been turned into light-filled lateral apartments and duplexes, while a pair of spectacular penthouses are a rooftop addition.

Each space has an individual floor plan and some have generous-size terraces. The flats range from 1,259sq ft to

2,896sq ft and will have impressive con-temporary interior design that respects the site’s avant-garde pedigree.

“Every so often there is a project that sets the market alight, and this is it,” says Ben Walden-Jones of selling agent Jones Lang LaSalle. “It’s a genuine loft scheme, in the spirit of the original New York lofts and the match of anything in

London.” The homes are striking a chord with the Soho and Covent Gar-den creative community of record producers, theatre directors, ad execs and new media entrepreneurs, he adds. Completion is scheduled for spring next year. Prices start at £2,275,000. Call 020 7993 7395.

This patch of the West End is under-

going its biggest change since the Sixties. The catalyst is the Crossrail station being built at Tottenham Court Road where “over-site” development is set to bring more new homes, an upgraded retail quarter and transform the scruffy public realm around listed Centre Point, London’s original Pop Art skyscraper, whose owner, Alma-cantar, has won planning permission for conversion to 82 apartments.

The project will transform a dead zone, hostile to pedestrians, into a so-called destination hub, with new shop frontages and restaurants facing on to a Continental-style piazza. The neigh-bourhood has already been given a facelift with a mixed-use scheme called Central St Giles, which has 56 private apartments, while developers and Camden council are refining a major scheme to revamp one of pop music’s spiritual homes, Denmark Street, better known as Tin Pan Alley.

Envisaged is an “urban retail gallery” and public space directly in front of the Tube station exit that aims to attract up to 250,000 people who use the transport interchange each day.

The Foyles bookshop on Charing Cross Road has been bought by Soho Estates and is earmarked for redevel-opment, while demolition of the old Astoria music venue has paved the way for an office and residential scheme plus a new 350-seat theatre that will open up views of pretty Soho Square.

Homes are sprouting in unlikely pock-ets, including previously out-of-bounds Soho backstreets. At Ham Yard, From £700 a week: rented apartments at 20 Jermyn Street sit behind this elegantly remodelled corner of Piccadilly, part of the Crown Estate’s St James’s Gateway project

Crossrail is the catalyst: computer image of how Centre Point tower in New Oxford Street, left, will look with 82 new homes, top-brand shops and restaurants facing on to a public piazza

KINGSTON

HAMPTON WICK


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behind Piccadilly Circus, a project by hotel group Firmdale includes 22 apart-ments and a new public square linking the scheme to surrounding streets.

Trenchard House, a former police section block on Broadwick Street is being remodelled into 78 flats by Barratt and United House. To register, call 0845 4606011. Royal Mail’s Rath-

bone Place post office depot is another key project. Great Portland Estates has submitted plans to create 162 homes, offices and shops in a group of build-ings around a central green space, with new pedestrian routes through the site

to fashionable pockets of Fitzrovia. This “micro area” probably has the best growth potential in central London, according to estate agent Wetherell, which has noted a development ripple spreading out of high-priced Mayfair

and Marylebone. Currently, Soho and Fitzrovia are the cheapest central addresses, with average values of £1,150 per square foot.

Depending on the exact location, West End properties can be cheaper than homes in central London’s more established residential neighbour-hoods such as Chelsea or Kensington,

with prices starting below £600,000, within the new Help to Buy limit. West End homes appeal particularly to film, fashion, theatre and hospitality indus-try workers who like to mix business with pleasure and feed off the vibe. Downsizers moving from outside the capital are also snapping up apart-ments so they can effortlessly enjoy the central London lifestyle.

“Crown Estate’s makeover of Regent Street is having a huge impact on the wider area,” says Tim Wright of Jones Lang LaSalle.

Uncharacteristically scruffy side streets either side of Haymarket, domi-nated by souvenir shops and chain restaurants, are the focus of a £500 mil-lion St James’s facelift that aims to attract top-brand shops and double the number of homes over the next 10 years. St James’s Gateway is the first big project and includes a scheme of flats built behind a listed façade at 20 Jermyn Street, with rents starting at £700 a week. Call WA Ellis on 020 7306 1654.

For show-offs, arguably the ultimate West End pads are W Residences. These have been created at the top of a boutique hotel on the site of the former Swiss Centre in Leicester Square. Apart-ments with views over the square and Piccadilly Circus’s neon advertising displays have flash interior design (silky and “bondage-style”) and are aimed at celebrity types and extroverts — even the four-poster bed is positioned facing curtainless floor-to-ceiling windows.

For rent, two-bedroom apartments cost from £1,950 a week. Call 020 7480 6848 for full details.

From £2,275,000: The Saint Martins Lofts strike a chord with media types

Pop music’s spiritual home: Tin Pan Alley is to get a Camden council revamp

From £1,950 a week: W Residences two-bedroom ultimate West End pads

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Live the dream by the sea or in the country for less than £600kState-backed 95 per cent mortgages under Help to Buy are bringing lovely parts of the commuter zone within budget for Londoners up for a life change, says Ruth Bloomfield

£600,000: a top-floor seafront flat in Hove, East Sussex, with two bedrooms and two roof terraces. (Visit homesand property.co.uk/hovetownhouse)

£550,000 to £575,000: a 17th-century detached farmhouse with four bedrooms and good-size gardens on the outskirts of Hastings, East Sussex. (Visit homesand property.co.uk/ greatridge)

THE Government’s Help to Buy scheme has opened up a huge swathe of the commuter zone to Londoners looking for a

complete lifestyle change.The upper price limit of the

scheme, which offers state-backed 95 per cent mortgages, is £600,000. This probably wouldn’t stretch beyond a two-bedroom flat in much of central London — but in the home counties your choice is tantalising, with country farmhouses and seaside townhouses in the mix. Prices in commuter hotspots such as St Albans, Guildford or Sevenoaks remain as hot as those in quality London suburbs but if you are prepared to make a small journey, there are some jewels out there.

KENT: thanks to its half-hour train journey to Charing Cross with an annual season ticket from £3,156, great schools both state and private, plenty of restaurants and safe, affluent feel, Sevenoaks has long been one of London’s most sought-after commuter belt locations.

If you want to be within walking distance of the town’s station and shops you could consider a high-spec two-bedroom flat in a converted period former courthouse, which is just within the Help to Buy limits — on the market with Knight Frank for £595,000.

If you are prepared to double your commuting time, four-bedroom, Grade II-listed Forge Cottage in the charming village of Lynsted is on the market for £560,000 with Strutt & Parker. The 18th-century weatherboard home was recently refurbished, and has a garage and walled garden. Lynsted is about a mile and a half from Teynham station, from where trains to London Victoria take an hour. The annual season ticket is £3,904.

HERTFORDSHIRE: in St Albans, the jewel in Hertfordshire’s commuting crown, a four-bedroom detached bungalow with good-size gardens is on the market with John D Wood & Co for £550,000. Aesthetically, this is perhaps not the dream family home in the country, but it is within an easy walk of the historic city centre and its London-standard array of boutiques, bars, restaurants, cafés, and pubs.

Local schools are excellent, and transport is a huge St Albans plus point. Fastest trains to St Pancras International take from 19 minutes,

and an annual season ticket costs £3,112. Hertfordshire’s other towns, while not quite as nice, offer far greater value for money. Trains to Liverpool Street or Moorgate from

Hertford take from 48 minutes, with an annual season ticket costing £2,320. A Grade II-listed thatched house with three bedrooms plus a detached annexe is on the market for

£599,995 with William H Brown. The town centre has decent shops, gastropubs, and weekly markets. Hartham Common is great, and schools are very strong.

SURREY: Guildford is classic commuter belt — an affluent town heavy on designer homewares shops, hairdressers and health spas. You can be at Waterloo in just over half an


Homes & PropertyCommutinghomesandproperty.co.uk with

£595,000: for a two-bedroom flat at The Old Court House, in the high street, Sevenoaks, Kent, right. Trains into Charing Cross take about half an hour. (Visit homesand property.co.uk/courthouse)

£550,000: detached four-bedroom bungalow in St Albans with a 165ft landscaped rear garden. Through John D Wood. Visit homesand property.co.uk/mayflower

£560,000: four-bedroom Forge Cottage is in the charming Kent village of Lynsted. Available through Strutt & Parker. Visit homesandproperty.co.uk/forge

£565,000: this stunning home has three bedrooms, all with en suite bathrooms, and is near Bramley Golf Club in Horsham Road, near Guildford town centre. Through Foxtons (01483 400 000)

hour and an annual season ticket costs £3,224. Choice within the Help to Buy threshold isn’t huge in this expensive town, but you could consider a four-bedroom end-of-

terrace house, in a great location for the town centre and overlooking Stoke Park, on the market with Foxtons for £565,000.

If you really want some bang for

your buck head to Ottershaw where you could buy a slice of a Grade II country mansion set in parkland, with private tennis courts and an indoor swimming pool. This end-of-

terrace, three-bedroom property is on the market for £599,950 with Seymours. The nearest station is Woking, with services to Waterloo from 25 minutes. The annual season ticket is £3,604.

The downside here is that Woking is far from Surrey’s prettiest town, although it does have some great satellite villages, such as Chobham.

EAST SUSSEX: Hove is the grown-up big sister of neighbouring Brighton, with fewer students and nightclubs and more pretty cafés and yummy mummies. The beach is lovely and less crowded than in Brighton, while the South Downs are an easy hop.

Hove’s nicest properties are its fine Regency townhouses with sea views, most of which are divided into flats. A great option would be a two-bedroom flat in an imposing period house on the seafront, with two balconies, a roof terrace and fabulous sea views. It is on the market for offers over £600,000 through Goldin Lemcke.

The quickest trains from Hove to Victoria take one hour and six

minutes, and an annual season ticket costs from £3,860.

If you need a family home and want seaside on a relative shoestring then Hastings, just along the south coast, might be a better choice.

This historic fishing town is not as refined as Hove, nor as funky as Brighton, but Hastings has its charms. The cobbled Old Town is very pretty, and there has been extensive regeneration since 1997, including the new Jerwood Gallery of contemporary British art.

While Hastings remains rough around the edges with high levels of local deprivation, it is great value and ripe for gentrification.

You could buy an immaculate 17th-century four-bedroom farmhouse with good-size gardens on the outskirts of town through Rush, Witt & Wilson, with a guide price of £550,000 to £575,000.

The value for money of Hastings will need to be balanced against the cost in both time and money of the commute. Trains to Charing Cross take from one hour 32 minutes, and an annual season ticket costs £4,304.

£599,950: for a three-bedroom home within The Orangery, left, a Grade II-listed mansion in parkland in Ottershaw, Surrey, with a swimming pool. (Visit homesand property.co.uk/ottershaw)


Homes & Property Affordable homes homesandproperty.co.uk with

Go on: slash the cost of shared ownership‘Now I can afford to live in London’

Save £5,400 a year with rent-free deals on homes in London’s newest neighbourhood, says David Spittles

EVEN “affordable” shared ownership is too expensive for many young Londoners trying to step on to the property ladder. Mortgage

repayments and rent combined normally exceed £1,000 a month, and outgoings can easily reach £1,500 once service charges, council tax and utility bills are added.

A new housing tenure called “rent-free shared ownership” seeks to keep homes affordable by reducing monthly costs by up to £450 a month, or £5,400 a year. The deal is on offer in east London, at Stratford’s East Village, the capital’s self-proclaimed “newest neighbourhood” with 2,818 homes and its own postcode, E20.

OLYMPIC LEGACYEast Village is a key “legacy” benefit of the 2012 London Olympics, with buildings designed by 16 world-renowned architects and a high-quality public realm of squares, parks and landscaped courtyards.

With conventional shared ownership, people buy a part-share, 30 per cent minimum, and pay rent on the remaining equity owned by a housing association. With the new tenure, 60 per cent is the minimum share that can be purchased but there is no rent to pay. Buying 60 per cent of the cheapest one-bedroom flat, full value £270,000, would cost £905 per month, or £280 per month less than standard shared ownership. Bigger “savings” are possible when purchasing more expensive flats.

“This is a tenure for people who do not want to ‘staircase’ — buy all the equity, in stages — to outright ownership,” according to Triathlon Homes, affordable housing provider at East Village.

With rent-free shared ownership, the maximum equity that can be purchased is 80 per cent. A higher

minimum deposit of 20 per cent is required (normally it is five per cent). Priority is given to first-time buyers earning less than £66,000. Visit triathlonhomes.com.

Shared ownership is the only way to buy at the site as all the other properties are for rent. This a classy new district, built to an exacting

standard. Stylish, energy-efficient homes range from one-bedroom flats to four-bedroom houses and are spread across 11 zones. There are 25 buildings in total, including a brand-new school and medical centre.

Last month, a new-style rental service called Get Living London started at the development. This

offers fee-free tenancies, furnished or unfurnished, for up to three years, plus a package of extras on 1,440 new homes. Rents start at £310 per week. Qatari Diar, the on-site landlord, will maintain the homes, public and private spaces, shops, restaurants and cafés. Call 020 3701 7900.

Private rent, shared ownership and outright purchase are all available at the neighbouring Stratford Halo development, while affordable “full ownership” is being promoted in Canning Town, part of Newham council’s “arc of opportunity” investment area, undergoing £3.7 billion of regeneration. In Hallsville Quarter, a new town centre next to Custom House DLR, Eddington Court, the first phase of 1,130 homes, has been unveiled. Flats and townhouses cost from £275,000. Call Knight Frank on 020 7718 5202.

Hello Halo: Victoria Pindar’s view of the Olympic Park is spectacular

From £275,000: for homes in Hallsville Quarter, Canning Town, left, convenient for Canary Wharf. East Village offers rent-free shared-ownership flats, right

STRATFORD HALO has 704 homes in five buildings including a 43-storey tower, and offers a gym, high-speed broadband, car club and concierge. Call 0800 954 1041.

Victoria Pindar, 28, moved there after renting in Islington, having realised she could get much more for her money in Stratford. She has been able to rent a brand-new two-bedroom tower apartment offering spectacular views across the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and the city skyline, while spending less. Rents cost from £1,300 per month.

“I hope to buy here eventually,” says Victoria, who works in advertising for a West End-based publishing company. “Normally in London it’s hard to save and live the lifestyle, but here I can.”

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Do the maths House-buying expert Naomi Heaton highlights the figures that count when you want a sound rental investment

BANK of England Governor Mark Carney has predicted stable interest rates for the next few years but while he paints the prospect

of negligible returns on cash investments, this need not apply to the investor who favours property.

Low and stable interest rates mean cheap mortgages. This comes at a time when rising property prices are an even hotter dinner party topic, thanks to the early introduction of the second phase of Help to Buy. While schemes like this do not help anyone looking to buy a second property — perhaps to supplement their pension — they give the slowed-down housing market a shot in the arm.

The new phase of Help to Buy helps buyers boost their deposit for homes under £600,000. This will allow second-steppers to move up. And it means that if you are looking for an investment property, you should get going.

The Land Registry’s latest stats show average prime central London prices reaching £1.47 million, up 7.2 per cent over the last quarter. There has been consistent growth, averaging nine per cent a year since the first stats were published in 1996. The average house price in Greater London is £475,940 — up nearly four per cent in the last recorded quarter. Rental income can provide a return of about four per cent a year compared with, say, one per cent for cash in the bank.

No wonder 40,000 buy-to-let mortgages were approved between April and June, 19 per cent up on the previous quarter.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

SUSS OUT YOUR MARKETThe consistent growth is not a London-wide phenomenon. Take for example, Tower Hamlets, home to the iconic Canary Wharf: prices have fallen there by three per cent since 2008. Or Newham, with its Olympics legacy, where prices have fallen by 10

per cent. So the first step is to identify areas with capital growth potential. This often means avoiding large new-build developments where all the units are the same and can only compete on price.

CHECK THE GOING PRICE PER SQUARE FOOT This knowledge is essential, and the price varies dramatically by postcode. In Bayswater W2, you might get an unmodernised flat for £1,000 a square foot. In near neighbour Kensington W8, this might be more than £1,500. While not an exact science, exceeding the yardstick and failing to get a rent to match, will lower returns.

KNOW YOUR TENANTThe next step is to understand what a tenant actually wants. My company specialises in singles or couples who are looking for a one- or two-bedroom flat. Going for three bedrooms or buying a super-spacious flat, surplus to requirements, is unlikely to see an increase in rent, again reducing

returns. Tenants mostly know what the going rental rate is — and so should you. Over-optimistic rents will throw out every calculation, with potentially dire consequences. Rents are also a good rule of thumb for calculating the right price for a property. For example, if a flat commands a rent of £400 per week, the price should be no more than £520,000 on the basis of a four per cent gross yield.

CONSIDER YOUR COSTSAs well as the purchase price, there are other costs. There will be stamp duty, at three per cent for properties over £250,000 and four per cent over £500,000. There will be the lawyer’s and valuer’s fees, and mortgage arrangement costs. Tenants of one-and two-bedroom flats often prefer furnished properties — another cost to factor in. So it may be necessary to put aside a further seven per cent on top of the purchase price for all this. And if an investor is looking in the older, iconic areas of central London, think renovation, too.

UNDERSTAND YOUR YIELDSIf you are taking out a mortgage, understanding your rental returns is a must. Running costs, such as service charges, letting fees and maintenance will reduce the rent in your hand by 25 to 30 per cent, leaving a net return of no more than three per cent in prime central London. One of the most competitive mortgages on the market is quoting an interest rate of 3.35 per cent. A 70 per cent mortgage means annual interest payments equal to 2.35 per cent of the property value. On this basis, the rent covers the mortgage by a healthy 1.27 times (per cent return vs. interest payment) but if the mortgage rate or amount borrowed is higher, the margin gets tighter, leaving less wriggle room.

KNOW YOUR BANK — WELLMany investors take out a mortgage to assist with the purchase but it has other financial benefits. As buy to let is a commercial enterprise, loan interest and other costs can be offset against rental income for tax purposes, like any other business. Even if there is a small surplus income after these deductions, it is unlikely to be taxable due to other allowances. So the smart investor will be liable to capital gains tax of up to 28 per cent on the sale of the property, rather than income tax which can rise to 45 per cent.

The bank’s money can also make the investor money in a rising market. For example, buy a flat for £500,000, see it double to £1 million and you clear £500,000, doubling your equity. On the other hand, you could use your £500,000 and borrow £500,000 from the bank to buy something for £1 million. See it double to £2 million and after paying back the bank, you have £1.5 million — trebling your original investment.

Naomi Heaton is chief executive of London Central Portfolio (LCP), an investment adviser and asset manager specialising in the private rented sector in prime central London. It has launched three property funds targeting this market. For more information go to londoncentralport-folio.com or follow @LCP_Ltd.

Market booster: Prime Minister David Cameron with first-time buyers in Northants at the launch of Help to Buy’s second phase last week

Wise buy: property investment can yield more than cash in the bank

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France in time for cocktails

Latest advances in high-speed train travel put the fine wines and great-value homes of Bordeaux less than five hours away, says Cathy Hawker

WHILE we get hot under the collar debating high-speed train travel, the Continent is steadily

upgrading its already impressive network. The next city to benefit is Bordeaux in south-west France where the elegant, classical 18th-century architecture reflects the city’s historic wealth from the wine trade.

By 2017, current track upgrades will shave an hour off the Paris to Bordeaux journey. Centre to centre will take two hours — encouraging more visitors to this clean, limestone city close to the Atlantic. With the train journey from St Pancras to the French capital about two and a half hours, French wine country feels tantalisingly close.

“Bordeaux is a year-round, compact and green city,” says Doug Storrie of Maxwell-Storrie-Baynes agency, who has lived nearby with his family since leaving London eight years ago. “Architecturally it resembles a mini Paris with Haussmann-style streets and a historic Old Town. It’s an affluent city where property represents really good value compared with many other French cities.”

BARGAINS IN A PRIME SPOTWith wide, sandy Atlantic beaches to the west, Pyrénées ski resorts to the south and France’s most celebrated vineyards on the doorstep, there’s plenty of potential in a Bordeaux holiday home. It’s a young city with 70,000 students and also a Unesco World Heritage Site with one of the best-known names in wine. Worldwide, 24 bottles of Bordeaux are sold every second. Three streets

— Allées de Tourny, Cours George Clémenceau and pedestrianised Cours de l’Intendance — enclose the city’s prime “Golden Triangle”. Compact apartments of 420 square feet start from £210,400, or £336,600 for two bedrooms, and they sell quickly, says Storrie.

Karen Maxwell, who lives in the

countryside an hour from Bordeaux, paid £193,500 five years ago for a buy-to-let flat in this part of the centre on Rue Michel-Montaigne. Today, the one-bedroom furnished flat rents for £500 a week on short-term lets.

For value, Maxwell advises buyers to look at Place du Parlement in the Old Town, minutes from the Grand

Théâtre de Bordeaux, along with new-builds around the docks at the top end of the Chartrons district. Another up-and-coming area is Quinconces, bordering on the Jardin Public, where warehouses along the river and houses in garden squares provide edgier apartments that are popular with younger buyers.

“Bordeaux changed dramatically in the past 10 years,” says Kirsten Pollard of Home Hunts agency. “The limestone buildings are clean, public transport is impressive and it has become a younger, laid-back city based around good street life, cafés and, of course, the wine trade.”

RURAL HOMES.South and east of Bordeaux, Entre-deux-mers lies between the Garonne and Dordogne rivers. Good-quality stone country manor houses start at £589,000, while the same with a

vineyard will cost from £1 million. British buyers want to be close to villages and traditional fortified medieval bastide towns, according to Storrie. “Pujols, Gensac, Créon and Duras are all sought after.” A two-minute walk from the centre of Duras, he is selling a renovated four-bedroom stone house with over an acre of walled gardens including a pool, reduced from £1,051,000 to £833,000. Through Savills.

In the middle of vineyards in a small hamlet close to Monségur, an hour from Bordeaux and 45 minutes from Bergerac airport, an English family is selling a beautifully kept, five-bedroom house with a welcoming, expansive family kitchen opening on to lavender-filled gardens and a pool. Priced at £669,000 through Savills, the house would rent easily for 12 weeks a year.

Yorkshire couple Andrew and Victoria Smyth, a former baker and a teacher, both in their forties, have lived near Monségur for six years. Their children Freddie, Ella and Harry, aged 11 to 15, attend local schools and the Smyths are caretakers for 11 second homes within a 10-mile radius.

“This is an international area, very friendly and with a good sense of community for all ages,” says Andrew. “Our family is very involved in the local commune, organising the regular summer night fêtes for example. It is safe, too. Our children have much more freedom here than they did in England.”

CONTACTS

Maxwell-Storrie-Baynes: through Savills (savills.com; 020 7016 3740)

Home Hunts: home-hunts.com (020 8144 5501)

Reduced to £833,000: a four-bedroom stone house with over an acre of walled gardens and a pool in sought-after Duras. Through Savills (020 7016 3740)

£579,500: five-bedroom house with a pool in central Bordeaux, through Savills

French charmer: an outdoor café in leafy, compact Bordeaux, with celebrated vineyards, beaches and ski resorts in reach

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Dream screensBy Caramel Quin

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2THE latest televisions and their accessories offer slim, space-saving and innovative techology that you can hide away — or

give pride of place on a feature wall.

1 LG 55EA980WThe most dramatic TV designs have curved screens to immerse you in the action and minimise distortion. This £7,999 LG Electronics model is a stunning 55in centrepiece, just 4.5mm thick, with a vivid OLED screen and a see-through speaker base, so it appears to float. A 77in version with ultra-high definition, for an even crisper picture, is coming soon. Visit lg.com/uk.

2 LOEWE CONNECT IDMany Londoners don’t want a giant TV. This designer screen — which starts at 32in, costing £1,395 — proves smaller can be beautiful. The ID stands for Individual Design: you choose from 12 colour combinations and 30 unique set-up options. For example, it can rest on a table stand, move on a flexible wall bracket or be mounted on a striking floor-to-ceiling pole. Bespoke and beautiful. Visit loewe.tv.

3 DENON DHT-T100 SPEAKER BASEToday’s televisions are so slim there’s no space for decent speakers, so they can sound insipid. This £249 one-box solution instantly upgrades you to powerful, room-filling virtual surround sound without the clutter of speakers and cables around the room. What’s more, it can wirelessly play music from your phone or tablet via Bluetooth. Visit denon.co.uk.

4 NOW TVNo need to replace a perfectly good television just to get “smart TV” features. The compact and ridiculously affordable Now TV (£9.99 including delivery) boosts the IQ of any television by linking it wirelessly to your broadband internet. So you can enjoy catch-up TV including BBC iPlayer, connect with Facebook friends on the big screen, listen to music on Spotify and more. There’s no subscription fee but you can choose to pay to view movies and sports on demand. Visit nowtv.com.

5. TEN ONE DESIGN MAGNUSThis is the simplest, most elegant iPad stand you can buy: a small piece of aluminium, machine crafted then hand finished, that attaches magnetically to your tablet. From most angles it’s invisible. At just £34.95 it’s perfect for propping up your screen on the bedside, breakfast bar or anywhere else you might want to use your iPad as a second screen to watch TV. Visit store.apple.com/uk.

6 HANSEN REMIX SOUND SIDEBOARDSit your sound system on beautiful furniture that’s been built with technology in mind. Designed by Gesa Hansen for Tivoli Audio, this minimalist sideboard, priced £1,875, is made from hand-selected, ecologically grown wood and is designed to be a perfect fit for Tivoli Audio’s range of high-end radios and CD players (from £169). Visit thehansenfamily.com.

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ALISON at Home’s elegant Chloe occasional chair is now available in grape and truffle-coloured velvet.

Handmade from a non-tropical hardwood and finished with deep buttoning, this hardwearing and practical chair measures D50xW58xH75cm — the perfect size for a bedroom, living room, entrance hall or stairwell.

Homes & Property readers receive a £15 discount, reducing the price from £195 to just £180. To claim your offer, visit alisonathome.com or call 0800 011 4793 and use the code CHLO1610 before November 6. Made to order in six to eight weeks.

BRING the outside in all year round with an Eden open glass room or veranda. Each one is individually designed to complement your home, whatever its shape or size. There are more than 50 frame colours to choose from, and heating and lighting are optional. All work comes with a 10-year guarantee. Eden will pay the VAT on every order placed before November 16. For more information or to claim your offer, call 0800 1072 727 or visit edenverandas.co.uk and use code AAH16/10.

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ADD a pop of colour with a cuckoo clock hand-crafted in Italy by designers Diamantini & Domeniconi. The mechanism of hourly birdsong is equipped with a light sensor that will silence the call at night.

Available in a range of colours including red, graphite and birch, the clocks make perfect presents — and a free gift-wrapping service is available.

Readers receive a 30 per cent discount on all Decopulse clocks, reducing each cuckoo clock from £200 to £135. To claim your offer, visit decopulse.co.uk/cuckoo or call 020 3586 7620 before October 31. Delivery is free.

MAKE work a pleasure with this handsome Vernay console desk from Made.com. Created in collaboration with award-winning designer Philippe Cramer, it features simple lines and useful drawers to hide work essentials, while the colour combination is offset by dark-stained ash.

The Vernay is £299 and measures W120xD33x H80cm. Readers get a £15 discount when spending £100 or more across the range. To claim your offer, visit made.com and quote MADEFORBN1 before October 27. Not to be used in conjunction with other offers.

ENJOY a cuppa from this quirky teapot by Anouk Jansen.

Classically shaped with a modern twist, this fun piece is made of high-quality ceramic and finished in bright yellow.

The pot measures H16xD13.5cm, and holds 1.25 litres. Matching mugs, milk jugs and sugar bowls are also available in a range of colours to complete the look.

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Homes & Property Our house homesandpropertyhomesandproperty

THE LIGHT’SFANTASTICLawyer Felicity Reeve loved her leafy street but hated the way the trees took away the light. A wall made entirely of glass was the answer, says Emily Wright

WHAT do you do when one of the main reasons you fell in love with your property becomes its greatest downfall?

When lawyers Felicity and Peter Reeve bought their Victorian terrace house in Islington 10 years ago, it was because they liked its leafy north London location.

“We really loved the street,” says Felic-ity. “We liked it because of the trees but it was those trees that became the big problem. They blocked all the light out — especially in the summer when they were thick with leaves. We didn’t want to move but we became totally fed up with the house being so dark and gloomy. It became a real issue.”

Eventually the couple did move — but only for the nine months it took to com-pletely reconfigure the house’s interior to make better use of the space and bring in much more natural light.

And while brightening up their home was the main goal, the value that has been added to the property by the makeover has been a major bonus.

The couple bought the house in 2004 for £825,000 and spent about £355,000 on the refurbishment. They moved back

in with their two children in July last year when the renovations were complete, and their home is now valued at about £1.8 million.

Felicity explains here how they approached the redesign, offers her advice on what qualities to look for in an architect — and shudders at the memory of throwing a birthday barbecue for 14 on the day they moved back in.

DECISIONS, DECISIONSFive years after the Reeves bought their five-bedroom house, they knew they had to address the gloomy, light-starved rooms. When it made no financial sense to buy a new property they weighed up their options.

“The living room in particular was dark and we decided that the use of space along that whole bottom floor — like so many terrace houses — was not working efficiently,” says Felicity. “So in 2009 we started to approach architects.”

The couple decided to work with archi-tect Phil Coffey based on the fact that he had already completed a very similar project on his own terrace house in nearby Highbury. “We went to look around his house which he had knocked Greenery: their leafy street was a winner, so the family decided to improve, not move

Show-stopping: stepping down to the kitchen, the view cuts right through to the garden — and, simultaneously, to the treetops

Photographs:: Charles Hosea


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all the way through and used lots of glass. We ended up using a lot of the same materials, such as the concrete work surfaces in the kitchen which are a lot lighter than granite or marble. I wasn’t sure about any of this at first so it was useful to go and see what he had achieved on a similar project.”

Work started in 2011 after an 18-month planning and design period. The Reeves went for the ultimate outside-in feeling by knocking through the entire down-stairs level from front door to back wall. This creates a show-stopping, unbroken view of the ground floor from the moment you walk through the front door. From a raised living area, light wood steps lead down to an exposed brick and light grey concrete kitchen.

And the line of sight doesn’t stop there. Thanks to an entirely glass back wall — as well as a huge skylight — it is possible to see, simultaneously, out of the back of the property at ground level and then higher up at tree-top level. “You can hardly notice where the house stops and the garden starts now,” said Felicity.

“We specifically wanted the kitchen in the centre. From there you can see up to the living room by the front door and down to the basement, where the

children have a playroom, at the same time. It’s like we all live together now.”

ATTENTION TO DETAILWhen it came to materials, they had some idea of what they were after. “We wanted to modernise the property with-out it being too ‘2012’. We didn’t want it to be cool for a year and then go out of fashion, so we have gone for quite simple, clean materials such as the brick and concrete,” says Felicity.

Having an architect was crucial to the success of the project, she adds, admitting she struggled with the vision necessary to make the scheme work. “I just didn’t have it,” she laughs.

“Phil knew what it was going to look like, even though I couldn’t see it. And he was great on attention to detail. Left to my own devices I would have made snap decisions and regretted them later. As it is, all the door handles, the hinges, the taps that he spent hours picking out

are all perfect. I would have just gone, ‘That one,’ to get it over with.”

After the nine-month build period — for which the family had to leave home because the basement was being dug out — the property is now 22 square metres bigger, at 230 square metres. The layout now comprises a playroom, utility room, gym and shower room on the new lower-ground floor, a sitting room and kitchen/dining area on the ground floor, with five bedrooms, a guest lavatory, and a family bathroom. The attic guest room is en suite.

MOVING BACKFelicity will never forget the move back home. Apart from relief at the project being completed and excitement over the new look, there was an overriding atmosphere of panic as the couple des-perately tried to make the house guest-ready. “It was the day before my birthday and we’d arranged a big dinner that night to celebrate. I had to rush out and buy a barbecue, ready to cook for 14 people within hours of moving back in.

“It was all fine — but from now on every year on my birthday, I will remember the move and the first time we properly walked back into our new home.”

Outside-in: Felicity Reeve and her children in the family’s smart Islington back garden, left. Felicity and husband Peter went for a simple, clean look, right, to modernise their home, but not date it

A whole new level: the opened-up ground floor has a raised living area leading down light wood steps to the kitchen

Lifestyle amenities: steps to the new lower-ground floor, which adds to the space with a playroom, utility room, gym and shower room

Thanks to the glass wall and a huge skylight, ‘you hardly notice where the house stops and the garden starts’


Magpie style in a cosy city nestInterior designer Holly Wick bought an unloved Victorian rental property and made it home with her quirky approach, says Luke Tebbutt

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Photographs: Lisa Cohen Styling: Mary Weaver

choose what she loves, “but be practical. I find that sketching a space helps me visualise what it needs and I always ask myself if I’ll use something before I buy it. Though I still come across things I have to have.” Themes help tie things together. There is a feel of country-in-the-city with exposed brick, a big kitchen table and those chicken-house heaters. “I’m a country girl at heart, so when I come home I don’t like to feel as if I’m in the city,” she says. “That’s why a big kitchen table was important, rather than an island in the middle.”

For quiet nights, Holly and Will have the front room, with its darker

colours and working fireplace. “That’s the room that makes me happiest when I get home,” says Holly. “The grey walls and warm colours, the velvet sofa, comfy cushions, snug Eames rocker and sheepskin rug, make it cosy for me.”

See Holly Wick’s work at hollys -house.com. See architect John Kirk Wilson’s portfolio at johnkirkwilson.com.

Living room: by opening up the front rooms and hall, Holly has given her home’s Victorian details more presence and room to breathe. The understated grey backdrop is enlivened with lush textures and warmer colours. Get The Look: the Content by Conran sofa is covered in a Designers Guild velvet. The Eames rocking chair was bought at a

market. To buy a new Eames RAR rocking chair, go to Vitra. The chandelier and coffee table are from thefrenchhouse.co.uk. The table light in the corner was found at a car boot sale. For similar, try Mid Century Modern. The pineapple on the mantelpiece came from Ardingly Antiques & Collectors Fair. For similar, try Caravan.

Kitchen: Holly doubled her kitchen’s size by extending into the side return and added glazing at the back with a long skylight on top. Get the look: the lights came from Circus Antiques. The table was made by Pigeon Vintage Furniture. The Bertoia wire chairs are from Little Paris and the wood-backed dining chairs were found at The Peanut Vendor. The cooker and hood are by Smeg. The geometric wall tiles are by Emery & Cie, available at Retrouvius.

two bathrooms to three bedrooms and three bathrooms.

Holly then spent a year on the interiors, with regular swoops to antiques markets and a canny selection of contemporary designs. Pieces by Lee Broom, Moooi and Jonathan Adler live with vintage furniture in her home, just as they do in her shop and interior design business, Holly’s House in Parsons Green. “The two influence each other,” she says. “Thankfully, I work with a friend who keeps me in check so half the shop doesn’t escape to my living room.”

Her design technique is basically to

Master bedroom: Holly indulged in some luxe touches for the bedroom, right, with chic bedding and a bespoke mustard-coloured headboard to lighten up the space. A Victorian-style radiator has also been fitted, in keeping with the building’s heritage. Get the look: the wings on the wall are from Rockett St George. The bedside cabinets and made-to-order headboard are from Holly’s House. The headboard is covered in linen fabric by Busby & Busby. The bedding is from Caravane. The patterned pillow is covered in fabric by Elli Popp, available from Holly’s House. The AJ Eklipta bedside

light is by Louis Poulsen from Twentytwentyone. The radiator is from Stonewoods. The walls are painted in Paint Library’s Boudoir emulsion.

En suite bathroom: “The bath was one of the first things that I bought for the house,” says Holly. “I then made everything work around it, with a black wall so it really stands out. I love the way its slightly battered surface catches the light.” Get the look: the bath, tap and shower attachment are by William Holland. The wall is paintedin Farrow & Ball’s Off-Black estate emulsion. The flooring is by Element 7. For a similar loo, try Laufen. Try Graham & Green for a sun-shaped mirror. Find similar blinds at Direct Blinds.

Eclectic mix of styles: the Victorian house’s stairway, far left, and the en suite bathroom, left

HOLLY WICK loves jewellery. From the jumbled pots on her antique dressing table, to her kitchen, where

two giant pendant lights hang above her dining table, it’s all about accessorising.

“They’re actually old chicken-house heaters that I had rewired,” she says nonchalantly of the lights. “People are like, ‘Aren’t they too big?’ And they probably are, but I just love using industrial paraphernalia.”

Holly is an interior designer, and her comments sum up her quirky approach. Like a bird picking twigs to make a nest, she has assembled a magpie mix of disparate strands to create her home, with a Victorian-style bath here, a Parker Knoll sofa and chevron rug there, all intertwined. She shares her home with boyfriend Will Vaughan who works in property development, and their cat, Didier, named after the footballer Didier Drogba. They live in a three-storey Victorian terrace house in west London with a living room, kitchen-

diner and lavatory on the ground floor, two bedrooms and bathrooms on the first floor and a third bedroom and bathroom on the second floor.

“I like combining different influences, but I didn’t want to take away from the building’s Victorian character,” says Holly. The house was in a sorry state when she bought it two years ago. “It had been rented out for years and was pretty unloved. For the first six months, it was a building site.”

Working with architect John Kirk Wilson, she knocked through the front reception rooms and hall to create something rare — a Victorian home that’s open and spacious as soon as you walk in. They also doubled the size of the kitchen at the back by extending into the garden’s side return, and changed the layout upstairs from four bedrooms and

The full version of this article appears in the November issue of Livingetc, out now


Gardening problems? Email our RHS expert at: gardenproblems @standard.co.uk

buy it

Buy it: the handy hoe

See it: Brogdale Apple Festival

Pattie Barron

The new gardening year starts right nowWork your way through the autumn to-do list for a garden that will survive the coldest months in great shape

THIS weekend visit the apple festival at Brogdale, home of the UK’s National Fruit Collection, near Faverhsam, Kent, to see hundreds of varieties on display, available to taste and buy. You can find heritage apples, exceptional flavours, and ask advice from “apple doctor” Joan Morgan. There will be guided tours of the orchards, rural talks, cooking demonstrations and childrens’ activities, as well as local cider and produce. You can also take home a tree grafted from Brogdale’s collection. The festival is 10am-5pm Saturday and Sunday; adults £8, children £4, family £20.

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THE new gardening year starts right here. October, while the soil is still warm, is the best time to plant trees, shrubs and spring-

flowering bulbs, as well as move any plants that would be happier in another part of the garden. For this last task, follow garden guru Christopher Lloyd’s sage advice to dig up the plant, move it and settle it in before it realises what’s happening.

This is also the time to get the garden — and your containers — in shape for the months to come. Clean up beds, raking off leaves, converting them to next year’s valuable mulch by simply stashing them in made-for-purpose

compost, and top with grit. Cap the pot with a secure cage of chickenwire to keep squirrels out. Try growing one new bulb in a pot, such as ravishing winter iris that flower as early as January, and can be bought indoors to be appreciated at close quarters. Find a great selection at livingcolourbulbs.com.

You need at least one tree or shrub that will give you a shot of glorious autumn colour, such as Japanese dogwood Cornus kousa or Cercis canadensis Forest Pansy, both suited to small gardens. However, if you have space for just one stand-out shrub or small tree, in border or container, make it a fine-foliaged Japanese maple. Acer palmatum Osakazuki has exqui-site deep green, lacy leaves that, from early autumn, turn a spectacular fire engine red.

sacks. Don’t be too tidy: leave seed-heads for the birds. Above all, make sure there is always a potful of flower-ing pansies or berrying skimmia on the patio table, beckoning you outside — and providing an inviting view from the house.

Roses, whether in ground or con-tainer, need to be tidied up, but save the pruning until early spring. For now, cut back long, wayward stems so the bush doesn’t shift around in winter winds, making it unstable, and pick up every last bit of blackspotted foliage around the base to avoid overwintering disease for next year. Reward your good work by ordering a few stunning bare-root roses to arrive this winter. — top of my list is the tangerine-tinted, fruity-scented Lady Emma Hamilton, compact enough to suit my raised beds or, in fact, any large container. See other English beauties at davidaustin-roses.com.

Clip herbs into shape so they don’t get too leggy, snipping off spent flower stems, but not cutting into old wood, from which they won’t regrow. You can spice up winter salads and stir-fries with oriental leaves and mustard greens if you sow the seed now, and cover with fleece. Garlic will grow in containers as well as the ground, but buy bulbs for the purpose: three cloves per 15cm pot, pushing them 3-4cms deep, root end down.

If you have autumn-fruiting raspber-

ries, cut the canes back to ground level to encourage new ones to fruit next year. If you don’t have any, why not plant some now? New variety Joan J produces masses of large, delicious berries for weeks on end, needs no staking or special treatment, and will even thrive in a tub on the terrace. Buy canes from pomonafruits.co.uk.

Clear out has-been plants from con-tainers and scrub pots clean before storing them, so they don’t become winter retreats for snails, or broken victims of frost. Repot this summer’s lily bulbs in a fresh compost mix of John Innes No 2 mixed with multi-purpose compost, topping with a layer of grit. Hold back a large container to create a succession of flowers for next spring — layer first tulips, then dwarf daffodils, then crocus or grape hyacinth into

THREE new hand tools, especially designed for optimum comfort in a woman’s hand, have been designed by Sophie Conran for Burgon & Ball: a twist-cultivator, to work the soil in small spaces, even pots; a spring-tined rake, compact enough to fit between plants and under bushes, and a hoe with a curved head. Conran claims: “The unique shape and angle of my ergo-hoe makes weeding and cultivating in even the most baked of soils, a doddle.” The twist-cultivator and ergo-hoe are £14.95 each; the rake is £15.95, all from burgonandball.com.

Try and buy: Brogdale Apple Festival in Kent, the UK’s biggest, offers hundreds of varieties to sample, talks, tours and local cider

“It’s a doddle”: Sophie Conran using the ergo-hoe she designed, and which she says takes the hard work out of weeding

Tangerine dream: the fruity-scented Lady Emma Hamilton rose is compact enough to suit raised beds or any large container

Blaze of colour: the lacy leaves of Acer palmatum Osakazuki, left, turn fire engine red from early autumn

Rake’s progress: clear leaves into biodegradable jute leaf sacks, right, which, left for a year, will break down and produce useful leafmould mulch

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Nicky Haslam

By Katie Law

INTERIOR DESIGNER AND SOCIALITE

TOP London interior designer and veteran socialite Nicky Haslam is as famous for who he knows as what he knows.

The energetic partygoer has just launched a second career as a singer, recording an album with friends Rupert Everett, Helena Bonham Carter and Bryan Ferry — but still had time to design a new furniture and home accessories collection for his old chum Annabel Astor, the Prime Minister’s mother-in-law and co-founder of OKA, the urban-meets-country chic shop in Fulham Road.

Haslam’s new collection is all about pared-down luxury with gothic-style influences inspired by his Jacobean hunting lodge in Hampshire. During the week he’s a man about town. He tells us why he loves having a ballroom in his new London pied-à-terre; where he finds the finest bed linen, and why you should never leave a tablecloth dangling.

WHAT NOT TO DONo framed photographs on pianos or mantelpieces, especially colour ones. And no three-quarter tablecloths — they look as if they’re dangling, which is terrible. Tablecloths should either reach the floor, or not at all.

Nicky Haslam for OKA (okadirect.com)

BEST SECRET SHOPGayle Warwick is a genius designer who makes the most fabulous fine linens for tables and beds. You can buy them at Thomas Goode in South Audley Street (gaylewarwick.com).

SECRET ESCAPEHawksmoor’s church masterpiece, St George-in-the-East in Stepney, in which you can see the beginnings of 20th-century architecture. When I was young it was next to the now-demolished Swedenborg Square, where Peter the Great lived while learning shipbuilding. It’s still so romantic.

LAZY SUNDAYI’m never lazy in London. Take a Tube to Arsenal, walk up the street and you’re in Turkey. Or go to Morocco by visiting Goldborne Road, W10. Go to the Caribbean in Brixton; or India, visit Southall. You feel as if you’ve been away. It’s a mini break.

Quality: Nicky Haslam for OKA Babelsberg chair, left, £670. Below, Gayle Warwick table napkins

Romantic: Hawksmoor’s masterpiece, St George-in- the-East Church, left, in Stepney

WHERE I LIVEI’ve just moved flat from one end of Cromwell Road to the other. In the past I always said I preferred small rooms but my new flat comes with a 40ft ballroom. It is exciting just to sit in it and look at the corners from a distance.

Being in Cromwell Road means I can get straight on to the M3 and head off to my beautiful hunting lodge in Hampshire, which is where I spend most weekends, so I’d never live anywhere else in London but here.

PAINT COLOURS AT HOMEI don’t have any set rules about which colours you should paint a home. A room’s position, proportions,

atmosphere and the amount of light it gets should dictate the colours. In my new flat, I’ve painted one end dark, including an oily green in the hallway, and the other end is white. I’ve added false, very roughly painted panelling to catch the light.

FAVOURITE MEMORABILIAI adore the portrait that was given to me of my friend Prue, Lady Penn. It’s of her and was done in about 1955 in that precise, beautiful style of the time, almost like a Pietro Annigoni, using very fine paint. It’s such a period piece with her in a satin stole looking beautiful.

The colours in it are wonderful and I’ve done my whole colour scheme in the room where it hangs in turquoise blue to match it. I always think it’s a good tip: be inspired by one special painting or object and plan the colour of your walls to co-ordinate.

FAVOURITE MUSEUMI love the Wellcome Collection on Euston Road. It has fascinating and well-curated shows about science and every aspect of medicine. There was an incredible exhibition called Madness and Modernity about the terrible electric shock treatment that 19th-century Viennese doctors gave their patients. You can see exactly where the artist Egon Schiele got his ideas from. It’s not very easy to get to but I love it whenever I go.

Pied-à-terre: Nicky Haslam at his new west London flat, which came complete with a 40ft ballroom

Monkey business: Japanese ivory skull, c1880, from the Wellcome Collection show, Death: A self-portrait

NIC

K H

OLT


SpotlightPaddington

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ONE of Britain’s greatest engineers and a small bear from Peru are Paddington’s best-loved characters. Both Isambard Kingdom Brunel

and Paddington Bear are celebrated with statues on Paddington station. Brunel, in his stovepipe hat, stands under the majestic ironwork spanning the platforms at the London terminus he designed for one of his greatest achievements, the Great Western Rail-way. Paddington Bear, as every child who has read Michael Bond’s books knows, came from “deepest, darkest Peru” and was found on the station bearing the tag: “Please look after this bear. Thank you.”

The central London district of Paddington is conveniently located in Zone 1 between Edgware Road to the east, Bayswater Road to the south and

Paddington Green to the north. Once known as Tyburnia after the famous gallows which stood at modern-day Marble Arch, it was laid out by the architect Samuel Pepys Cockerill, a relative of the great diarist. Tyburnia was intended to rival Belgravia and even though the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray — who lived in Albion Street — described it as “the elegant, the prosperous, the polite Tyburnia, the most respectable district of the habitable globe”, he may have had an interest in promoting his neigh-bourhood, as Cockerill’s plans were never fully implemented.

Nonetheless, Cockerill left a legacy of large terrace houses and garden squares, and although in the roads close to the station, cheap and mid-market hotels predominate, Padding-ton is often unfairly overlooked.

WHAT THERE IS TO BUYPaddington has quite a mix. There are large houses in Connaught Square where former prime minister Tony Blair has linked his house with the mews house behind. Now guarded day and night by armed police officers, this must be one of the safest places in London to live. There are large flats in converted terrace houses in Hyde Park Square, Westbourne Terrace and The Lancasters in Lancaster Gate. In the

roads between Praed Street and Sussex Gardens there are small, early Victorian terrace houses. The Hyde Park Estate has streets and squares of postwar houses and terraces. Paddington Waterside is a large regeneration project around the Grand Junction Canal basin and on former railway lands, with a mixture of office buildings — including those of M&S, Vodafone and Statoil — and residential blocks.

Flats can be more expensive than houses in Paddington. The most expen-sive “flat” for sale now is really a mai-sonette, in Hyde Park Gardens. Savills (020 7578 5100) is selling the four-bed-room property, on the third, fourth and fifth floors, for £13.5 million. The most expensive house currently for sale has seven bedrooms and is in Connaught Square. Knight Frank (020 7871 5060) is seeking £6.85 million.

Estate agent Alison Treneer, from the local branch of Chesterton Humberts, says that price per square foot ranges from £1,200 upwards, although flats in favoured positions such as in Hyde Park Square now sell for over £2,000 per square foot. The area attracts: many overseas buyers are investing in property in Paddington, rather than living there permanently. The area was very popu-lar with Middle Eastern buyers but Treneer says she is seeing an increasing number from India and Pakistan, and there is interest from French and Italians. “They like the convenience. Heathrow is easily accessible with the

Neighbourhood where being well-connected comes with the territoryWith 15-minute trains to Heathrow among its unrivalled transport links, this Zone 1 area is prized indeed, discovers Anthea Masey

Larger than life: British sculptor Sean Henry’s Walking Man statue, one of a pair at Paddington Basin

Taking a break: lunchtime at Paddington Basin, where offices include those of M&S and Statoil

Photographs:Graham Husssey


CHECK THE STATS

The best schools in the Paddington area

The best shops and restaurants

The renting scene

The most expensive residential streets

How this area compares with the rest of the UK on property prices

Smart maps to plot your home search

GO ONLINE FOR MORE

For all this and more, visit homesand property.co.uk/ spotlightpaddington

What do you like about Paddington? Have your say at ESHomesAndProperty

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGEWhat connects this famous fugitive, above, with a street in Paddington?Find the answer online at homesand

property.co.uk/spotlightpaddington

■WHAT HOMES COST:BUYING IN PADDINGTON (Average prices)One-bedroom flat £548,000Two-bedroom flat £967,000Two-bedroom house £1.51 millionThree-bedroom house £2.05 million Four-bedroom house £2.47 million

Source: Zoopla.co.uk

RENTING IN PADDINGTON (Average rates)One-bedroom flat £1,967 a monthTwo-bedroom flat £3,010 a monthTwo-bedroom house £3,292 a monthThree-bedroom house £5,763 a monthFour-bedroom house £8,163 a month

Source: Zoopla.co.uk

£770,000THIS two-bedroom modernised ground-floor flat in Wymering Road has access to a large communal garden. For sale through Foxtons.

Visit homesandproperty.co.uk/wymering

£650,000A FIRST-FLOOR one-bedroom flat in a period conversion in Westbourne Terrace Road with a private balcony. Through Goldschmidt & Howland.

Visit homesandproperty.co.uk/westbourne

£1.25 MILLIONA THREE-BEDROOM lateral flat in Blomfield Court with a stylish kitchen/breakfast room and plenty of natural light. Through Marsh & Parsons.

Visit homesandproperty.co.uk/blomfield

£1.5 MILLIONA RECENTLY renovated three-bedroom, three bathroom house tucked away in Bristol Mews, close to Little Venice. Through Lurot Brand.

Visit homesandproperty.co.uk/bristol

To find a home in Paddington, visit:homesandproperty.co.uk/paddington

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Heathrow Express trains from Pad-dington, it is a short walk to the West End and Marylebone High Street, Hyde Park is on the doorstep and parking is generally easy.” Staying power: for investment buyers there is no incentive to sell in a strong central London property market. Best roads: these are Hyde Park Gardens, Connaught Square, Albion Street, Gloucester Square, Queens Gardens and Cleveland Square.

What’s new: Paddington Waterside is a 20-year mixed-used regeneration scheme covering 80 acres, a site the size of Soho. New offices and more than 1,100 new flats have already been built, with another 1,200 homes planned over the next five years. Merchant Square, part of Paddington Waterside overlooking the canal basin, is a devel-opment of six buildings around a new public square. Number 3 Merchant Square is now 93 per cent sold off-plan,

for completion next summer. The remaining two-bedroom flats start at £2 million. Number 1 Merchant Square will be launched soon. This 41-storey block will be Westminster’s tallest and will have 222 flats, a 90-room hotel and a top-floor restaurant. Up and coming: the area between scruffy Praed Street and Sussex Gar-dens has two pretty roads — Star Street and St Michael’s Street — of small, early Victorian terrace houses that sell for about £1.5 million, although they rarely come on to the market. Open space: the 350 acres of Hyde Park are on the doorstep and there are canalside walks to tranquil Little Venice and beyond. Leisure and the arts: the West End’s theatres, cinemas and restaurants are a short walk away. There is an Odeon Cinema on Edgware Road near Marble Arch, and a museum in Alexander

Fleming’s old laboratory in St Mary’s Hospital. A disused Royal Mail sorting office has been turned into a perform-ance space for innovative theatre com-pany Punchdrunk’s latest production, A Drowned Man.

The nearest council-owned swimming pool is at the Seymour Leisure Centre in Seymour Street. The pool at St Mary’s Energia Gym is open to the public and there is also swimming at Nuffield Health club in Sheldon Square. Travel: Paddington is in Zone 1 (annual travelcard £1,216) and is on the Circle, District, Hammersmith & City and Bakerloo Tube lines. Heathrow Express trains take 15 minutes to the airport, and a new Crossrail station is being built on the western side of Paddington station.Council: Westminster (Conservative-controlled). Band D council tax for the 2013/2014 year is £680.74.

Majestic: Brunel designed the ironwork above platforms at Paddington rail station, right

Tradition meets modernity: barges and stunning new Paddington Basin high-rise buildings, left

Georgian: the present St Mary’s Church, right, is the third built on Paddington Green

WANT MORE?For more about the history of Paddington, visit Melanie Backe-Hansen’s fascinating blog at homesand property.co.uk/blogs

amp is a serious problem affecting thousands of UK homes. It stains walls, rots woodwork, spreads mould, causes paint to blister and

wallpaper to peel off. Damp looks unattractive and smells musty. It also poses a potentially serious health risk – particularly for people with rheumatism, asthma and other respiratory conditions.

into peoples’ hearts as they often worry about the mess of re-plastering and the disruption that usually comes with a new damp proof course. Traditional damp proofing used to be the only choice, but this is no longer the case and you do not need to fear damp proofing any longer. We offer a no mess, no fuss method, that removes excess moisture, once and for all.

Not only is it environmentally friendly, convenient and simple, it is also suitable for almost all buildings. Unlike traditional damp proofing there is no need to move furniture or go to the expense or inconvenience of re-plastering and redecorating. In fact it is installed from the outside of the external walls so there’s no need to even move furniture inside your home and the way it works is also completely different”.

The principle is simple: remove the moisture and you get rid of the problems caused by damp. Schrijver does this by installing a serious of small handmade elements into the external face of the wall. Moisture

is drawn out of the wall into these elements and then carried into the air outside by natural ventila-tion. There are no chemicals, no need to replaster or redecorate and no mess – just a permanent solution to the problems caused by damp.

The Schrijver System can be installed in brick, stone, cob and breeze-block walls as well as solid brick and cavity walls. It is suitable for both new-build and period properties, and even buildings of special architectural significance, inlcuding wind-mills, castles and churches. Since 1976, the system has been successfully installed in more than 30,000 homes across Europe.

The Schrijver System was developed in the Netherlands, where 60 per cent of the population lives below sea level. No wonder the Dutch lead the world when it comes to damp control. In most cases the system takes no more than two days to install, and all the work will be carried out externally by one of our own teams of engineers. Schrijver does not employ subcontractors.

We know our system really works – providing a permanent solution to the problems caused by damp. That’s why, unlike conventional damp proof treat-ments, Schrijver offers a lifetime guarantee.

“I am delighted with the Schrijver System. It was incredibly painless to have it installed, no mess, no hassle and people arrived on time. But the most important thing is that it really works and to be free from damp is absolutely wonderful.”

Mrs B from Wattisfield

“We are very happy that we found a much better and green alterna-tive in your special bricks – not only do they look good on the outside of the property, but they work like a dream. Thank you.”

Mrs L from London


WHAT’S YOUR PROBLEM?IF YOU have a question for Fiona McNulty, please email [email protected] or write to Legal Solutions, Homes & Property, London Evening Standard, 2 Derry Street, W8 5EE.We regret that questions cannot be answered individually but we will try to feature them here. Fiona McNulty is a partner in the residential property, farms and estates team at Withy King LLP (withyking.co.uk).

These answers can only be a very brief commentary on the issues raised and should not be relied on as legal advice. No liability is accepted for such reliance. If you have similar issues, you should obtain advice from a solicitor.

More legal Q&As Visit: homesand property.co.uk

Could a lodger solve my mortgage woes?

Q I AM a single mother, my son has now gone to university and I am alone at home. I would like to

earn some money to help with my mortgage by taking in a tenant. I am a little nervous as I have never done anything like this before. Where do I start?

A AS YOU still live in your house you will actually have a lodger rather than a tenant and so a tenancy agreement

is unnecessary, although you could have a simple licence drawn up if you prefer to have something in writing.

Obtain references for your lodger. Alternatively, find a lodger who is known to someone you trust or who can at least vouch for them.

Contact your lender to ensure it is acceptable to them for you to have a lodger. It may be necessary for your lodger to sign an occupiers consent form so he or she cannot try to claim any interest in your property should you default on your mortgage and your lender take action to repossess

it. You will not be able to claim single person discount in respect of your council tax if you have a lodger.

There is a scheme which allows you to earn up to a threshold of £4,250 per year tax free from letting out furnished accommodation in your home. If you earn less than the threshold you do not need to do anything, but if you earn more then you must declare the income from

your lodger on your tax return. Notify your buildings and contents insurers that you now have a lodger.

Finally, in the unlikely event that your lodger does any work to your property which may add value, such as putting in a new kitchen for you, he or she could try to claim an interest — but this is really more applicable to a cohabitee than a lodger.

Q MY HUSBAND and I have been married for several years and have young children. We are buying a new home and he has decided he wants to do it in his sole name as it is

easier for him to do the paperwork because he works in the city, near to our lawyers. I have not worked since we had the children and I have no problem with his plan. In any event, we have prenuptial agreement. However, my husband’s bank, which is lending him the money, says I must take independent legal advice and sign a consent form. Is this necessary?

A IT IS usual for a lender to request this. The fact that there is a prenuptial agreement may be taken into account by a divorce court should you end up there, but it is of no interest to your

husband’s lender.The lender will be concerned to ensure that you will not

claim any right of occupation or interest in the property should your husband default on the mortgage and possession proceedings prove necessary.

By signing an occupiers consent form you agree to give up or postpone your rights of occupation in favour of your husband’s lender. Indeed the lender will wish to be sure that you fully understand the situation so that at some stage in the future you cannot allege that your signature to the occupiers consent form was obtained by duress or under pressure. That is why you have been asked to obtain independent legal advice. If you do not take such advice then the lender may very well not proceed with the mortgage to your husband.

Fiona McNultyOUR LAWYER ANSWERSYOUR QUESTIONS

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MONDAYToday I am conducting a valuation of a stunning Regency property in the heart of Belgravia that has been owned by the same family since 1970. It was a house but has been converted into apartments, with the owners living in one of them, and it retains many original features including a beautiful central staircase.

I am amazed to discover the family paid less than £300,000 to acquire the place — especially when our valuation indicates a current market value in excess of £20 million.

TUESDAYWe are marketing a flat as a probate sale on the Fulham Road and we’ve had more than 40 viewings in 72 hours. After receiving multiple offers we are instructed by the executors to go to sealed bids on Thursday. With a guide price of offers in excess of £1.5 million, it will be interesting to see the final price we can agree. With autumn upon

us, one of our staff who is a keen follower of holistic therapies suggests we purchase light boxes to improve the mood in the office. With them installed this afternoon the branch seems much brighter, and visitors to our shop are very complimentary about them.

WEDNESDAYI go along with a colleague to a large ground- and lower-floor flat we manage near Eaton Square to conduct our annual property inspection.

The tenant is allowed to keep a single dog there, more specifically, a chihua-hua. So we are slightly surprised to be greeted by a pack of dogs totalling no fewer than five. An interesting conver-

sation ensues, during which the tenant agrees that the number of pets does in fact exceed the terms of the contract. However, we agree to approach the landlord on the tenant’s behalf to seek an alteration to accommodate these extra flat-sharers.

On my return to the office, everyone is very excited to hear that the business manager of a Seventies super-group who viewed a house we are marketing in the region of £8 million is interested

in making an offer. Fingers crossed we can agree the deal.

THURSDAYWe are currently dealing with a particularly unpleasant sale involving an acrimonious divorce. Every time we take someone to view the house we have to contact both the husband and the wife, and their respective solicitors. With both parties still living at the

property, it doesn’t make for the best atmosphere during viewings, espe-cially when all of the items inside the place are covered in Post-it notes to highlight who they belong to. I hope we get a sale soon so that this unhappy couple are able at last to move on with their lives.

On a much more positive note, we generate seven offers on the apartment for the probate sale, finally agreeing a deal at nearly £100,000 above the asking price.

FRIDAYIt’s time for my weekly, early morning dilemma. It’s my turn to provide the office snack, and I ponder whether to buy cookies, doughnuts or pretzels. In the end I opt for pretzels.

There’s a lunchtime emergency con-cerning another agent showing one of our flats. The applicants ask to view the roof of the building and the fire door shuts, leaving them and the agent stranded outside. They’ve got our keys, which means we can’t get into the property to rescue them.

After much sweet-talking of one of the neighbours, we manage to get access and free a rather windswept and dishevelled group of individuals after approximately an hour.

I finish the day with a valuation of a converted houseboat moored at Cadogan Pier in Chelsea which has seen service as a Dunkirk Little Ship.

Diary of an estate agent

His ex is a great housekeeper . . . she’s determined to keep the house

Tom Dogger is a director of Winkworth in Knightsbridge, Chelsea & Belgravia (020 7589 6616)

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Homes & Property Letting on

Find many more homes to rent athomesandproperty.co.uk/lettings

The accidental landlord

There’s such a thing as being too careful

Victoria Whitlock agrees to change the locks on her rental flat, but only if the new tenant goes halves with her on the bill

£795 A WEEKIn Ainger Mews, NW3, John D Wood & Co has this bright, modern and architecturally innovative two-bedroom mews house with a private roof terrace available to rent.

Visit homesand property.co.uk/rentainger

A NEW tenant has asked whether I plan to change the locks before she moves into my rental flat. No tenant has ever asked

me to do this before so my immediate response was no, don’t be silly, but when I mentioned this to other landlords I was surprised that one or two said they always change locks between tenancies, regardless of whether they’re asked to do so.

Their fear is that previous tenants might be holding on to keys so they could let themselves back in. Changing the locks protects the property as well as the new tenant. However, unless these landlords make a habit of letting to low-life, I think they’re being paranoid.

I always insist that outgoing tenants return their keys before I refund their deposits. Admittedly, one tenant initially refused to hand over a set he’d had cut for his cleaner, insisting they belonged to him as he’d paid for them. Although I’m sure he wasn’t going to use them to get back into the flat, the tight-fisted moron just didn’t want me to get something for nothing.

Only when I threatened to deduct the cost of new locks from his deposit did he back down and hand over the keys — chopped into tiny pieces.

I suppose there’s a very slight risk that previous occupants could have had a spare set cut with the intention of sneaking back and ransacking the flat, but if there was a burglary with no forced entry they wouldn’t have had to watch many episodes of Miss Marple to work out they’d be the prime suspects.

I changed the locks on my flat when a tenant was mugged close to the property and her keys were taken, but I don’t think it’s necessary between lets, unless you’ve had a big fall-out with a previous tenant who you’re worried might have a sideline in burglary.

Locks aren’t expensive — a high-security five-lever deadlock costs about £20 — so I suppose if you can

work out how to do it yourself (I can’t) it might be worthwhile to reassure nervous new tenants. But if you call out a locksmith and need extra sets of keys cut, it would add about £100 to your costs at the start of every tenancy. In the end I told my tenant I’d happily arrange for new locks to be fitted and split the cost with her 50/50. She’s decided not to bother. Funny how people aren’t so worried for their safety when it comes at their own cost.

On the subject of security, I wrote a few months ago about the possibility of using a wall-mounted external key safe to store a spare set for dopey tenants who keep locking themselves out. However I’ve since learned these can be alarmingly easy to break into.

If you do want to use one, SupraUK (keysafe.co.uk) has one with a push-button lock that has been tested to a standard recognised by police.

Possibly a safer option could be to use a key storage company, such as Sparekeys.com. It sounds as if it has a pretty robust storage system for your rental property’s spare keys and it promises to deliver them to locked-out tenants within about 40 minutes, round the clock, sparing you the risk of a late-night phone call.

Mother-of-two Victoria Whitlock lets three properties in south London. To contact Victoria with your ideas and views, tweet @vicwhitlock

‘I don’t think you need to change the locks between lets — unless you’ve fallen out with a previous tenant who might have a sideline in burglary’


The word from the streetDavid Spittles

Live by the water, sport

Join the Bloomsbury set in a modern garden ‘square’

WATER sports opportunities in London are more plentiful than many people realise. As well as the Thames, there are inland docks, lakes, canal basins and reservoirs where regeneration

projects are opening up access to the water for recreational use.

The 64 acres of Woodberry Park in Stoke Newington sit alongside two giant reservoirs with boating clubs. The former reservoir filter house is now a visitor centre with old hydraulic machinery on display, while the Victorian pumping station, a distinctive castellated design, has been converted into a popular climbing centre.

Up to 4,600 new homes are being built alongside the open water and will be linked by a series of “linear parks” converging on a new town square. New River Gardens, the latest phase, has flats from £425,000. Call Berkeley Homes (020 8985 9918).

Homes & Property New homes homesandproperty.co.uk with

Smart mmSmart mmSmarSmart mm

EMERGE from Russell Square Tube through the sea of tourists and you could be forgiven for writing off Bloomsbury as place to live. But turn a couple of corners and you discover a district of elegant Georgian squares and hidden mews offering a range of flats and outstanding period houses.

Near the Grade II-listed residences of Mecklenburgh Square is Bloomsbury Gardens, a new-build scheme of 44 flats, including ground-floor duplexes with basement patio terraces and stairs to private gardens. Smart interiors have full-height doors, underfloor heating and heated bathroom walls. Service charges should be reasonable as there is no concierge or underground car parking. From £910,000. Call Crest Nicholson on 020 3667 5119.

From £910,000: Bloomsbury Gardens, where service charges should be reasonable

From £425,000: for waterside flats in Stoke Newington


KENT’S EURO STAR EBBSFLEET’S ON THE COMMUTER MAP

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IF YOU are a Parisian at heart but still lust after a London fix, then Ebbsfleet in Kent could have a surprising appeal.

Having a Eurostar station has put this once-dreary area on the map and opened up to commuters some pretty villages along the banks of the Thames Estuary that were previously overwhelmed by heavy industry, but which are now returning to residential life.

Thanks to Japanese-style bullet

trains, the trip from Ebbsfleet to the City and Canary Wharf is super-fast. The commute to central London is now 17 minutes — quicker than from Richmond or Wimbledon.

Ingress Park, at nearby Greenhithe, occupies one of the best positions on this stretch of the Thames. The famous Empire Paper Mill once stood here and a listed Victorian abbey with amphitheatre forms the centrepiece of the 72-acre site, which slopes down to the river

and includes listed ancient follies that are part of a new heritage woodland trail.

The estate has a varied collection of homes, ranging from riverfront flats to Regency-style townhouses. The Pier, above, the latest phase, marks an architectural step change. Its modern, Docklands-style apartment blocks offer cantilevered balconies and floor-to-ceiling glazing. Prices start at £165,000. Call Crest Nicholson on 01959 564282.

Maternity hospital reborn as homes WITH a sprinkling of handsome conservation areas plus a Tube station plugging travellers into the Jubilee and Northern lines, Stockwell should be a desirable inner suburb. As it is, the area is about 20 per cent cheaper than its near neighbour Clapham despite being that bit closer to the West End action.

Annie McCall Maternity Hospital in Jeffreys Road is another local delight. Founded in 1889, it was the first in Britain to have an all-female staff. It closed down as a hospital 30 years ago and was taken over by artists and craftspeople.

Now the reborn listed Victorian buildings, above, are being turned into homes, while new artists’ studios and a lodge house have been built in the grounds. Prices from £410,000. Call Henley Homes on 020 7401 8777.

From £410,000: homes at the former Annie McCall Maternity Hospital

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Wednesday 16 October 2013 New tricks Property · Exclusive UK Preview of Aberfeldy Village, E14 Book your place today. Turn to page 9 FIRST OPPORTUNITY New tricks ... to build a four-bedroom