This month’s property from Benham & Reeves is an unusual two-bedroom apartment in South Hampstead.
Woodchurch Road, South Hampstead, NW6
Guide price £950,000
Sole agent
Forming the upper parts of a handsome red brick Villa originally commissioned and built for the renowned Victorian artist John Seymour Lucas and designed by Sydney Williams Lee, a fabulous and unusual 2 bedroom apartment. This part of the house was specifically designed as the artist’s studio and is where John Seymour Lucas would have painted many of his seminal works. The studio is now a spacious open plan reception/dining room/kitchen with the double height vaulted ceiling and large window making this room a wonderfully bright and tranquil space with far reaching views over London’s skyline.
A delightful mezzanine area could be used as either an extra sleeping area for guests or as a study and there is fantastic storage space in the attic. If you have a good head for heights there is access to an unofficial roof terrace for even better views on a clear day.
Woodchurch Road is located in the popular and leafy South Hampstead Conservation Area and provides easy access to the transport links at both West Hampstead and the Finchley Road.
Properties of these proportions and light are rarely available to the open market and early viewing is advised to avoid disappointment.
2/3 bedrooms * bedroom 3/mezzanine * bathroom * reception/dining room * kitchen * eaves storage * residents parking zone * energy rating E
It’s been a long time coming, but Ballymore has finally announced the names of its tower blocks, following the competition West Hampstead Life ran back in August.
Only the first five blocks have been named so far and Ballymore hasn’t decided which name will go with which block. I’m told that the two rear blocks (which contain the affordable housing component of the development) will be named in line with the others though they’re still deciding on those names.
Ballymore has chosen authors with local connections as the theme, and the winner of the competition is Ed Fordham, who suggested three of the five names and was, coincidentally, also one of the original agitators for the names to be chosen in this way. All submissions were sent to Ballymore anonymously however.
The first five blocks will be called Hardy, Orwell, Beckford, Lessing and Milne.
All five authors lived at one time or another (and for varying lengths of time!) in West Hampstead.
Here come the boys… (Hardy, Orwell, Beckford, Milne)
And here’s the Nobel prize-winning Doris Lessing in 1975. Lessing died in November last year having lived in West Hampstead for some 25 years.
More than 50 people submitted offical suggestions for the seven blocks with varying degrees of seriousness. More people left comments on the original article (including one who got most of the names that won). I won’t list all the entries, but here are a selection of the thoughtful, amusing and cheeky.
Classical references were popular: Seven wonders of the world, seven against Thebes (niche), and the seven hills of Rome.
Ephesus
Adrastus
Aventine
Giza
Amphiaraus
Capitoline
Alexandria
Capaneus
Esquiline
Babylon
Hippomedon
Quirinal
Halicarnassus
Parthenopeus
Palatine
Rhodes
Polynices
Caelian
Olympus
Tydeus
Viminal
The developers had said that “Connections” was their keyword in marketing, and some played on the transport links both at home and abroad
Marylebone
Marais
Paris
St Pancras
Vendome
Toulouse
Fenchurch
Concorde
Lyon
Kings Cross
Vosges
Marseille
Euston
Bastille
Strasbourg
Paddington
Madeleine
Avignon
Waterloo
Châtelet
Grenoble
Famous people loomed large, many living, some dead. Lots of submissions covered broadly similar ground with Dusty Springfield, Gerry Anderson, Emma Thompson, and Dirk Bogarde all featuring prominently. Camila Batmanghelidjh always seemed like a stretch though.
No-one would be surprised that Ballymore didn’t choose trees varieties, the suggestion of a few people (well before the tree dispute earlier this year). However two more unusual “vegetation” suggestions came in the form of English grape varieties and… inevitably… cucumber varieties.
Bacchus
Vectina
Huxelrebe
Olympian
Ortega
Fountain
Seyval Blanc
Marketmore
Rondo
Corinto
Reichensteiner
Kekiri
Madeleine Angevine
Wautoma
Some of the odder suggestions came from people who got hung up on there being 7 towers. The seven dwarves (“Hi, I live in Grumpy House”), the seven days of the week, and the seven colours of the rainbow were all suggested twice. We had the last seven monarchs (which gets confusing with two Georges and two Edwards), seven planets and seven (rather than 8) points of the compass.
My favourite “whacky” suggestion though was to name the tower blocks after the Secret Seven: Peter, Janet, Jack, Barbara, George, Pam and Colin. Genius.
There were surprisingly few, shall we say, “satirical” entries, though someone did suggest “Totally, Out, Of, Keeping, With, West, Hampstead”. I don’t think that made the shortlist.
Alongside the winner, a genuine special mention to Jamie Murray, who put some serious thought into it and chose names linked to William Beckford. Beckford, whose name will appear on one of the buildings, owned West End House, which stood on the site of the development. Here’s Jamie’s submission in full:
As the towers in the West Hampstead Square development are to be built on the site of the old West End House, surely their names should be selected to commemorate eccentric author William Beckford, “The Sultan of Lansdown Tower”, who grew up there? So “Lansdown” is one obvious suggestion, but what about “Fonthill”, after the abbey Beckford built himself in Wiltshire?
Vathek, the antihero of the gothic novel for which Beckford is best remembered, is probably a bit too gothic, but what about “Carathis”, surely the most memorable character in the book? She’s based on Beckford’s own mother, Maria, who ended her life at West End House. And how about “Istakar”, after the destination of Vathek’s quest? It’s an old name for Persepolis, and has a lovely ring to it.
We ought not to forget “Azemia”, the heroine of one of Beckford’s more satirical works. Finally, while northwest London is already graced with a Mozart estate, we really must remember Beckford’s music tutor somehow: so what about “Amadeus” or “Wolfgang”?
So my suggestions are: Lansdown, Fonthill, Carathis, Istakar, Azemia, Amadeus, Wolfgang.
But the winner is Ed Fordham whose full list was: “AA Milne, George Orwell, Gerry Anderson, Thomas Hardy, Dusty Springfield, Joe Orton, WH Ainsworth”. Well done Ed, a meal for two at The Wet Fish Café awaits.
This month’s property from Benham & Reeves is a three-bedroom flat in one of the most desirable streets in West Hampstead.
Marlborough Mansions, Cannon Hill, West Hampstead, NW6
£1,295,000
Sole agent
In one of West Hampstead’s most prestigious mansion blocks, a delightful 3-bedroom apartment offering generous lateral accommodation of 1436 sq ft including an open plan kitchen/dining room ideal for entertaining together with a more formal reception room for relaxing. Presented in excellent internal decorative condition, the property has retained many original features and this, combined with high ceilings and wooden floors, provides an immediate overall feeling of a home full of charm and warmth.
This particular flat enjoys direct access to a well-manicured and cared for communal garden. Cannon Hill provides easy access to the shops, cafes and excellent transport links of West Hampstead whilst also being moments from JW3 and the O2 centre on Finchley Road. Early viewing of this fine home is advised.
3 bedrooms * en suite shower room * family bathroom * reception room * dining room * kitchen * communal garden * porterage * residents parking zone * energy rating D
It’s been a busy first quarter for Paramount as we’ve made some major changes to how we manage properties. As the length of the average tenancy increases and the private rented sector becomes a long-term housing solution, we have to adapt to ensure procedures such as inventories continue to be fair.
In order to combat the lack of knowledge about a property that the shift towards longer tenancies presents, we need to take a proactive and preventative approach to property management. It’s the only way we can protect a landlord’s asset over a long tenancy. We now offer landlords a regular audit of their property during the course of any tenancy which will allow us to spot minor problems before they escalate, such as old water stains from previous leaks or deteriorating wooden windows, ensuring minor issues are identified and fixed long before they become an issue for tenants or landlords.
We will be enlisting an independent inventory company to provide this service at a cost to Paramount. Inventory clerks are trained, property-savvy professionals who are able to spot small issues before they become big problems. By using an independent, impartial and professional inventory company instead of our in-house management team, landlords will know that all listed works will be recommended. In keeping with our ethos, the inventory company we will be using are an independent family owned business who we have worked with for many years.
As tenancies get longer there is no doubt that letting agencies need to adapt it order to meet the challenges this change presents. It’s a topic we think a lot about and we will continue to find innovative ways to improve our service inline with these changes.
Agents Giving
We are thrilled to have been named Fundraising Champions for the second year running by ‘Agents Giving’, a charity that encourages and supports agents to raise funds for established and recognised charities in the UK.
We all become blinkered sometimes to what is going on outside of our own world. I believe that it is important to help people first hand in order to see what’s going on inside our local community as well as donating and fundraising for charities like Agents Giving. We’re proud to have been named Fundraising Champions for the second consecutive year, but the real reward is seeing first hand how charities like Ashford Place and Thames Reach improve the lives of others.
Talking of charity leads us nicely onto…
Brent Foodbank Brent Foodbank, located between Kilburn and Willesden Green, urgently need supplies to donate to those in need in our community. Paramount is working with Brent Foodbank as a donation drop-off point; this means you can donate any non-perishable food items and toiletries six days a week at our office, 150 West End Lane, which we will then deliver to the centre.
Each week we’ll let you know on Twitter and Facebook what the Foodbank needs the most. This week toiletries are in high demand, so if you’re able to donate shower gel, toilet roll, soap, toothbrushes or shampoo please drop them into our office.
Spencer Lawrence
Lettings Director Paramount Properties
150 West End Lane
West Hampstead
020 7644 2314
“I fell in love with this extraordinary house. It’s an ordinary terraced house, but an architect scooped out the inside and created all these different levels. There are two trees growing through the middle.”
That was Stephen Fry, in 2002, talking about his house on Sherriff Road in West Hampstead. It’s now on the market again, four years after Fry sold it, for just shy of £2.5 million.
Fry sold the house around the same time he split from his long-term partner Daniel Cohen. According to the Daily Mail, Cohen received all the proceeds from the sale.
The house sold for £1,850,000 back in 2010 and it’s back on the market with The Modern House at £2,495,000. It is a spectactular property – five bedrooms over three floors (although the floors are far from traditional in layout), and what the agents now selling it term “significant spatial drama”. That’ll be the tree in the middle.
The agents, who specalise in architecturally significant properties, explain more: “The house was redesigned in its entirety in the 1980s by the architect Brian Muller, who stripped it back to the structural fabric of brick, joists and lath, and planted a tree that grows through the middle of the space. Huge glazed up-and-over doors flood the interior with natural light and allow it to be opened up to the south-facing garden, providing a seamless transition between inside and out. Metal service ducts and boldly exposed pipework are a nod to the High Tech movement pioneered by architects such as Norman Foster and Richard Rogers.”
Assuming that the property goes for at least its asking price, it’s a 35% price rise in a little under four years, well ahead of the estimated 25% price rise for the street as a whole over that time.
A studio flat in Hillfield Road, West Hampstead has just gone on the market for £160,000 – a bargain if you want to live on one of the area’s most desirable roads.
As you’d expect, the downside to Foxtons’ low asking price for this room (+ shower room) is its tiny size – just 11 ft square (121 sq ft). How big is that? Well you couldn’t fit a full-size snooker table in there. It would be 8 inches too long.
The master bedroom…
It may be the cheapest property in West Hampstead (according to Zoopla and Rightmove), but it also works out at possibly the most expensive per square foot, at £1,322.
This is more than 30% over what you would expect to pay for most larger studio and 1-bed flats, which at the moment usually work out at between £600-£900 per sq ft.
The cheapest studio in the yet-to-be-built apartments at West Hampstead Square, which set a new benchmark for flat prices in the area, came in at £908/sq ft with an asking price of £405,000. It is only just over 3.5 times the size of this property, so still hardly large.
However, if you’re shopping around with a budget of less than £200,000, you’ll know there’s not much else available. An ex-council studio flat in Brassey Road has just received an asking price offer of £175,000 after less than a week on the market, according to Peter Gobey at Greene & Co.
Open plan kitchen/living room
Will the – ahem – “bijoux” Hillfield Road apartment sell? Peter Gobey thinks so, “with the market as it is now, I’d expect it to sell as a pied-à-terre or a rental investment.”
Could this tiny living space be a solution for buyers priced out of West Hampstead’s “bonkers property market“? It may be more appealing to commute to London from Barcelona, or to invest your £160,000 budget in this rather nice 4-bedroom house – in Scotland.
‘Bonkers’. I hear the word repeatedly whenever discussing the West Hampstead property sales market with buyers, sellers and fellow agents alike. Even people with no recent first-hand experience tell me it’s bonkers.
Newspapers and websites tell us how bonkers it is. A headline in The Sun on Friday reads ‘Property up 2% in a month!’ and goes on to say that this is ‘fuelling fears a property bubble is looming’. Hardly a day goes by without The Daily Express fixating on the impending doom across its front page.
But how bonkers is it? Is it really a bad thing for London and Londoners? A recent article in the Guardian got me thinking; it tells how a central London property investment company has recently set up a £100m fund (or ‘warchest’ if you’re reading The Sun) to buy 1 and 2 bedroom apartments in prime central locations. The company’s reasoning is that the property price inflation seen over the last 40 years is set to continue at 9–10% per annum for the next 30 years at least. They say they can see no reason for this to change and it’s difficult to argue that they’re wrong: a growing population, strict planning laws, conservation areas, limited space and foreign demand and investment are unlikely to change. Their prediction – and gamble – is that by 2050 a central London flat will cost £36m.
This seems unimaginable and enormously unfair for many people, but made me realise that this is one of the reasons London is such a great city. The London property market creates huge wealth and prosperity due to the ‘multiplier’ effect of capital injection into services, employment and investment.
Much is made of overseas investors buying properties in London and never living in them but, in my experience, these people employ local surveyors, solicitors and agents when buying and then embark on expensive refurbishment programmes which employ local contractors and firms, increasing the value of the property and in some cases, gentrifying poorer neighbourhoods, setting new benchmark values for other properties in the process.
The London construction industry alone counts for 10% of the UK’s GDP and employs nearly 2 million people. Office development in London is now at a 4-year high with 9.7 million sq ft under construction and notable recent landmark sales including Google’s purchase of its new headquarters at Kings Cross. The knock-on effect of such investment is huge.
This wealth generation also helps create demand and employment opportunities that attract people from all over the world to London, adding to the multi-cultural mix of Londoners that want to buy property whilst giving it such vibrancy and diversification. This is what we all love about London – would we really want West Hampstead and West End Lane to feel any different?
Homeowners in London also benefit from the consistent rise in prices by being able to unlock large amounts of tax free equity in their homes which they can reinvest into businesses or help future generations get on the housing ladder.
Of course, those yet to get on the housing ladder, or who need to move to a bigger property, are finding it increasingly hard to make London their home as house price rises outpace wage inflation. The risk is that while London might become more diverse in some ways, in others communities like West Hampstead could become more homogenous as only the relatively affluent can afford to buy here, while everyone else is forced out of the city and onto those crammed commuter trains that run through our Thameslink station every day.
So, yes, it does all seem a bit bonkers, and perhaps inequitable for those that don’t live in London or are priced out, but the ripple effect of investment and increasing prices is felt across the whole of the UK eventually. It also makes London an incredibly vibrant, eclectic and exciting city.
This month’s property from Benham & Reeves is a three-bedroom maisonette.
Mill Lane, West Hampstead, NW6
£700,000
Joint agent
A beautifully refurbished 3 bedroom maisonette arranged over the top two floors of a period building located on Mill Lane, a popular road with easy access to the Jubilee Line at Kilburn and the cafes, shops and excellent transport links at West Hampstead.
3 bedrooms * en suite bathroom * shower room * family bathroom * reception room/open plan kitchen * separate WC * balcony
If you’ve been out and about in West Hampstead lately, you might have noticed a few changes. You may also remember our article on Alan Grogan’s petition a few weeks ago to officially rid West End Lane of estate agents’ boards. At the moment, the rule is that boards should come down 14 days after a property is let or sold, though in practice this rarely happens.
As a result of West Hampstead Life contacting agents about the article, many voluntarily removed all their boards from the high street. Cedar, Paramount, Dutch & Dutch, Parkheath and Vita were the first to comply, although a few Cedar boards still remain, including one from a whole other era of branding.
It’s not clear who is responsible for signs such as the one above Mamacita, which has disintegrated and can’t be easily traced to any agent. Perhaps one of the other agents might take it upon itself to do the kind thing and remove this board as well.
No change here…
The boards now most prominent on West End Lane are those of Greene & Co and Abacus, as well as a few from agents not based in West Hampstead.
Count the Abacus boards
James Altman, lettings manager at Abacus, today confirmed that he has ordered all Abacus boards to be removed from West End Lane. He expects this to be done by early next week.
Altman acknowledged that some of his boards had been up for some time (one has been in place so long it has its own anti-pigeon spikes). Abacus manages the buildings opposite its offices, and claims that the freeholders are fine with the boards being up, but says that the agency sees itself as part of the community and that if the community wants the signs down, then it is happy to comply.
David Pollock, managing director of Greene & Co, said that he “certainly won’t be objecting to the ruling” if it comes into effect, and would be happy to remove his boards from West End Lane if he was satisfied it would result in a “level playing field”.
It won’t be clear to everyone what a ‘level playing field’ means in this context. According to Greene’s website, it has no properties for sale or rent on this stretch of West End Lane at the moment yet there are boards up. Given the 14-day rule, one must assume that either these properties have just come off the market, or that a willingness to abide by the legislation works only when everyone follows suit.
However, surely it’s the company that keeps its boards up after others have removed theirs as a gesture of goodwill that is the one tilting this mysterious metaphorical playing field in its favour – especially if these boards also exceed the 14-day rule.
Indeed, Pollock admitted that he is “slightly cautious” about removing his boards, which he sees as a valuable marketing tool, while those of other agents are still up. Yet, most other agents have now removed their boards. Over to you Mr Pollock.
A few signs have come down – but too many remain
Meanwhile, Alan Grogan is pleased with how successful his campaign has been. His petition gathered the support of 181 local residents in just two weeks, and has been submitted to Camden’s planning department in support of the Regulation 7 application that would ban all boards from the street.
According to Alan, Camden has confirmed that no estate agents have formally objected to the proposed application. Planning officer John Sheehy will submit the request in the coming weeks, and expects a decision about two to three months after this. Hopefully by then, the agents will have all voluntarily removed their signs; nevertheless, regulation would ensure they don’t creep back – and alert agents from outside the area that West End Lane should be a board-free street.
The whole process seems rather tortuous, but it’s one that Alan – and Camden – expect to pay off. In the short term, however, it seems that most local agents agree that it’s in everyone’s interests to tidy up West End Lane.
True to its word, Cedar Estates – the agent with the most boards on West End Lane – has been removing them today. Four other estate agents as of writing (Paramount, Vita, Parkheath and Dutch & Dutch) have also pledged to remove their boards. If you want to ensure none of them creep back, and that other agents are forced to follow suit, sign the petition. Camden council needs your signatures in order to apply for the ban. Once West End Lane is resolved, we may be able to tackle other streets.
![Cedar Estates boards come down [video]](https://westhampsteadlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/WestEndLaneboards.jpg)
