How to blush your way to a brighter home using spring pastels April 1, 2016 The evenings are lighter, and it suddenly feels wrong to be putting on sombre-coloured winter coats and boots. The magnolia trees are in bloom, their distinctive petals a delicate blush of soft pink. And it’s this pretty pastel that stores have heralded as the interiors story of the season. The idea is to keep tones [...]
UK house price growth has accelerated – and it’s not all because of stamp duty changes, according to the Nationwide House Price index April 1, 2016 Would-be second home owners appear to have bolstered the UK's house price growth in March, with the annual rate accelerating to 5.7 per cent – up from 4.8 per cent the previous month. The price of a typical UK home rose by 0.8 per cent, at least in part as a result of buy-to-let investors [...]
Landlords make last minute dash to beat buy-to-let stamp duty hike deadline March 31, 2016 Landlords and agents were scrambling to complete last-minute purchases of second home and buy-to-let properties today ahead of stamp duty hike which comes into effect at midnight. George Osborne's clampdown on buy-to-let properties was announced in November's Autumn Statement as part of a raft measures designed to tackle the housing crisis and help more first-time buyers on the property [...]
London 2012 Olympics Aquatics Centre architect Dame Zaha Hadid dies aged 65 March 31, 2016 One of the UK's leading architects, Dame Zaha Hadid, has died aged 65. Today Zaha Hadid Architects said Hadid, who is best known for work including the London 2012 Aquatics Centre and the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, died suddenly while being treated in hospital in Miami in the early hours of the morning, after contracting bronchitis earlier this [...]
Why building your dream home is about to become easier March 31, 2016 Fans of Channel Four’s Grand Designs who dream of creating a home from scratch will be one step closer to doing so tomorrow when a new laws encouraging self-build and custom housebuilding come into force. From 1 April, councils in England will have to keep a register of everyone seeking land to build their own home or [...]
Property Entrepreneurs: How Pelican Media built an app to sell City apartments off-plan March 30, 2016 When the luxury apartments at Landmark Place in Canada were launched in February, their details were presented on a series of iPad Pros. The new tablet had been launched just three months previously, but Tony Nicol could see the benefits of using the new hardware – and set his team racing to [...]
Soz, Osborne: Buy to let stamp duty changes aren’t putting many potential landlords off March 30, 2016 The best laid plans, and all that. It seems George Osborne's attempts to put potential landlords off sinking their cash into buy-to-let properties may not be having quite the desired effect – after new research suggested not many have given up on their plans to buy rental properties. The research, by the Nottingham Building Society, [...]
Property of the Week: The Woolwich mansion where Mike Leigh filmed Mr Turner is up for sale for £3m March 29, 2016 The life of a property developer is rarely glamorous. But for 15 weeks in 2014, Gary Halkyard rubbed shoulders with the great and the good of the British film industry and it was all down to a run-down mansion he'd acquired two years previously. Midway through restoring Rush Grove House in Woolwich, Oscar-nominated director Mike [...]
London house prices: Qataris now own £1bn chunk of Mayfair property – and their favourite addresses are Park Lane, Green Street and Mount Street March 29, 2016 Members of the Qatari royal family, other Qatari nationals and wealth funds now own a £1bn chunk of Mayfair real estate, a new report estimates. Almost a quarter of Mayfair’s 279 acres and over 4,300 residential properties is now dominated by Qataris, prompting estate agent Rokstone to dub the area between Park Lane, Hyde Park and North Row "Qatari [...]
Is this the UK’s most expensive conservatory? Mayfair apartment on sale for £5.6m values garden space at £750,000 March 29, 2016 It might not look like much, but this conservatory and rooftop patio are worth an estimated £750,000 – making it potentially the most expensive garden space in the UK. They are part of a two-bed luxury apartment in Mayfair, which is currently on sale for £5.6m (for a 116-year lease). The 2,212 sq ft south-facing [...]