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Construction of central London new-build flats fell by a quarter in 2017

By Rupert Neate

Apartments housed in developments dubbed ‘posh ghost towers’ struggle to sell

The estate agents LCP said developers were scaling back their ambitions after realising there was ‘a huge oversupply of over-commoditised new-build boxes’ in London. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Construction of luxury flats in central London dropped by a quarter last year, with apartments housed in developments dubbed “posh ghost towers” struggling to sell.

New-build starts in the capital in 2017 dropped by 25.4% compared with 2016, according to a report by London Residential Research and the luxury estate agents London Central Portfolio (LCP).

The number of new-build starts fell in seven of the 11 inner London boroughs featured in the study, with a 62% decline in Southwark (where there has been significant development around Elephant and Castle) and 42% falls in Wandsworth (which includes the developments along the Thames in Battersea and Nine Elms) and Westminster. In total, new-build starts in the inner boroughs fell by 3,810 units.

Naomi Heaton, the chief executive of LCP, said developers were scaling back their ambitions after realising there was “a huge oversupply of over-commoditised new-build boxes” in London.

“An awful lot of what was built was generic and overpriced and they struggled to sell it,” she said. “Historically, a lot of properties would have been bought by overseas investors in the assumption that they could flip it and sell it on at a huge profit, but now there is huge nervousness following increases in stamp duty and the the impact of Brexit.”

In January the Guardian revealed that more than half of the 1,900 ultra-luxury £1m-plus apartments built in London last year failed to sell. One property buying agent in the luxury sector, Henry Pryor, warned at the time that the city would be left with a legacy of “part-built posh ghost towers”.

Builders have delayed work on an additional 13,800 units they had planned to build, according to the research.

Developers have slashed prices to shift stock: the average cost of luxury London properties has fallen by 14% from its 2014 peak. The number of £1m-plus sales has fallen by 24%, according to the bank Coutts.

It said 53% of prime property on the market was being sold below asking price, compared with 42% last year. Prime-property buyers can now expect to achieve an average of 12.1% off the asking price, which works out at £300,000 off a 2,000 sq ft property.

The number of 20-storey or higher blocks under construction in London has fallen by 32%, from 46 in 2016 to 32 in 2017. The total number of flats in new tower blocks has fallen from 8,200 to 5,500.

The estate agent Strutt & Parker has said prime-property prices in central London could fall 5% this year. Guy Robinson, the head of residential at the agency, said: “In a climate of fast property price growth and low stamp duty, the cost of moving previously seemed relatively inconsequential, but now, with higher stamp duty and lower house price growth, moving costs are extremely material in the whole event, and has had an impact.

“People have come to terms with Brexit, and sellers should be preparing to act on plans put back from last year. As we move into summer, we are hopeful that a lift in confidence will see an increase in supply to meet current buyer demand.”

Camilla Dell, a managing partner at the property buying agent Black Brick, said: “We are seeing continued interest from Middle Eastern buyers, with Saudi clients particularly active. Brexit notwithstanding, the UK offers political, economic and legal stability.

“Saudi buyers tend to value confidentiality and favour trophy properties. In the current market, few of those are marketed publicly. Around a third of the properties we bought for clients last year were sold off-market.”

Estate agency sets up divorce division aimed at wealthy splitters

London has become a popular place for the wealth to divorce Credit: Peter MacDiarmid

By Rhiannon Curry

Estate agency Black Brick has launched a specialist service to cater for divorcing couples as an increasing number of the super-rich seek to untie the knot in London.

The company, which specialises in buying homes rather than selling them, set up the new team to give people advice on how much a new home would cost, enabling them to approach a judge with an accurate figure for divorce settlement purposes.

It also advises clients on what it costs to run a home in a particular area so they can use the information as part of a claim against their spouse, and finds short-term accommodation for those going through the divorce process.

London has become increasingly popular location for those looking to instigate divorce proceedings because of the more generous terms that can be negotiated for the financially weaker spouse. Unlike in other countries, property owned before the marriage and wealth that has been inherited can be included in a potential settlement, resulting in higher payouts.

Black Brick said such is the demand from wealthy individuals looking to value properties for the purposes of a divorce that the new division is needed to provide information to courts. In 2017, around 10pc of the transactions conducted by Black Brick were for people getting divorced.

Meanwhile, Swiss private bank Julius Baer has also begun offering a service that allows clients can borrow money in order to fund a divorce process if their cash is tied up in jointly-owned assets such as property.

Last year, the former wife of an oil and gas trader was awarded £453m in one of the largest divorce settlements ever agreed by a UK court.

She said she needed £39.3m to purchase a home in England as a result of the marriage breakdown, as well as £27.9m to buy a property abroad. She claimed she needed £5.4m a year to live on.

Hiring a ghostbuster and only buying on the eighth floor: how beliefs and superstition can make or break a property sale

By Arabella Youens

When the Norman Foster-designed HSBC building in Hong Kong was completed in December 1985, it was the most expensive building in the world ever to have been constructed.

While designed – much like earlier colonial-era structures on the island – with a trained feng shui geomancer, it did not anticipate the arrival, just a few years later, of the Bank of China building, with its knife-like edges, next door.

Shortly after it was built, the governor of Hong Kong died and there was a downturn in the city’s economy; it didn’t take long for fingers to be pointed at the new building. Feng shui masters were consulted and two cannon-shaped structures were mounted on the roof of HSBC’s building to dispel incoming negative energy from its neighbour.

Such is the power of the ancient practice of aligning buildings and objects, in order to attract good luck and ward off misfortune, that entire apartment buildings in Hong Kong have been built with holes through the middle. This is to allow dragons – traditional symbols of wealth and prosperity – to reach the harbour. Blocking the dragons’ path is thought to bring bad luck to residents.

While this may be a step too far for London developers, many are all too aware of its importance, and factor in a feng shui consultant if they wish to attract the lucrative Chinese market.

That means changing addresses if they feature the number four, which is considered inauspicious in China because it sounds similar to the words for “death”. Property developer Ballymore also commissioned a feng shui audit report for its Embassy Gardens project at Nine Elms in south London. The number eight is lucky, and Chinese buyers will often make offers on apartments with eight in the number or floor, explains Merlin Dormer, of buying agent Heaton & Partners.

Mayfair and Marylebone-based agent Martin Kay, of Kay & Co, says that Chinese clients looking at high-end property will sometimes bring their feng shui consultant with them on viewings. “It’s nerve-racking as it can end a deal immediately if something’s not right, particularly if one of the couple is more superstitious than the other.”

In one example, an enterprising (and not superstitious) wife managed to persuade her husband to buy a flat on the edge of Regent’s Park by convincing him it was on the fifth floor rather than the fourth. “She just counted from the ground floor up instead,” says Kay.

These days in London, feng shui requirements compete with another Eastern system of beliefs, vastu shastra, which is important to some Indian buyers, says Camilla Dell, of Black Brick, a buying agent. “One of the main requirements of vastu is that the front door should face south, which, in theory, sounds relatively simple but in London it can rule out whole parts of the city where the streets simply face the wrong way.”

Earlier this year, developer One Point Six took the unusual step of designing a luxury apartment on Pont Street in Knightsbridge according to vastu shastra before putting it on the market. While this remains a niche approach, agents have to find other solutions to remedy such concerns.

For one of Dell’s clients buying in a new development, this involved purchasing two flats opposite each other as well as the corridor space in between. By linking them together they were able to create a south-facing front door and the deal went ahead.

“With off-plan developments, we can try and find a way around these problems. But with some Indian clients, it’s likely that their vastu consultant will be the first to see the floor plans,” says Dell. “If something’s not right, the property is simply ruled out before anyone has been to take a look.”

Astrological concerns have also been known to delay a sale. “I was bidding on a property for a client, and we were all ready to exchange when she called a temporary halt because the planet Mercury was moving in the wrong direction,” says Guy Meacock, of Prime Purchase.

“While the planet was in retrograde she was of the belief that she shouldn’t sign the contract. I had to tell the selling agent we’d need to wait until it started moving in the right direction, which took several weeks.”

As international buyers increasingly enter the top end of the country house market, concerns regarding feng shui are having an impact here, too, says Rupert Sweeting, head of country house sales for Knight Frank.

Buyers who believe in the paranormal can also affect how successful a viewing is, adds Sweeting. If there’s any hint of a problem, his advice to vendors is to get the house cleared of any such ghouls by “employing a ‘ghostbuster’ or a priest to exorcise the house”.

Salisbury-based solicitor Marcus Thorpe, of Trethowans, says it’s important to be honest about any activity in the house. “While questions about the paranormal don’t form part of the standard buyer’s questionnaire, and perhaps it’s unique to the country house sector, a good solicitor might ask the question.”

For astrologer Shelley von Strunckel, who writes horoscopes in The Sunday Times and London Evening Standard, interest in the “mystical” is increasing. “There’s a big buzz about it now and a growing interest in the more subtle elements in life.”

Concern regarding the alignment of buildings is not a new concept on British shores, as demonstrated by Stonehenge. According to von Strunckel, even the least mindful buyer of a property will be aware of the energy of a place when they walk into it – they just might not know how to articulate it.

The energy of previous owners of a property can remain in the walls, she believes; in the case of a new build development, even that of the builders can be present long after they have finished.

Would-be buyers should, according to von Strunckel, stop and think about what they feel during a viewing, without being embarrassed.

Can negative energy immediately stop a sale? Not necessarily. “Regardless of any religious belief, you can always ask someone to come and clear the energy or bless the space,” says von Strunckel. “If in every other way the property works, it’s a lot easier to do that than fix physical problems like replacing small windows or bringing light into eternally dark rooms.”

Von Strunckel is hoping to leave some of her positive energy in her loft apartment in King’s Cross, north London, which is on the market for £2.85 million through Currell.

Bought nine years ago, the three-bedroom converted warehouse flat is flooded with light by its huge windows. It overlooks Battlebridge Basin and Regent’s Canal and comes with access to a 24-hour concierge.

Camilla Dell talks to Coutts about the London property market

Camilla Dell talks to Coutts about the London property market as part of their London prime index property market. Watch the video here –

London buying agency looks to Hong Kong after a ‘surge’ of interest from Asian investors

Black Brick is heading to Hong Kong to capitalise on an international investment trend

Camilla Dell’s buying agency Black Brick is taking a team to Hong Kong after seeing “a surge in interest from Asians looking to invest in the central London property market”.

“A surge in leads” has come through in the last six months, reports the firm, mainly from India, Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia (but also from China, Oman, Lebanon and Singapore). The agency has also completed on ten international-buyer deals in the last 18 months, representing clients from Singapore, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, India and Lebanon.

Now Black Brick partner Caspar Harvard Walls (pictured) is heading to Hong Kong at the end of this month to charm private bankers, family offices and HNW expats living in Singapore and Hong Kong. “It is extremely difficult for those clients to conduct a London property search from so overseas,” notes Camilla Dell, “so using a buying agent makes sense.”

Camilla Dell, Managing Partner at Black Brick: “Asia has always been a key market for us and with a rise in interest from this region, we are keen to reach out to potential clients who need the services of a buying agent.

“Many Asian buyers can also often be confused by the sheer number of new build developments being advertised by London developers. Even for domestic buyers, it can be very confusing. We are able to help our clients to decide which development to buy above another and the nuances of the market. There are many pitfalls which overseas buyers can make when buying without advice such as overpaying, buying the wrong unit, buying in the wrong location and having the wrong advisors. For example, often developers will push buyers to use their own in-house solicitors and mortgage brokers who may not provide impartial advice.

“We are visiting Hong Kong to address this issue, and to meet with private banks, family offices and other professional intermediaries to spread the message that there is another way of buying. Paying for advice can more than pay for itself and avoid costly mistakes in the long run.”

https://www.black-brick.com/young-street

Chelsea mansion’s £16.5m price cut does the trick

Super-fast turnaround on Cresswell Place provides further proof that there is a market – when the price is right…

A turnkey mansion in Chelsea that took a well-publicised £16.5m price cut last month has been snapped up pretty sharpish.

The “one-off” behemoth on Cresswell Place came to market amid a blaze of publicity last summer at £37.5m, following a full-scale redevelopment programme at the hands of luxury specialist Albyns. A sale failed to materialise, however, and the property was put into receivership and relaunched just a couple of weeks ago at £20.95m – 44% below the original figure.

Last we heard, 50 viewings had already been booked in pre-launch, and we’re told a deal has already gone through (although the purchase price has yet to be confirmed).

The six-year project delivered an 11,046 square foot pile with bells and whistles aplenty; along with some glorious reception spaces and five bedroom suites, some “incredible” leisure facilities have been installed, including a 15m swimming pool, gym and spa. There’s also a car stacker for two large vehicles, a passenger lift to all floors, state-of-the-art tech throughout, and a separate staff area.

An unconfirmed report suggested an offer at £36m “fell away” last year.

Mayfair-based buying agency Black Brick recently flagged up a rise in the number of newly-developed properties going into receivership. The firm’s Camilla Dell said: “Sellers at every price point, including super-prime, are becoming more realistic. Understanding who you are buying from and their motivation for selling is crucial in order to get the best outcome on price. We have noticed an increase in the number of newly developed properties that were on the market for over inflated prices back in 2015/16/17 and which are now in receivership – in other words developers that got their timings wrong and are now suffering the consequences. Now could be an excellent time for buyers at the top end of the market to take advantage of sellers looking to close a deal and receivers looking to get their money back on un-sold properties.”

It’s not just PCL properties either. The remarkable Chalet Estate in Surrey has just reappeared on the open market on the instructions of LPA Receivers with an asking of £5m (a good £8m below the £13m it was originally launched at in 2016), with contents available by separate negotiation…

True grit: will redevelopment blunt Kentish Town’s edgy appeal?

The North London area’s rough edges are slowly being smoothed out

By George Hammond

When describing Kentish Town in north-west London, estate agents like to use words such as “edgy” or “gritty”. Both would be desirable qualities in a piece of sandpaper, but not in a place where buyers might be looking for a family home — and certainly not in a place where the price of a family home frequently tops £2m.

Still, its “edginess” forms part of Kentish Town’s appeal, agents say. It’s perhaps why Taylor Swift chose to shoot part of her video for “End Game” there. The singer can be seen hanging out in Falkland Place and drinking in the upstairs bar at the Bull and Gate. She also reportedly filmed a segment in local kebab house Kentish Delight — though these scenes don’t seem to have made the final cut.

“There are some bits of [Kentish Town] that are still quite grotty,” says Camilla Dell, managing partner at buying agents Black Brick. Any buyer strolling past Kentish Delight on Kentish Town Road might be inclined to agree — agents admit the high street looks a little shabby. But move away from there — to the grid of streets north of Leighton Road or to one of the area’s highly Instagrammable multicoloured terraces — and the housing stock starts to look much smarter.

On the brightly painted Leverton Street, Chestertons is selling a two-bedroom house (in creamy yellow) for £1.1m. On Montpelier Gardens, the same agent is selling a large five-bedroom terrace for £2.7m. The area’s rough edges are slowly being smoothed out, says Gary Linton, founder of developer the Linton Group, which launched the Maple Building, a block of 57 apartments just north of Kentish Town station, in May 2016. The development is currently “about 75 per cent sold”, he says.

A chicken shop recently reopened as a sourdough pizzeria; and a subterranean public toilet reconfigured itself as a cocktail bar. “Gail’s [the bakery] is moving in where there was a tanning salon,” says Caroline Hill, chair of Kentish Town Road Action, “which I’m delighted about.”

A two-bedroom house on Leverton St, £1.1m

“It’s authentic London,” says Nina Coulter, director of residential development at Savills. “It hasn’t been over-gentrified and it hasn’t got loads of shopping centres: it’s somewhere to live.”

Not everyone agrees. In 2015, when the Mamelon Tower pub was being developed into apartments, squatters put up a banner that read: “We don’t want your yuppie flats, we are happy with our rats.”

House prices in Kentish Town have almost doubled since 2007 — up 94 per cent, according to Land Registry data compiled by Savills. Last year, the average cost of a second-hand home reached £805,000. Prices for new-builds can be much higher, as developers such as Linton have been moving in — a sure sign that an area is “up and coming”, says Dell. Aside from the Maple Building — where a three-bedroom penthouse is on the market for £2.495m, through Savills — recent arrivals include the Furlong Collection, where a four-bedroom townhouse is on the market with Foxtons for £1.5m; and Founders House, a former pub converted into one and two-bedroom apartments.

The cooling market for prime central London homes seems to have spread to Kentish Town. In 2017, the price of a square foot in the area fell 7 per cent, according to LonRes — with more than 37 per cent of homes having their price reduced before selling. As confidence in the market recedes, the number of transactions has slumped too, down 33 per cent since their peak in 2014.

Over the road from the Founder Arms development is a Grade II-listed building with a sign on it that reads: “12 new homes, one cinema space, coming soon.” Developer Uplift Property took over the premises in 2015, but it’s still not clear when it will be complete. “Soon went past a long time ago,” says Hill.

Traditional houses on Patshull Road, Kentish Town

Buying guide

As well as affordability, buyers are drawn to good quality local schools, including the Collège Français Bilingue de Londres
A number of local streets are lined with pastel-painted houses, a convention initiated on Kelly Street, which is now a conservation area
The area is served by underground and overground railway lines, as well as direct trains to Luton airport

What you can buy for . . .

£500,000 A two-bedroom ground floor flat

£1.5m A four-bedroom Victorian terraced house

£5m A five-bedroom duplex penthouse

Market stalls in London’s Covent Garden

Properties around the historic piazza have been upgraded but sales have slowed

By George Hammond

February 2nd 2018 – The Financial Times

Stalls and shops in Covent garden market

Prime property added market stalls in London’s Covent Garden properties around the historic piazza have been upgraded but sales have slowed shops and stalls in Covent Garden market.

At various times the home of paupers, performers, prostitutes and the pious — it started life as a monks’ vegetable patch — Covent Garden’s identity has been haggled over and traded like produce at a hawker’s stall. Its latest reinvention is at the hand of developers, insistent that this one-time “touristville” is now a smart residential district in what developers and agents have dubbed London’s “Midtown”.

Since the developer Capital & Counties (Capco) purchased the market building and nearby properties for £421m in 2006, buyers and surging residential prices have given credence to that idea. But with values across prime London tanking — down 15.9 per cent since the 2014 peak, according to Savills — vendors in this former fruit and flower market are ready to barter.

Before Capco moved in “Covent Garden was a bit seedy”, says Nina Coulter, director of residential at Savills. “Some of the retail was a bit low-end.” Since Capco’s acquisition, though, “even the quality of the street performers has gone up”.

The developer’s influence is evident all around the piazza. Restaurants — including Balthazar and the Ivy Market Grill — and retailers have been brought in. Today, Capco boasts that Covent Garden is home to the “most beauty brands per square metre” anywhere in London. The most dramatic facelift, though, has been on the local housing stock.

“Because the perception of the area has improved and it’s been gentrified, the developers have moved in,” says Coulter. Aviva Investors recently converted a former jazz club into 14 apartments at The Colyer, where CBRE is listing a three-bedroom penthouse for £3.495m. Nearby in the newly-built 38 Southampton Street, prices for a one-bedroom flat start at £975,000. This year will also see the completion of Capco’s Floral Court development. As well as 45 homes, the project will include restaurants, shops and a courtyard. “We’ve not seen anything like it in Covent Garden,” says Lisa Hollands, executive director of CBRE residential.

The effect on house prices has been significant. In 2007, the average square foot of property in the Covent Garden area would have cost you around £1,000. A decade on, that figure had risen 60 per cent, to £1,600, according to LonRes. Prices for new-builds are much higher. The three-bedroom penthouse at the Colyer, at £3.495m, costs more than £2,400 per sq ft.

There are signs, however, that the surge is petering out. Last year, prices per square foot in the postcodes spanning Covent Garden fell 1.4 per cent from 2016, according to LonRes. Properties languished on the market for an average of 170 days, the longest period of the past five years. On Macklin Street, a two-bedroom apartment in a converted warehouse is for sale at £2.3m, with Knight Frank.

Sales of new-builds have slumped. Between January and September last year, LonRes recorded just two new-build sales, compared with 18 in 2016.

Three-bedroom penthouse at The Colyer, £3.495m

“A lot of the new boutique developments which were completed when the market was still up, have had to cut prices a lot in the last few years,” says Louisa Brodie, head of search and acquisitions at estate agents Banda Property. She puts the blame on stamp duty reforms in 2014 and 2016, which first raised the tax bill on all homes priced above £937,500 and then added a 3 per cent premium on second homes.

There may be more localised reasons behind the price falls, though. Agents say that much of Covent Garden’s recent ascent was built on its relative value. “One of the reasons people were buying four or five years ago is it looked great value compared to Mayfair or Kensington,” says Camilla Dell, managing partner at buying agent Black Brick. “But now the price per square foot is the same as Kensington on new-builds.”

Buyers may be reluctant to return to Covent Garden’s resale market. “Some of the older stock looks knackered,” says Jo Eccles, managing director of SP Property. “People are used to having pools, and all they have is a tatty water feature.”

That’s unlikely to play well with wealthy European and Far Eastern buyers. Overseas buyers comprise roughly half the local population. “Domestic buyers wouldn’t have thought of it before the gentrification,” says Peter Preedy, a director at JLL. They’d go to the theatre, but would they live there? God, no.”

Even now, agents concede that the bustle of Covent Garden can dissuade clients, with many preferring more residential neighbouring postcodes. “To buy in Covent Garden you have to love Covent Garden,” says Dell. Convincing buyers to see past the street performers and tourists might need more than the flashy new “Midtown” rebrand.

King Street, Covent Garden

Buying guide:

Covent Garden’s piazza, the surrounding houses and St Paul’s Church, on the piazza’s south-west side, were designed by 17th-century architect Inigo Jones
The Royal Opera House, just off the piazza, is the third entertainment venue built on the site. The Theatre Royal, built in the 1730s, burnt down in 1808. Its successor met the same fate in 1856
Covent Garden is less than 15 minutes from the City of London via the Tube

What you can buy for . . .

£1m A one-bedroom flat in a Grade-II listed building

£3m A three-bedroom penthouse apartment

£6m A seven-bedroom townhouse on Long Acre

A stage too far?

By Oliver Wadeson

January 22 2018 – The Metro

Take a look at any model on the cover of a magazine these days and you assume the image has been airbrushed to remove any blemishes: sadly, digital trickery has become an acceptable fact of life in the world of publishing. Now, the manipulation of images has entered the world of property. In the US, estate agents — or realtors as they are known there — have been using digital technology to ‘improve’ photographs of properties for sale for some time, and, inevitably, this practice is now coming over here.

The process is simple — and controversial. Estate agents instruct photographers to take images of a property as they would normally. Then the digital images are sent to studios where they are ‘treated’.

How far this treatment can go is the subject of some debate but generally, for its proponents, the idea is that the doctored images should represent the potential of a property: what it could look like. This could often involve ‘dressing’ an empty flat but it could also extend to removing the furniture in the original photographs and replacing it with more tasteful items, or changing the colours and shades of a room. However, as the website of one US virtual staging company illustrates, it can do something as dramatic as add a swimming pool to a garden.

Changing the sheets: Stowhill Estates apply the technology to a bedroom

The photographs are sent back to the estate agents who upload them onto property portals, such as Rightmove and Zoopla, with a disclaimer stating something along the lines of ‘we have used digital technology to give an impression of the home’s potential. Actual furnishings may not be as they appear in some photographs.’

Stowhill Estates is one of the first British estate agents to adopt virtual staging here. Stowhill agent Lucy Joerin says they don’t use it on every property they market as many are properly presented already, with well furnished rooms and up-to-date décor but it’s a useful tool to have where there are time or budget restrictions to presenting the house in the best way. Virtual staging, she says, is a natural extension of dressing a home for sale.

‘Both physical and digital staging of homes is common practice in the US, where it is generally understood that the way you live in a home is very different to the way you sell a home,’ she says. ‘Most of the top real estate agents in the US will hire specialist staging companies who will come and remove all the existing furniture, and replace it with high end furnishings, in order to present the home in the best possible way − almost like dressing a shop window. Many owners even move out while their home is up for sale.

‘Here in the UK, where homes generally take much longer to sell (months rather than 30 days), it’s clearly not practical to move out and it’s prohibitively expensive to rent furniture for weeks or months. That’s where virtual staging can really benefit a seller who may not have the time, or budget, to hire in physical furniture.

‘We’ve used our virtual staging service on a number of different types of property, from an empty flat in Windsor to a three-bedroom home in Maidenhead where the owner needed to sell quickly but did not have the budget to clear out all her existing furniture or redecorate.

‘We’ve also used it in new-build homes, properties where there might be just one room that is unfinished, or where there are tenants in the property who don’t want their furniture and personal items to be photographed.

‘In any home that we virtually stage, we are extremely careful to only change decor and furnishings and never the actual structure or physical features of the home. You should certainly not move doorways, ceiling mouldings, window frames or bathtubs/showers, and we would never gloss over any structural faults such as cracks in the walls.

‘What we are trying to achieve is a visual image of how the property could look with different furniture or decor to give potential buyers a clear idea of the homes’ potential. We also always make it very clear which of our pictures have been digitally staged. Our clients have always responded very positively, as it enables them to see what could be possible.’

Caspar Harvard-Walls, a partner at London buying agent Black Brick, is concerned. ‘I understand why people are doing it. Normal “physical” staging — when you rent furniture to dress an empty flat is very expensive.

Just add water: This five-bed home located in New Haven, Connecticut, had a pool added by Why Not Homes to show potential buyers what could be done with the exterior space of the property.

‘It can cost about £450 a week to dress a two-bed flat with a minimum of a 12-week contract. And for some time developers have used CGIs for new build developments which are not completed. And I can see how that be extended for secondary marketing.

‘But it could lead to people being disappointed. Maybe they haven’t noticed the disclaimer. It should also be pointed out to sellers that sometimes the virtual staging can look appalling.’

Zach Calhoun, who runs one of the US studios offering virtual staging services — Why Not Homes — defends his service, which he has run from a studio in Houston, Texas since 2016. ‘It’s been around for years in the US but has only just started becoming popular internationally. We now have clients coming from the UK, Canada and New Zealand,’ he says.

Sky’s the limit: Why Not Homes says the technology shows a home’s potential.

‘I would say half the realtors in the US I speak with have heard of it and 15 per cent use it. It’s hard to tell how many properties have been virtually staged, but our group alone has staged more than 2,500 photos for more than 800 projects. My advice to our clients is: disclose everything, use both empty and virtually staged photos for the listing, do not hide anything or misrepresent anything.

‘Virtual staging is for people who see an empty room and have trouble visualising what’s possible. For example, my wife walks into an empty room and she sees possibility, I walk into an empty room and I look for cracks in the wall.

‘So the service needs to be used for selling possibility, not tricking people. Even though we do not have control of the use of our photos, we never advise hiding anything. But as a selling tool, it’s incredibly powerful to create foot traffic.

‘Once the buyer has seen the photos, walking into an empty property can be much more enjoyable and lead to faster offers. After all, you don’t buy a house’s furniture, you buy a home to make your own.’

■ stowhillestates.com; whynothomes.com; black-brick.com

The price is right: a guide to valuation

With so much advice available, how should vendors decide who to listen to? We outline the factors to consider

By Francesca Steele

January 12 2018 – The Times

This five-bedroom house in Broadway, Worcestershire, is on the market for £1.9 million with Savills.

The old adage goes: “There is no such thing as a bad property, just a bad price.”

A sharp slowdown in house price growth last year, along with several reports of sellers dropping asking prices in central London, means that many homeowners may be wondering how to price their house sale correctly. Should you listen to your estate agent, or look at house price indices? How much more should you expect buyers to pay for your designer kitchen?

“The key is research,” says Caspar Harvard Walls, a partner at Black Brick, a buying agency. “There are some estate agents who are desperate for stock, and so will value a property high so that they can get it on their books. All too often the overpriced property is then used as a ‘lever’, whereby agents will show it alongside more accurately priced alternatives in a bid to make them look cheap. This does not help the owner, and they will have to bring their price down.” We answer your pricing questions.

What do the house price indices say?  Research from Nationwide shows that house prices rose by 2.6 per cent last year, compared with growth of 4.5 per cent in 2016. London was the worst-performing region, with house prices falling 0.5 per cent last year. Meanwhile, prices in the West Midlands grew by 5.2 per cent, and in the East Midlands by 4.6 per cent.

In Chelsea, west London, this five-bedroom home is on sale for £27.5 million.

Regional disparities could also be significant this year. Savills forecasts a further house price fall of 2 per cent in London this year, and growth of only 0.5 per cent in the southeast and east of England. Over the next five years the estate agency predicts growth of 7.1 per cent for London, compared with a rise of 18.1 per cent for the northwest and 14.8 per cent for the West Midlands.

How can I tell how much my house is worth?

Don’t look solely at property portals, as these will tell you the prices that sellers are asking, not what they are achieving. “Get the opinion of three local agents,” says Christian Warman, a director of Tedworth Property. “Often people opt for the middle valuation. There is logic to this, but also ask each agent to demonstrate how and why they’ve come up with the price they have given. If they can’t justify it, alarm bells should be ringing.” Compare the agents’ valuations with sold price data on Rightmove, which shows the latest Land Registry figures. David Lee, the head of sales at Pastor Real Estate, says: “Do some research into what has sold in your area and a radius of five streets within the past six months.” Alex Newall, the founder of Barnes Private Office, says: “Don’t look at Rightmove or Zoopla’s approximate pricing of your house. They are mostly incorrect.”

Should I under price?

It depends. Round numbers pick up people searching online for different price brackets. “Gone are the days of pricing just under or over a price point — say, at £499,950 in favour of getting £500,000,” says Tim Simmons, the head of residential sales at Humberts. “Vendors will render themselves invisible to those looking in the £500,000 to 550,000 price point.” Vendors keen to sell quickly are often advised to drop down a price bracket and add “offers in excess of”.

Should I factor in higher stamp duty?

Absolutely, says Alexander Lewis of Knight Frank. “Anything above £1 million is being down-valued because of higher stamp duty [since it went up in 2014]. Buyers expect sellers to factor at least 50 per cent of [the loss] into their pricing.”

Does my location matter?

Yes. Lewis says: “Not only should you think about what is selling in your neighbourhood, but what makes your house worth more than the neighbourhoods near by.”

Prime southwest London properties have experienced a decline in prices over the past year, according to Savills. Property prices in Battersea, Clapham, Fulham, Wandsworth, Barnes and Richmond fell by an average of 4.2 per cent last year, making it London’s weakest prime market. Regional city markets are likely to hold their value, but check out the competition.

So what is likely to alter the value of my house?

Transport links are key (including imminent ones, such as Crossrail), as are good local schools. Agents say that buyers are happy to pay more for completed works that add structural value, such as a loft conversion or extension, but not for expensive cosmetic changes such as a new kitchen. “If something has been on the market for six months or more, even if you are getting lots of viewings, you may want to reconsider the price,” Lewis says.

A Knightsbridge flat for £10?

Agents are using novel marketing to ride the downturn in prime London property

Harrods on Brompton Road, Knightsbridge © Getty

George Hammond

Yesterday

Knightsbridge isn’t usually somewhere to shop on a budget but this year one lucky home hunter might pick up a three-bedroom apartment on Walton Street — valued at more than £3m — for £10.

All he or she need do is beat a few hundred thousand other hopefuls in a cricketing “spot-the-ball” competition. As well as a share of the freehold, the winner of the property will have stamp duty paid and receive a matte-black Jeep.

“It’s a sexy house,” says Santa Agolli, founder of Your Laddr, which is organising the competition. “It’s next to Harrods, it’s a dream lifestyle.” This property event is launching her business: Your Laddr will eventually offer a range of homes through the same form of competition.

“For 10 quid, why not have a go?” asks Noel De Keyzer, director of Savills’ local office. The average sale price of Knightsbridge flats in 2017 was just over £3m, with houses close to £5m, according to data from LonRes. The 1 in 380,000 chance offered by Your Laddr might be more appealing than ponying up the actual costs.

“So long as the scheme involves a sufficient element of skill, judgment or knowledge, ‘spot-the-ball’ competitions can operate lawfully in the UK without the need for an operating licence,” says David Copping at Farrer & Co, the law firm. He adds, however, that if prizes can be awarded on the basis of pure luck or guesswork, the competition is likely to be subject to regulation by the Gambling Commission.

Local agents describe the competition as a gimmick, but vendors may be open to new ideas. Prices are down 15 per cent since 2014, according to LonRes, and homes that did sell last year spent an average of 157 days on the market, with 45 per cent having their prices cut.

Like other affluent London neighbourhoods, Knightsbridge has been hit by what De Keyzer calls “Osborne’s changes” — the stamp duty reforms introduced by the former chancellor, which first raised the bill on properties costing more than £937,500 and then added a 3 per cent premium to all second homes. “People have not adjusted to the changes we’ve seen over the past 18 months,” he says. “[The vendors] might not have been able to shift the apartment the conventional way.”

“As a buyer you can’t afford to make a mistake if you’re paying 10-15 per cent in stamp duty,” says Harry Dawes, head of Knight Frank’s Knightsbridge office. The caution has been palpable among Knight Frank’s customers: “At the peak of 2014 we were averaging 18 viewings per offer, now it’s around 45,” says Dawes.

Apartment on Walton Street, valued at £3.2m, which is the prize in Your Laddr’s ‘spot-the-ball’ competition © Frederick Ardley

“Our register in the Knightsbridge office has never been so low,” says De Keyzer. “We’ve seen transaction numbers at the top end [on properties valued at £5m and above] down by 40 to 50 per cent.”

Discretionary buyers have been discouraged by the stuttering market and many have become renters until confidence returns. Buying agent Camilla Dell has an alternative explanation: “Knightsbridge is not the desirable postcode it once was,” she says. “A lot of my clients say Knightsbridge has lost a lot of its gloss.” Even Middle Eastern buyers — so established in the area that Harrods is now an asset of the Qatari state — are venturing to the garden squares of Belgravia and Mayfair, she says.

Before the downturn, Knightsbridge had been on a streak. The area straddles Kensington & Chelsea and the City of Westminster — the two best-performing markets in the UK from 2005-2015, according to Savills Residential Research. During that decade, prices there rose 80 per cent or more.

One reason for the boom was a series of super-prime developments, such as The Knightsbridge, 201 residences near Hyde Park. Today, a one-bedroom flat in the development is on sale for £3.495m — more than £4,000 per square foot — with Harrods Estates.

The Knightsbridge was followed in 2011 by One Hyde Park, a Candy brothers development which launched at a headline-grabbing £6,000 per sq ft. “The reputation of One Hyde Park is still head and shoulders above anything else,” says Simon Barry, head of New Residential Developments at Harrods Estates. Dell is less flattering, describing it as “a goldfish bowl”.

The address certainly commands a premium, with a five-bedroom apartment marketed for £50m by Knight Frank. A number of apartments in the development are owned by offshore companies — at last count, it was reported that 20 have purchased homes there in excess of £20m.

Transaction volumes in Knightsbridge have fallen 36 per cent from 2014 levels, according to LonRes, and even a small bounce back last year, when some 26 more homes were sold than in the year before, has done little to raise morale among local agents. For now, finding a ball might be easier than finding a buyer.

Buying guide

Transaction volumes in Knightsbridge have fallen 36 per cent from 2014 levels, when 318 homes were sold, according to LonRes. In 2017, just 202 changed hands
Two-thirds of students at Imperial College in Knightsbridge are from overseas. Agents report an increase in buyers — particularly from China — looking for high-end student accommodation
Hyde Park barracks, home of the Household Cavalry, was earmarked for development, but failure to find a home for the mounted regiment stalled plans

What you can buy for . . .

£1m A one-bedroom flat opposite Harrods

£7.5m A five-bedroom penthouse in a listed building

£20m A four-bedroom new-build townhouse

Indian buyers pouring money into expensive London property

By Isabelle Fraser

Indian buyers are pouring into central London’s lethargic high-end property market after a change to how much money they can take out of their home country.

Buying agency Black Brick said that 13pc of sales it has done this year have been to Indian buyers, up from 2.6pc in 2015/16.

Separate research by Cluttons found that between August 2016 and July 2017, Indian buyers accounted for 22pc of the sales in prime central London, made up of the City of Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea, up from 5pc in 2012.

This is partly due to changes in the Reserve Bank of India’s regulations of how much money can be taken out of the country. The so-called liberal remittance scheme was adjusted in 2015, meaning that a family of four can take out $1m, while previously it was only $400,000. Camilla Dell, managing partner at Black Brick, said: “It means that a family of four, after one year, will have $1m to spend, and after two years $2m. It quickly adds up, and explains why a lot of our Indian clients are buying in the £1m to £2m range.”

Property in central London is very attractive to foreign buyers as prices have been falling due to an oversupply of luxury flats and affordability issues. Prices of these luxury homes are 15pc lower than in September 2014, according to Savills. Coupled with the fall in sterling, some international buyers can buy homes for less than they could two years ago.

Black Brick’s Indian clients are split between investors, who largely want to buy new build flats in Shoreditch and White City, and owner-occupiers looking in Mayfair.

Becky Fatemi, managing director of estate agency Rokstone, agreed: “The most popular address for Indian buyers is Mayfair – where the most sought after addresses are Grosvenor Square, South Audley Street and Hill Street. The other alternatives for them are St James’s and Belgravia.” Ms Dell added that she is currently working with a Bollywood actress to buy a London home in Marylebone, Knightsbridge or Mayfair.

According to Black Brick, other big international buyers include those from the Middle East, France, Nigeria and Russia.

Bag a bargain in Belgravia

Average house prices in the prime London area top £2m but are 14% off their peak

By George Hammond

Next month, Elizabeth Street in Belgravia will get dressed up for Christmas. There is a popular Christmas market and, as part of the yuletide festivities, local boutiques will deck their shopfronts with winter finery, baubles and twinkling lights. Local estate agents don’t tend to take part, but as expensive as the offerings in their windows are, they might still offer buyers the chance to pick up a cut-price high-end item this December.

In this part of Belgravia — a super-prime neighbourhood bounded by Knightsbridge, Chelsea and the Queen’s back garden — transactions have been sluggish and prices are 14.5 per cent below their 2014 peak. “Now might be a good time to put in a cheeky offer,” says Camilla Dell of Black Brick. “Christmas can be a great time to buy,” she says, “because a lot of sellers who’ve had their houses on the market [for a while] want to get it done, and start the year afresh.”

In 2014, before stamp duty raised the tax bill on houses priced over £937,500, homes in Belgravia were selling within a few weeks of listing, says Dell. “Fast-forward to today and things are taking 12 months to sell,” she says. “Elizabeth Street is no different, regardless of a fun little Christmas market.”

In fact, the difference in the number of days between listing and exchange may be overstated, with LonRes figures suggesting houses sat on the market an average of 153 days this year, compared with 143 days three years ago. What has undergone greater change is the proportion of properties reducing their prices to encourage a sale: that accounted for 43 per cent this year, compared with 28.6 per cent in 2014, according to LonRes data.

Over the year to September, local prices fell 5.1 per cent, but the market seems to be bottoming out, with Savills recording a modest 0.8 per cent dip in the last quarter. “My sense is that we are near the bottom of the curve in Belgravia,” says Stuart Bailey of Knight Frank’s Belgravia office. “It has taken two years to get here, but some properties in Belgravia are now blatantly good value.”

Still blatantly expensive, though: over the past year, the average sale price for a flat in Belgravia has been just under £2m, according to property website Zoopla. Savills’ forecasting also assumes the bottom has been reached, with the agency predicting growth in prime central London of 20.3 per cent to 2022. The number of transactions has been increasing, to 88 in the year to September, from 82 the year before. While that’s some way off the 126 recorded in 2015, even a tentative rise is cause for optimism among agents. Independent property consultant Jeremy Davidson says the total number of transactions may be higher than the recorded figures, because many local homes can be sold off-market. Belgravia is “probably the one area where [such] things happen without too much fanfare”, he says.

Around half of all buyers are from overseas, says Richard Gutteridge, director at Savills’ Sloane Street offices. “Belgravia definitely has taken top spot for overseas family destination, if you have the budget to match,” he says. The grand squares and mansion blocks that characterise Belgravia are the legacy of 19th-century master builder Thomas Cubitt, who developed the neighbourhood on swampland owned by the Grosvenor Estate. At the pub on Elizabeth Street which bears Cubitt’s name, diners tuck into platters of rock oysters for £30 a dozen. A few doors down, Fox Gregory is marketing a three-bedroom house for £6.95m.

The Grosvenor Estate still manages much of the area, trying to maintain a village ambience in the central London neighbourhood, where 57 per cent of the housing stock is pre-1900. Butlers and Bentleys abound on Eaton Square, one of the UK’s most expensive streets. Houses here average £17m, according to Lloyds. On the square, Strutt & Parker is selling a five-bedroom lateral flat with tennis court access for £27.5m. In the square’s communal gardens, “ball games, bicycles or other noisy activities” are forbidden.

The peace is only disturbed by the low rumble of a Rolls-Royce kicking into life. As well as serenity, the area is highly valued for its security, according to Richard Barber, director of residential agency at LLP. Although the borough of Westminster has London’s highest crime rate, the ward of Knightsbridge and Belgravia sees a vanishing fraction of it. Of 4,192 offences across the borough in January, fewer than 100 occurred in the area.

The average sale price in Knightsbridge and Belgravia was more than £2,000 per sq ft in the year to the end of May Journeys to the City of London take about 18 minutes from Victoria Underground station Elizabeth Street hosts its Christmas market on Sunday, December 3

Buying Guide

The average sale price in Knightsbridge and Belgravia was more than £2,000 per sq ft in the year to the end of May
Journeys to the City of London take about 18 minutes from Victoria Underground station
Elizabeth Street hosts its Christmas market on Sunday, December 3

What you can buy for…

£1m A one-bedroom

£5 A two-bedroom garden flat on Eton Place

£28 An eight-bedroom terraced house on Chester Square

Tech firms buoy up property in Silicon London

Areas of the capital that attract international companies could see distorted price rises

Although estate agents are not usually known for their understatement, following three years of price falls in London’s prime housing market, many have been uncharacteristically cautious about the prospect of short-term growth. In September, the prices of central London’s most expensive homes — those above £5m — had dropped 15 per cent in three years, according to Savills.

This makes a recent forecast from Kay & Co all the more surprising. The estate agent claims that certain pockets of the capital could see “a surge in property prices of up to 60 per cent in five years”, thanks to the expansion of global tech companies.

This year, Facebook took up residence in new headquarters at One Rathbone Square, close to Tottenham Court Road in Fitzrovia, and Snap, parent company of the social media platform Snapchat, signed a decade-long lease on 7-11 Lexington Street in Soho. Google is expanding its presence in nearby King’s Cross, Twitter has established European headquarters in Soho and Instagram has set up shop a short walk away in Covent Garden.

“Tech giants are choosing to move their international headquarters [here], ramping up their investment in the UK,” says Martin Bikhit, Kay & Co managing director. “Fitzrovia is fast becoming a creative tech hub.” Despite a relatively high living cost in London compared with many other tech cities, Kay & Co points to sterling weakness as a lure for companies previously put off by the relocation costs. The agency also cites the strength of London’s universities, the area’s proximity to the City of London financial centre and a recent government pledge to invest £1.9bn in cyber security and a further £1bn in faster broadband.

The limited supply of new homes in Soho, Fitzrovia and King’s Cross — despite the new 2,000-unit development — will cause price rises, says Bikhit. “They’re slap bang in the middle of town; there’s only so much you can do. There is Rathbone Square, and some more boutique developments as well, but you’re not going to have oversupply because of the nature of the area.” At Rathbone Square, a 142-unit development, Savills is selling a two-bedroom penthouse with a roof terrace for £3.39m. Between Fitzrovia and King’s Cross, on Drummond Street, a three-bedroom home is available for £1.25m through Frank Harris & Co.

Camilla Dell, managing partner of property consultants Black Brick, thinks the effect of the tech companies on London’s property market has already been felt.

“Once all the companies are in, it’s too late,” she says.

Google first announced its move to King’s Cross in 2012; Facebook has had a presence in the capital since 2007; Snap — though making its first foray into London — brings a modest 300 staff.

The average price of a flat in Fitzrovia, Bloomsbury and Soho has grown 52 per cent in the past five years, according to Kay & Co. At £3,177 per square foot, a three-bedroom flat on Soho’s Sherwood Street is bringing the average up. The £5.3m property, for sale through Dexters estate agents, comes with a 24-hour concierge. Over the same five years prices in King’s Cross have grown 48 per cent.

At the start of the millennium King’s Cross had a reputation for drugs and prostitution; today, three-bedroom apartments in the newly-built Plimsoll Building begin at £1.8m.

Despite the price rises, properties in King’s Cross are selling — in the second quarter of 2017, 53.7 per cent of properties sold had been on the market for three months or less, compared with 25.4 per cent for the rest of central London, according to Kay & Co.

Whether properties can maintain that growth and continue to sell is less clear. Savills anticipates prime home values will increase by around 10 per cent over the next five years across some London boroughs.

Lucian Cook, head of residential research at Savills, agrees that London’s new arrivals may push values up, but is more circumspect about the extent to which they will do so.

“I suspect that having higher-value employers taking commercial space will underpin prices, but not growth [of 60 per cent]”, he says. The London market is already “pushing the limits” of mortgage affordability.

And affordability is the key issue. In King’s Cross, the average asking price of a two-bedroom flat is just over £1m, according to property website Zoopla.

A 60 per cent increase would take that figure to £1.6m. Glassdoor, the recruitment website, estimates the average base salary of a software engineer at Google to be £61,210 — almost double the median for inner London. This means that by 2022, a pair of young Googlers hoping to settle locally — taking home a combined £135,000 at current rates of growth — would still need a deposit of about £1m to make their mortgage stack up, providing they could get a 4.5 times salary mortgage. Even so, the couple would find King’s Cross more manageable than Soho or Fitzrovia, where prices for a two-bedroom flat already average more than £1.5m.

The number of property transactions in London has fallen by 13.5 per cent since the 2014-15 tax year, according to Land Registry data. Many would-be buyers have been deterred by political uncertainty and high stamp duty, says Dell, who thinks the short-term beneficiaries from the new tech arrivals are likely to be landlords looking to rent units out.

Though increased rental demand should put upward pressure on yields, overinflated rents may alienate would-be residents. An example of this can be seen in the area around Silicon Roundabout — another of London’s tech hubs — which encompasses the City, Shoreditch and Angel. It has been home to a cluster of tech enterprises since 2009, with around 45,000 people employed locally.

As tech companies have moved in, local prices have rocketed — by some 124 per cent over 10 years in Hackney — and many people working in the area are now priced out. UHY Hacker Young, the accountants, reported last year that new company registrations in the area were less than 20 per cent of what they had been in 2014, down from 15,620 to 3,070. The firm identified soaring rents as key to the decline.

Where to buy for wild swimming, rowing and fishing on your doorstep

All aboard: Olympic Rower Ben Hunt-Davis and his family’s nautically themed London apartment CREDIT:DAVID ROSE

By Nicola Venning

30th October 2017, 6am

Having a home near the water has always been important to Ben Hunt-Davis. The Olympic rowing champion, who won gold at Sydney in 2000, currently lives in a five-bedroom apartment moments from the Thames in Barnes, south-west London, with his wife, Isabella, teenage daughters, Sofia and Julia, and younger son, Luca. Living in this corner of Barnes has given Hunt-Davis year-round access to the Thames from nearby Hammersmith Bridge. “I have a kayak in my garden and can take it down to the river whenever I want. My daughters currently row and I often go out with them.” The family’s top-floor apartment, which has a vast open-plan kitchen/living room with a high vaulted ceiling, a roof terrace and a communal garden, is on the market for £1.65 million with Carter Jonas.

You don’t need to be an Olympic rowing champion to enjoy an active riverside lifestyle. Living by the water’s edge, or at least near it, allows residents to dip their toes into all sorts of water-based activities that can be enjoyed year-round.

He is planning to upgrade to a house and stresses that it will, once again, be near the river. “I love being close to the water, having spent a lot of time on it,” says Hunt-Davis, who co-founded the performance consultancy Will It Make The Boat Go Faster? and works as a motivational speaker. “You get an amazing sense of space.”

Living in this corner of Barnes has given Hunt-Davis year-round access to the Thames from nearby Hammersmith Bridge. “I have a kayak in my garden and can take it down to the river whenever I want. My daughters currently row and I often go out with them.” The family’s top-floor apartment, which has a vast open-plan kitchen/living room with a high vaulted ceiling, a roof terrace and a communal garden, is on the market for £1.65 million with Carter Jonas.

“There is an absolute attraction to being by the water and buyers have always loved living next to a river or the sea,” says Ed Heaton, founder of Heaton & Partners, a buying agency based in London and Newbury. He regularly receives inquiries from buyers looking for homes with a mooring. Fishing rights are also “much coveted”, he adds. “The opportunity to step out of your back door and cast a fly over a resting trout is one most fishermen can only dream about.”

A niche but growing area is wild water swimming – whatever the weather. “I’ve come across a few homes where the owners like to swim in their lake every day,” says Heaton. Such water babies might be tempted by Howells Barn, a five-bedroom converted Cotswold stone barn within the 550-acre Lower Mill Estate Nature Reserve near the Gloucestershire village of Somerford Keynes. The house (one of just two on the estate that can be bought as a principal private residence) comes with a swimming pool as well as access to a large lagoon – perfect for that early morning dip. There is also an airy lakeside cabin, should you need a rest afterwards. It’s on the market with Knight Frank for £1.95 million.

Splashing out to splash about doesn’t come cheap. Premium homes – those with a price tag of £2 million or more – on the waterfront tend to be 81 per cent more expensive than a neighbouring property without a river or sea view.

Even the risk of flooding, which would deter most buyers, is overlooked in particularly desirable areas such as Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire and Marlow in Buckinghamshire, where “a buyer will still pay a premium,” says Heaton.

Such is the demand that in London, tens of thousands of homes have been created along the 27-mile stretch of the Thames. “The river was a very undeveloped area and there was a lot of land available to build on,” says Caspar Harvard-Walls, a partner at Black Brick buying agency. “And there is something iconic about living over the Thames.”

Not that riverside living is one big regatta. Overbuilding and a lack of transport have led prices to dip on some waterfront developments, while some schemes “can feel quite soulless if the developer has not allowed for commercial space such as cafés and restaurants,” says Harvard-Walls.

One development that will benefit from both transport facilities and social amenities is Royal Docks West, a new apartment block from Mount Anvil in east London, between the O2 Arena and ExCeL London. The 19-floor tower – one of many regeneration projects in the area – has 105 homes ranging from studios to three-bedroom flats. It is moments from Royal Victoria DLR station and not much further from Custom House station, where Crossrail is due to begin next December.

And, of course, Royal Docks West is next to an inlet of the Thames, where locals can enjoy a small beach as well as rowing, kayaking, open-water swimming and even wakeboarding. Serious water enthusiasts can catch the Emirates Air Line cable car over the river and then jump on the river bus to work.

“Rather than sit on a hot, stuffy Tube,” Heaton says, “it is so much nicer to go up the river.”