Top tips for house sale success

“Get the pricing right, have your paperwork in order and proceed with caution if you want to sell in this unusual market”, writes Jayne Dowle of The Times this week.

The property market can be a tricky and testing place to navigate alone. In this piece, we’ve shared our top tips for hpw people can hope to get the best deal, as smoothly as possible, on their house sale.

Leaning on our decade-long experience in the property sector as leading buying agents, Black Brick Partner, Caspar Harvard-Walls shared:

“It’s vital your property is priced competitively otherwise it will become a ‘lever’ flat for the selling agents. A lever flat is where your property is shown to prove to an incoming buyer that another flat is actually really good value. This is to be avoided at all costs.”

Read more in the full article here.

London property investment: redrawing the Monopoly map

“Forget Mayfair, Park Lane and Piccadilly. A new wave of investors is redrawing London’s real-life Monopoly map.”, writes Christopher Middleton in a new piece for The Telegraph this week.

The UK property market, and especially in London, is an ever-changing landscape. Is it a buyers’ market? A sellers? Both… neither? It depends on the day.

As an established buying agent who has worked in London’s toughest and most competitive prime property market for over 10 years, our Founder, Camilla Dell offered her insights, and practical advice for the article:

“Trying to time the market is impossible,” she simply put. “Many people who sit back and wait end up never getting anything, and then watch in regret as the market rises.”

Read more in the full article here.

Hong Kong investors snap up older properties in London hotspots

Wealthy buyers coming all the way from Hong Kong are snatching up old properties in some of London’s most sought-after hotspots.

As a luxury property buying agency for the London area, Black Brick shared our input and insights onto this latest emerging property trend in the capital for a new article in South China Morning Post.

We cited a recent client case study of ours where we supported a successful Hong Kong entrepreneur to secure premium blocks of apartments valued between £5 to £10 million, in Kensington and Chelsea.

Read more in the full article here.

Now for the good mews

The market for ‘mews’ houses is booming here in the UK.

Originally designed for horses and servants in the 18th-19th century, mews houses today are becoming some of London’s most sought-after homes due to their quintessential style and typically-British design.

“Across prime central London, there is a real shortage of mews houses. Competition is fierce,” our Founder, Camilla Dell commented in a new article all about mews houses this week in The Telegraph.

“We had an Italian client recently who was looking for a secure second home in London, but we found that many apartment buildings wouldn’t accept her dog. In the end, the solution was to buy her a lovely mews house near Hyde Park, for £2.78 million. But we had to pay the asking price and move quickly.”, she said.

Read more in the full article here.

On the scent of a secret hideaway home

Secret, hidden away homes with beautiful gardens is hardly something you’d imagine London would have.

And yet, a new article in The Times is sharing all about how the UK capital does in fact have a host of tucked away “hidden homes”, and they’re highly sought-after.

In the piece, our Founder and top London buying agent, Camilla Dell offered her advice to those hoping to secure one of these prestigious hideaway homes:

“We recently acquired an off-market house on Earls Terrace in Kensington for a high profile Asian businessman. The road is popular because it’s concealed from Kensington High Street by a high hedgerow and it is also gated with 24/7 security. Even better, you can drive into and out of the car park underneath the houses to avoid being photographer by paparazzi.”, she said.

Read more in the full article here.

Prime property trends: South East Asian buyers

Demand for luxury new-builds in London is “sky high and rising”, and reports show that much of that interest is coming from South East Asian buyers.

In a new piece in Prime Resi this week, Black Brick buying agency owner, Camilla Dell shared her experience of working with wealthy South East Asian investors looking to buy up property in the UK capital:

“Asian buyers are hugely important to the prime and also general London property market. London property has become hugely attractive for many Asian buyers, where many investors feel that their own local property markets have become over-heated and are about to fall – for example property prices in Hong Kong are higher than London. In addition recent changes in stamp duty and capital gains tax is making investing in residential property in Singapore less attractive with significant penalties if investors sell within the first three years of buying a property.”, she said.

Read more in the full article here.

Battersea Power Station flats snapped up

With Battersea Power Station’s much-needed makeover underway, investors are snapping at the chance to secure one (or many!) of its promised luxury apartments .

We shared our perspective on the regeneration of the development, and its wider region, in a new article for The Telegraph.

“Battersea isn’t prime central London and prices are already in excess of £1,000 per square foot,” said Camilla Dell, Founder of Black Brick.

Read the full article here.

Why are so many Chinese HNWs moving to the UK?

The UK is seeing a considerable rise in the number of Chinese HNWs (High-Net-Worth Individuals) coming over here to live.

As a top London buying agency whose client base is made up of 30% Asian buyers, Black Brick’s Founder, Camilla Dell offered her insights into the rising interest from Chinese investors in a new piece this week for Spear’s:

“Asian buyers like to buy “offplan” [before construction has commenced] or new-build properties, as this is what they are familiar with in their own local markets.”, she said.

“Areas such as Canary Wharf have become extremely popular with Chinese buyers who want to invest in off-plan developments. However, we always advise buyers to be wary of such purchases, which can be located in secondary areas and tend not to perform as well as prime central London properties.”

Read more in the full article here.

Resist the herd instinct and focus on small developments

“As irresistable as the glossy brochures of large scale housing schemes may be, many home hunters might find a better deal if they focus on smaller, less high-profile developments”

A new article in The Standard this week debates on how people should invest their money into UK property, and we were happy to chime in. As an experienced prime property buying agency in London, we’ve helped countless clients to buy property that will bring them back a great return on investment.

Sharing our insight into rental investment potential, Black Brick Founder and Managing Partner, Camilla Dell said:

“I’d estimate that the proportion of homeowners in smaller, lower density developments in prime locations is around 70 per cent, compared with high density new build developments where more than 70 per cent of buyers will be investors”.

“In contrast”, Camilla continued, “large-scale developments are marketed as a matter of course to speculative investment buyers in Asia, who buy off-plan and want only to trade or rent out their units, not to live in them. The flats in these schemes tend to be smaller, cheaper, relatively standardised units to appeal to that market.”

Read the full article here.

Investment in Central London property market emerging as the safest bet

Could prime central London property really be the safest place to put your money, after all?

We shared our thoughts on the matter in a new article for Economic Times this week. As a top buying agency specialising in property in prime central London, we’re experts on this topic, to say the least.

In the piece, our Founder and Managing Partner, Camilla Dell shared how there was a growing interest in the market from Indian buyers recently:

“There’s a sharp increase in wealthy Indians choosing to go offshore and become NRIs. We’ve had a surge of enquiries in the past few weeks since the credit rating downgrade.”, she said.

Read the full article here.