23 March 2016 - Homes and Property

Transcription

Homes&
Property
Wednesday 23 March 2016
The plants
that go the
distance
Gardening
Page 26
EASTER SHOW HOMES P4 MAKE YOUR HOME PAY P8 COMMUTING: WEEKLY BOARDERS P10 SPOTLIGHT ON GOLDERS GREEN P30
Homes are where
the art is
Page 6
Money
issue:your
turnhome.
a studio room into a flat
PLUS: transform
Easter paint special
Page 14
London’s best property search news: homesandproperty.co.uk
WEDNESDAY 23 MARCH 2016 EVENING STANDARD
2
Homes & Property | News
Don’t let them destroy
Whiteleys, say protesters
Trophy
home of
the week
a Sandy Lane
villa... so handy
for London
P
Editor:
Janice
Morley
VISIT homesandproperty.co.uk/
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Homes & Property, Northcliffe
House, 2 Derry Street, Kensington,
London W8 5TT.
Luxurious: the
remodelled
centre would
have a giant
glass-topped
atrium, top-spec
homes a cinema,
hotel and shops
and as well as 103 new homes, there will
be shops, a gym, a boutique hotel, a
cinema, a large car park and a crèche.
The homes are likely to sell for sums
which only the world’s richest could
consider. At The Lancasters, the only
comparable development locally, a fourbedroom flat is for sale at £24 million.
O Find Ruth Bloomfield’s full story at homesandproperty.co.uk
2,000-ticket giveaway
National Homebuilding
and Renovating Show
April 14-17
at NEC Birmingham
STYLING your home
around your needs and
ideas is one of the most
exciting and rewarding
experiences you’ll ever
take on. It can, however,
be challenging and
stressful — which is where
a day at the Homebuilding
& Renovating Show can
really help.
We have 1,000 pairs of
tickets to give away, first
come, first served. You will
find everything you need
for your next project, big or
small. From interior design
to exterior landscaping,
Pick a project: bring your
dream-home plans to life
roofing to flooring,
restoration to new builds,
it’s all at the Homebuilding
& Renovating Show.
O To apply for a free pair of
tickets visit standard.co.uk/
offers before 3pm on April
12. Usual rules apply.
The best seat
in the house
"
!!
!
£2,775,000: you don’t have
to bother with Barbados to
luxuriate in a Sandy Lane
villa with palm trees. This
one overlooks a golf course
in Sandy Lane, the poshest
street in Kingswood, Surrey.
The newly built pile rivals
the spec of its Caribbean
cousin — the Sandy Lane
resort that’s a firm Barbados
favourite with holidaying
celebrities. It boasts four
bedrooms that all have
terraces, plus a sauna and
steam room, a gym and
mood-lit spa pool. There’s
also a games room, a private
cinema, an open-air
entertainment area, and
ornate pools and relaxing
water features in the
landscaped gardens. Nearby
Kingswood village has a
great pub and is just 45
minutes from London.
Through Sotheby’s (01932
485110).
fireplace, the dining room has
a mass of beams, the family
room is spacious, and the
kitchen/breakfast room —
kitted out superbly for
serving all those “full
Englishes” — leads to a
spacious conservatory.
Upstairs are five more
bedrooms and two large loft
rooms ripe for conversion, all
with country views. Through
Hamptons International
(01722 417939).
Lifechanger
of the week
find perfect
peace and run
a New Forest
village B&B
SIMON MAXWELL
ROTEST from major conservation groups and 1,000 local
residents has greeted a plan
to demolish London’s first
department store. A wealthy
Brunei-based private family trust wants
to turn the historic Whiteleys shopping
centre in Bayswater into a 10-storey
block of luxury flats, with no affordable
homes included.
Though some façades would be
retained, the store, founded in the
Victorian era and rebuilt in 1912, would
be gutted and its distinctive Edwardian
glass domes removed. The proposal is
the centrepiece of a £1 billion project
to clean up Queensway, which has
gone from chic to shabby in 20 years.
Westminster council planners will
rule next week on whether Whiteleys
can be demolished leaving only its
stucco façades in Queensway and
Porchester Gardens standing.
Three new basement levels are
planned in the Grade II-listed building
£975,000: in the pretty
village of North Gorley, a
peaceful, secluded spot in
the New Forest, sits Little
Mere — a picture-postcard
thatch. Once the village shop
and tea rooms, it is now a
lovely home with two
successful B&B rooms that
you could expand upon.
The reception room
features a huge inglenook
London buy of the week a boutique flat near
Richmond Green and beautiful river walks
£500,000: this groundfloor, one-bedroom flat is in
a boutique development in a
quiet street, just a stroll from
Richmond Green. And if you
love clean, uncluttered lines,
this is the home for you.
With skylit ceilings and pale
wood floors, the open-plan
reception room includes
generous dining and kitchen
areas kitted out with sleek
cabinetry.
There are fitted wardrobes
and more skylights in the
bedroom, while the
bathroom is tiled in luxe grey
marble. Bustling Richmond
town centre is close, along
with fabulous leafy riverside
walks. It’s on the market with
Foxtons (020 8879 2100).
By Faye Greenslade
"
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ESHomesAndProperty • Twitter:
@HomesProperty
3
EVENING STANDARD WEDNESDAY 23 MARCH 2016
News | Homes & Property
homesandproperty.co.uk powered by
Star in
Jamie’s
kitchen
Got some
gossip?
Tweet
@amiranews
REX
superstar
chef, left,
would slide
down the
banister to
the kitchen
on the
opening
credits. The
three-bedroom
house has a spa
and home gym,
and it is generous
at 2,410sq ft, but
wouldn’t quite
suit Jamie, who
recently revealed
that wife Jools is
expecting their
fifth child.
By Amira Hashish
O For more celebrity gossip, visit homesandproperty.co.uk/gossip
g
Rent Leo’s Caribbean retreat
of the fabulous
Eden Rock hotel
next door.
Described as “a
hundred-milliondollar yacht on
land”, the villa
also has a
recording studio
which features
the console used
to make John
Lennon’s album
Imagine. Visit
homeaway.com/
vacation-rental/
p3518250 — price
on request.
An art fan’s prize
next to Jay’s place
É ALICIA KEYS is selling her holiday
home. The singer and her hip hop
star husband Swizz Beatz, right,
have put the estate, above, in
Phoenix, Arizona, on the market
for £2.6 million because they
can’t find the time to fully
appreciate it.
The palatial house has four
bedrooms, five bathrooms and
a six-car garage. When the
couple bought the place, Keys
is said to have fallen for the
incredible surrounding
landscape.
“There are
only a
handful of
properties
in Phoenix
that
offer
such
magnificent
views,” says
Kristle Jensen of
Luxury Treehouse
Realty. “This
remarkable estate
captures every
element a buyer
could ask for.
It was designed for
entertaining and
upscale living.”
É LIVE next to White Cube, the
contemporary art gallery owned by
Jay Jopling, above, often credited with
making household names of Damien
Hirst and Tracey Emin.
Former offices at the junction of
New Cavendish Street and
Weymouth Mews, below, moments
from Marylebone High Street, are
now a five-flat development where a
three-bedroom home is for sale
through Druce at £4.6 million.
Super-chic styling includes
European oak panelling, Italian
marble in the kitchens and book
matched marble in the bathrooms,
while Tom Dixon metallics make this
a design lover’s dream.
8
SO 0%
LD
ÉA CARIBBEAN
retreat where film
actor Leonardo
DiCaprio, inset,
partied with
singers Rihanna,
Lana del Rey and
fashion designer
Marc Jacobs is up
for holiday rent.
The villa, right,
with a private
pool and four
bedroom suites,
is on St Jean
Beach, the best in
St Barths. Guests
can use facilities
Alicia kisses goodbye to
her Arizona ranch
REX
period house,
right, which was
the set for Jamie
Oliver’s Naked
Chef TV series is
for sale. It’s back
on the market at
£2.75 million
with KFH,
having been
listed for
£3 million
last year.
In Chequer
Street, EC1, it
has been
refurbished
since the days
when the
REX
ÉTHE stunning
BECOME AN EXCLUSIVE RESIDENT OF
THE VISTA COLLECTION
Luxury apartments in Stockwell SW9
Spacious 791 sq.ft 2 bedroom apartments
West facing private balcony with
panoramic City views
6 minutes walk to Stockwell
Underground station
Enjoy the 20th floor residents’ sky garden
THE VISTA
COLLECTION
15th - 19th floor
apartments from
Price and details correct at time to going to press.
CALL:
0344 809 2026
CLICK:
www.ParkHeightsSW9.co.uk
VISIT:
Park Heights, 25 Robsart Street,
Stockwell SW9 OFA
£635,000
Price and details correct at time of going to press. Actual photography of Park Heights.
4
Homes & Property | New homes
This could be the
perfect day out
From £750,000: Thirty Casson Square, Southbank Place.
Ken Livingstone’s old office is part of the marketing suite
A recipe for success: treat your family to the city’s top
sights this Easter while you enjoy the best show homes
in London, says David Spittles
T
HE slowdown in house
prices means it will be a
buyers’ market this Easter.
Developers, tempting us
with an Easter parade of
show homes, will be open to serious
offers. With such a wide selection of
schemes to view, why not combine
hard-nosed house hunting with a spot
of sightseeing and retail therapy?
SOUTHWARK
SHREK’S ADVENTURE
AND THE LONDON EYE
With its “string of pearls” of riverside
attractions, Southwark is a good place
to start. Head for County Hall, where
the office of former mayor Ken Livingstone is part of a marketing suite for
Thirty Casson Square at the Southbank Place development, named after
Sir Hugh Casson, the late director of
architecture for the 1951 Festival of Britain. Prices from £750,000. This highbrow cultural quarter now includes
family attractions such as Shrek’s
Adventure and the London Eye.
Live by the
water: marvel
at new-look
Southwark
riverside from
the London Eye
when you call
in to view flats
at Southbank
Place luxury
development
BOROUGH MARKET
THE SHARD AND THE OLD VIC
THE CITY
SHAKESPEAREAN HISTORY TOUR
Cross London Bridge into the City to
visit The Stage, a 412-home development on land where Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet and Henry V were first
performed. Archaeological remains of
the original stage will be encased in glass
as part of a new heritage centre that
includes a 200-seat sunken amphitheatre. Show flats designed by award-winning Nicola Fontanella have been
created in refurbished railway arches
on the 1.2-acre site. From £695,000.
Imagine a world with more
opportunities to buy your home.
Shiny new appliances, plants and
wallpaper everywhere. And the only
thing missing is you. So join us, and
soon you can own your home with
Shared Ownership from L&Q.
How does that sound?
Stroll past Tate Modern towards Borough Market to find a show home centre
for three SE1 schemes by developer
Crest. These include Valentine Place
— 42 flats and mews houses near the Old
Vic theatre, from £735,000, and Snowsfields Yard, 28 flats in the shadow of
The Shard, from £765,000.
FINSBURY PARK
SAIL, CYCLE AND GET THE
INTERIOR DESIGN VIBE
Builders are pushing the boundaries of
design and architecture, some collaborating with luxury brands, others focusing on high street chains and specialist
local shops to offer flats where first-time
buyers can afford to “get the look”.
Furnishing store Heal’s has designed
Scandi-style show homes at Woodberry Down, Finsbury Park, where
new flats, from £465,000, overlook two
reservoirs with a busy sailing club and
a nature trail. Call 020 8895 9918.
From £675,000:
above and above
right, homes at
Keybridge Lofts,
Vauxhall, the
UK’s tallest
residential
brick tower
at 37 storeys
From £695,000:
The Stage in EC2,
right, with 412
new homes and a
heritage centre
on the site
where Romeo
and Juliet was
first performed
5
New homes | Homes & Property
Worth
a look —
and at a
price to
suit you
From £610,000:
apartments at
former optical
works Camden
Courtyards, left,
in St Pancras
Way, close to
Camden Town
Our selection of hot new offers, starting below £500k
PICK OF THE SHOW HOMES
UNDER £500,000
Less than
£1.5 million:
The Villas, eight
handsome
houses off
Harrow Road,
north-west
London
St John’s Way is a new 528-home
neighbourhood opposite Clapham
Junction train station where
Peabody, the developer, is creating a
new route through to Wandsworth
Common.
Art and architecture come together
with relief sculptures depicting the
history of the area embedded into
the brick façades. Call 020 7758 8431.
ALAMY
UNDER £750,000
Islington Square, on the site of the
former Royal Mail depot, is a new
quarter for fashionable Upper Street.
It has a grand double-arched
entrance and listed Edwardian
warehouses. A new shopping arcade
and civic square are being created as
well as 263 homes plus an acre of
green rooftop space. Call 020 7723
6733.
UNDER £1 MILLION
Reach Sundridge Park in the
Bromley suburbs by a leafy road
running alongside a golf course
leading to a listed Nash mansion.
New homes are being built in the
grounds of the 275-acre estate — flats,
plus three-storey townhouses that
have an open-plan kitchen and family
room opening on to a neat garden,
and a first-floor lounge with sun
terrace. Call 020 8313 9163.
UNDER £1.5 MILLION
The Villas is a scheme of eight
freehold houses at a former builder’s
yard off Harrow Road in north-west
London. The bespoke entrance gates
made of polished brass herald the
high-quality architecture of handsome Danish brick frontages with
floor-to-ceiling glass and designer
interiors, in a landscaped courtyard.
Aimed at design-conscious
urbanites, the three-bedroom houses
have underfloor and solar heating
plus a clean-air ventilation system
and a basement with an “engine
room” that usefully doubles as a
utility area.
Each house is cabled for CCTV and
entertainment systems, and has a terrace and private parking. Call Aston
Chase on 020 7724 4724.
UNDER £2 MILLION
190 Strand is the first purpose-built
housing scheme in this part of central
London for more than 100 years.
GRID Architects took their cue from
the many classical buildings that
surround the site and came up with a
façade of Portland Stone and
mansard roofs with decorative
metalwork filigree panels, tying in
with the Beaux Arts and Victorian
English Baroque buildings in
Aldwych and Kingsway.
A ground-floor colonnade with
shops runs towards Temple Gardens
next to the river. The apartments’
interior design is inspired by the
grand Savoy hotel nearby — bold and
classic, with coffered ceilings,
bespoke joinery and extravagant
finishes of marble and polished
nickel. As well as underground
parking and a grand staffed entrance
lobby, there are basement storage
rooms — these are big, walk-in spaces
— plus a package of amenities from
spa to private cinema and virtual
golf. Call 020 3051 1022.
INTERIOR
DESIGN: A
SIGN OF THE
TIMES
From £725,000:
Conran-designed
apartments at
Blake Tower,
Barbican
DEVELOPERS are bringing in interior
architects at an early stage to devise
flexible floor plans and storage
solutions. One result is “Manhattanstyle” homes, where you step straight
into the main living space. Sprinkler
systems cut the need for fire doors.
In high-rise flats with floor-toceiling windows, such a floorplan
accentuates the sense of space and
light, and the views. See the impact
at Keybridge Lofts, Vauxhall, the
UK’s tallest brick tower. From
£675,000. Call 020 7205 4152.
At Artisan, Fitzrovia, developer
Dukelease opts for a “broken plan”
layout, using sliding walls and
screens to provide flexible space. A
curving oak-and-glass staircase is a
standout feature. From £1 million.
Call CBRE on 020 7420 3050.
Bling interiors are making way for
comfort, using glass, stone, stainless
steel, leather, laminates, wood and
concrete. At Blake Tower, Barbican,
Conran-designed flats have a
concrete feature wall and Sixtiesstyle brass and terrazzo fittings and
fixtures. Sliding “pocket” doors, hall
cupboards and window bench seats
in bedrooms make the most of space.
Prices from £725,000. Call Redrow
on 020 3538 3719.
Other developers are taking
inspiration from context and
character of the location. At Camden
Courtyards, a former optical works
in St Pancras Way, 164 new homes
are being built. Clad in patterned
brick and with a striking rusty Corten
steel two-storey roof extension, the
architecture picks up on the site’s
industrial heritage.
The innovative S-shaped building
allows for two tranquil internal
courtyards and communal roof
terraces. Prices from £610,000. Call
Barratt on 0844 2250032.
6
Homes & Property | Homes with art
Brightest and
best: artist Morag
Myerscough’s
Colourblock
Cranes are a
striking addition
to the Greenwich
Peninsula skyline
For new stars of
the east: far left,
St George and
Bow Arts Trust
are delivering 90
affordable artist
studios at
Pennington
St Warehouse
in Wapping
A
RTISTS are being invited to
open workshops, studios
and galleries in new
housing schemes — a happy
reversal of the saga when
creatives are forced out of a district as
developers move in. The idea is seen
as a solution of mutal benefit — with
creatives attracting visitors and bringing a youthful vibe to a district, which
in turn draws in home buyers.
Councils and communities are behind
this move to encourage art-based businesses into regeneration zones, helping to build new neighbourhoods and
often creating lasting relationships
between developers, students and colleges.
Greenwich Peninsula will have
30,000 residents when complete and
developer Knight Dragon hopes this
new swathe of London will become a
“creative quarter” with galleries, public
art and community events. Ravensbourne College opened its campus there
in 2010 and students and teachers
regularly exhibit work in the free and
permanent NOW Gallery, which is showing Where Pioneers Live, a specially
commissioned abstract interpretation
Good for
the art
Making room for young creatives
in new schemes is a win-win for
everyone. By Ginetta Vedrickas
Community
showcase:
below, the free
and permanent
NOW Gallery
exhibition space
at Greenwich
Peninsula
From £450,000:
below right,
apartments at
Greenwich
Peninsula’s
latest phase,
Upper Riverside
of the peninsula’s transformation, until
May 16. Meanwhile, in Tunnel Avenue,
Greenwich Peninsula, Lazarides Editions produces handcrafted limited
editions of the work of innovative
young artists, using traditional and
digital printing techniques.
More space is being set aside for use
by creative companies, start-up businesses and artisan producers. Richard
Margree, Knight Dragon chief executive,
has responsibility for choosing artistic
ventures which he says are vital when
creating a distinctive community.
Developers hope that people who
come to a district to see art, visiting local
bars and restaurants in the process, will
also be interested in their homes for
sale. Sculptor Alex Chinneck’s installation A Bullet From a Shooting Star — an
illuminated lattice shaped like an
inverted electricity pylon — was commissioned by the London Design Festi-
val and Knight Dragon at Greenwich
Peninsula last year. This commercially
attractive, 115ft-tall work generated
crowds. Knight Dragon also commissioned British artist Morag Myerscough
to enliven the peninsula skyline as
development progresses, and currently
her Colourblock Cranes add splashes
of bright hue to the landscape.
The latest phase of new homes on the
peninsula is at Upper Riverside with
one -bedroom apar tments from
£450,000. Call 020 3713 6153.
AFFORDABLE ART
A Shoreditch building acquired by Londonewcastle is home to Art Rabbit, a
venue for emerging art that has hosted
500 shows. The developer says it gives
access to affordable art and helps it to
judge what customers want. At 62-68
Rosebery Avenue in Clerkenwell, video
installation artist Marco Brambilla’s
7
Homes with art | Homes & Property
Homes from
£270,000: the
LV21 floating art
gallery, left, is
moored opposite
apartments at
Victory Pier in
Gillingham, Kent
work helped to sell all units to Londonewcastle’s target — creatives living
around Exmouth Market. The developer’s flats and penthouses at Queen’s
Park Place, NW6, start at £565,000.
Call Aston Chase on 020 7724 4724.
In Hampstead, new development
Kidderpore Green includes a new
base for Hampstead School of Art, built
by Barratt London as part of planning
requirements. Principal Isabel H
Langtry says the school’s relationship
with the developer is so sound that a
studio will be named for Barratt. The
school offers vital opportunities to artists seeking affordable workspace, and
artists Frank Bowling and Alan Gouk
are new patrons, the first since Henry
Moore. At Kidderpore Green, 128 new
and refurbished homes start from
£1.35 million. Call 0844 811 4321.
Henry Moore’s sculpture Locking
Piece stands in Riverside Walk Gardens
Creative home:
Lazarides
Editions
workshop and
digital print
studios, a
platform for fine
art print editions
at Greenwich
Peninsula
From
£1.35 million:
below, homes at
Hampstead’s
Kidderpore
Green, which
contains a new
base for the
Hampstead
School of Art
near Vauxhall Bridge and now Ronson
Capital Partners has commissioned
works by Peter Randall-Page and Pablo
Reinoso for its neighbouring homes
scheme at Riverwalk. Artsource’s
Patrick Morey-Burrows helps developers choose art, and selected Reinoso.
“Westminster wanted artwork to
include a play element for children.
You can imagine how that goes down
with most artists, but Pablo sweetly
incorporated this into his Children
Only Bench.” Riverwalk apartments
start from £1.25 million. Call Savills on
020 7828 3007.
HACKNEY SHOWCASE
Woodberry Down, one of Hackney’s
biggest new homes developments, hosts
Exhibition in the Sky in May, showcasing
work from local gallery, Unit G. Exhibitions are regularly held in the marketing
suite, community centre and wetland
centre. A new Heal’s-designed show flat
has just opened with prices from
£550,000. Call 020 8985 9918.
The River Medway isn’t known for its
art scene but residents at Victory Pier,
Peninsula Quay, in Kent have their own
floating art gallery — LV21, a 40-metre
steel-hulled lightship moored opposite.
Prices from £270,000. Call Berkeley
(01634 776773).
St George and Bow Arts Trust are
bringing 90 affordable artist studios to
Pennington Street Warehouse in
Wapping. The studios are the first use
of the warehouse in over 200 years. It’s
all part of the St George London Dock
masterplan, a mixed-use scheme delivering 1,800 homes and 200,000sq ft of
commercial space. Homes in the latest
phase, Clipper Wharf, start from
£869,950. Call 020 7971 7880.
VISIT THE Computer generated image of XY Air.
*Prices correct at time of going to press.
8
Homes & Property | Money spinners
Founders: William Sieghart, left, and
Roddy Campbell set up Vrumi last year
Creatives get a cosy office, you get
the rent. It’s a perfect solution, say
Liz Hoggard and Ruth Bloomfield
LAUNCHING SOON
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DANIEL LYNCH
DANIEL LYNCH
Let your
M
home make
the money
ODERN offices can be so
soulless that it’s hard to
focus on the task at hand,
says Roddy Campbell.
It’s one reason why the
hedge fund manager-turned-digital
entrepreneur launched Vrumi, a “day
rental” version of Airbnb.
Rather than hire out your home overnight to people on a city break, with
Vrumi you hire it out to people looking
for an affordable, pleasant workspace
while you are out at work yourself.
Vrumi connects people who need
extra working space — from writers and
photographers to hairdressers and
yoga coaches — with those who aren’t
using their homes during the day.
The renters may be regulars or they
could be looking for a one-off space —
head-hunters needing somewhere to
hold interviews, perhaps, or actors
wanting to stage a script readthrough.
Campbell launched Vrumi last year
with his friend, entrepreneur and philanthropist William Sieghart, who cofounded Forward Publishing — sold to
WPP in 2001 — and created National
Poetry Day. Campbell’s own big rambling house in Pembridge Villas, Notting
Hill, doubles as Vrumi’s HQ. Downstairs
in the kitchen, smart twentysomethings
on laptops help to match requests with
interesting homes.
“I had a big mortgage and my property sitting idle all day long,” explains
Campbell. “Taking idle residential
space and using it as productive workspace seemed to me to be something
which would suit everyone.”
Vrumi came about after Campbell
broke his leg in a skiing accident. Chatting to his physiotherapist, he realised
the physio could rent a comfortable
room in a house more cheaply than a
cramped space at the back of a gym.
Some 600 Londoners have registered
their homes, offering everything from
space at a kitchen table in a house in
Kingsbury, north-west London — £30
a day with use of the coffee machine
and living-room sofa — to a basement
in Chelsea with a pool and sauna for
Creative collaboration: Katherine Gillham and Anton Nelson
Turning other people’s houses
into music video backdrops
SINGER and composer
Katherine Gillham finds
different spaces through
Vrumi to perform and film
new arrangements with
film-maker Anton Nelson.
After shooting, Nelson,
who works under the name
AHTOH, colours the film,
influenced by the décor and
Gillham’s costume choice. “If
you’re working in people’s
houses you get that natural
light, which is different from
a recording studio,” he says.
We catch up with them at
designer Tamara Tymovski’s
‘I had a big
mortgage
and a home
sitting idle
all day... it
seemed that
using it as
productive
workspace
would suit
everyone’
£400 A DAY
A SPACIOUS warehouse apartment
with a roof terrace in County Street
in trendy Borough, SE1
, , $ $+ , $ & $ $ + ' $ + , ) ) $ * +%%% "
, ( $ , £150 a day. Even Campbell’s own living
room is listed, at £70 a day.
One of Vrumi’s absentee hosts,
project manager Corina Lee, 30, travels
daily to her Canary Wharf office for
7.30am, and used to leave her twobedroom Victorian house in Islington
standing empty for 12 hours. Since
discovering Vrumi, she has had a
steady stream of bookings, from market research companies to an advertising agency which needs a place for
meetings. She charges £60 a day and
estimates she has earned about £300
a month since joining late last year.
Working in someone else’s house
means you won’t get distracted by your
own household chores, or by having to
walk the dog. Plus the clock is ticking,
“so your subconscious is saying, ‘Get
O To rent out
your home or
book a workspace, visit
vrumi.com
O katherine
gillham.com
O sybaris
interiors.co
flat in Holland Park Gardens.
She runs her company
Sybaris Interiors there, but
enjoys having others around.
“Vrumi is a huge antidote to
the loneliness of working
from home,” she says. “It’s
almost like a creative club.”
Her flat has high ceilings,
original fireplaces and a
huge blue sofa that she
designed. “We can create an
environment to work in that
suits us much more than an
office, where you have zero
privacy and mustn’t disturb
colleagues,” she adds.
on with it’,” says Sieghart. The Vrumi
website carries hosts’ room details and
manages the payments, taking around
five per cent of the rental fee. There is
a system of reviews and feedback.
The income Vrumi hosts make is taxable, says Campbell, but he is lobbying
to have the service included in the Government’s Rent a Room scheme, under
which people taking a lodger can earn
up to £4,250 per year tax free, rising to
£7,500 from next month.
Vrumi’s founders say the “sharing
economy” business model fosters
mutual trust and community recycling
of empty buildings. Lasting friendships
have emerged from Vrumi, while Londoners get pleasant, affordable, flexible
places to work.
“The way people work is changing
fast,” says Sieghart. “So many corporate office spaces are windowless, with
no natural materials. I think it affects
your psyche and the way you think and
behave.” He gestures around Campbell’s living room, with its leather armchairs and eclectic art collection, and
adds: “In a space like this, there’s no
limit to your imagination.”
£100 A DAY
A LARGE, bright converted pub
with bags of character in
Lyndhurst Road, Peckham
10
Homes & Property | Commuting
A
LASTAIR TURNER works
in Shoreditch where his life
is a frenetic round of meetings, pitches and afterwork drinks. His wife,
Anne-Marie, lives 130 miles away in
Dorset with their three small children
in a house in need of renovation.
This is how the huge cost of London
housing has left many people. The
Turners are typical of families striving
to find a balance between work and
home that results in a “split-screen”
life. Anne-Marie and the children live
in the family-size house they’d craved,
while Alastair has become a “weekly
boarder” in the capital, returning for
three, sometimes four nights a week.
Many of the friends the Turners have
made since buying their Georgian farmhouse 18 months ago in Gillingham, near
Sherborne, are in the same boat.
SpareRoom.co.uk says more than
6,500 people advertised on its website
for a Monday-to-Friday London rental
last year. Meanwhile, MondaytoFriday.
com rentals website was set up specifically to cater for those who only live
in London on weekdays.
Despite the tears they’ve had no regrets.
Alastair says he has the “best of both
worlds”, particularly as he can work
from home one or two days a week.
“I run a business based in Shoreditch,
then at weekends I go to the English
countryside. It is great. The summer’s
RICHARD SAMUELS has been living
the weekly boarder lifestyle for five
years. His wife Tara, 32, lives in
Darlington, County Durham, right,
with their children Bronte, two, and
Verity, eight months.
“We have decided this will be
forever, until I retire,” says Richard,
34. As an account manager for a
marketing tech company in London
Bridge, he earns three times the
£30,000 he’d get in the North-East.
The family can afford the mortgage
on their four-bedroom Victorian
semi, bought for £295,000, and cover
the £500-a-month rent for a Mondayto-Friday room in a Crouch End flat.
Richard tries to get three or four
nights a week at home, then catches
the 6.30am train to London on
Mondays, keeping in touch with his
young family via Skype. The couple
chose Darlington for affordability and
because Tara’s parents live nearby.
Richard doesn’t feel he is missing
out as his children grow up. He says a
regular commuter is likely be leaving
home before the children wake and
getting back when they are asleep.
“When you think what it costs to raise
a family... it has to be a London salary
or it just does not stack up for us.”
‘IT’S A SACRIFICE’
TOM WREN/BNPS
The Turners had a terrace house in
Acton but with daughter Georgie, five,
and three-year-old twin sons Archie
and Charlie, they were desperate for
more space. They also worried about
the quality of the local schools.
Anne-Marie says:“I cried all night after
we left London, and I cried saying goodbye to our neighbours. We both loved
London but it was the children.”
The Turners bought their Acton home
for £450,000 and extended it, then
sold for a little over £1 million — just
enough to buy and start renovating
their new home; even a long-distance
move doesn’t automatically mean you
can afford a fabulous country pad and
have a pile of cash to spare.
They chose far beyond the commuter
belt. If they were going to leave London
they wanted “real” countryside. “We
wanted the children to be able to run
around fields, and all of that,” says
Alastair, chief executive of public relations firm Aspectus.
‘THIS IS FOR LIFE’
“We’ve had to man up”: Alastair Turner, wife Anne-Marie and their children
moved from Acton to Dorset in search of a bigger home and better schools
Weekly boarding
is the trend
Ruth Bloomfield says the price of a big family
home can be a breadwinner’s long commute
Dorset’s home: Alastair Turner travels
back to Gillingham at weekends
London’s for work: Shoreditch, where
Alastair is a PR firm chief executive
MAT GAZELEY, 32, and his fiancée
Fleur Vidler, 30, face spending the
early years of their marriage, at
least, living 100 miles apart.
Renting in Muswell Hill, they decided
last summer to buy a family home in
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, right,
near Fleur’s family. As their £400,000
budget wouldn’t go far in London,
they went for a five-bedroom
Georgian townhouse in “the gateway
to the Cotswolds”. The mortgage, at
£1,200 a month, is less than their
£1,500-a-month London rent.
Mat, who works for online lending
company Zopa, now spends three
nights in London, splitting his time
between friends and a kind aunt and
uncle with a spare room, and works
from home on Fridays. Fleur, 30, runs
coming, the kids are running out to
meet me shouting, ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ I do
get the best of it.” But what of AnneMarie, alone looking after the children?
“At first it was really hard,” she says.
“Friends thought we were crazy, and
it wasn’t that much fun initially. But
now I’d recommend it to anyone.
“Life is much more relaxed in Dorset,
we’ve met like-minded people and
there’s plenty to get involved with. Our
friends all come and stay weekends,
and though it is hard being apart from
Alastair we talk a lot and have a very
upmarket children’s fashion label
Belle Enfant from Cheltenham.
Mat admits that the weekly
separation is a “sacrifice”. He adds,
however: “We have got into a routine,
and it is not so bad.
“But I do think that what we have
done is a bit of a trend. Lots of our
friends are doing the same.
“There comes a point when you
need to stop renting in London and
think about the future.”
strong relationship. We always said we
would never live apart, that it was a
recipe for disaster, but in a crazy way
it has made things better because we
appreciate our time together.”
The boys settled into their new routine instantly. Georgie, plunged into
full-time school for the first time, was
less sure but is now fully involved in
country life. And Anne-Marie certainly
isn’t bored or lonely. “I don’t have time
to breathe, especially with house renovations. We are both working hard.
Sometimes you just have to man up.”
11
Homes abroad | Homes & Property
‘La Rosière has all the
big resort qualities —
and it is so friendly’
A new
star is
born in
the Alps
Cathy Hawker finds
£75k village homes
where you can wake
up in France and ski
to Italy for lunch
B
OASTING LONG, snow-sure
descents, the Tarentaise
Valley in the French Alps is
home to some of skiing’s
top resorts. In Val d’Isère,
Courchevel, Méribel and Les Arcs, all
property, from a café to a slope-side
chalet, comes at a sky-high price
premium.
So three cheers for the delightful
French resort of La Rosière which
ticks all the boxes on altitude,
spectacular views and authentic
charm. Even better, it links directly
with La Thuile in the Aosta Valley,
meaning you can breakfast in France
and ski to Italy for lunch.
“La Rosière has exceptional views
over the Tarentaise Valley and is fully
south facing with sun all day,” says
Charles-Antoine Sialelli of Athena
Advisers. “It is in the exclusive ‘Club
of 1800s’ at the same altitude [1,850
metres/6,070 feet] as Val d’Isère and
Courchevel but without the crush
and queues, even in peak weeks.”
Family-friendly La Rosière is lined
with pine trees and traditional
chalets. It has 100 miles of runs and
work is about to start on two new
chair lifts that will add 28 miles. When
the £9 million project is complete in
December 2018, the top height will be
2,800 metres, or 9,200 feet.
Summer activities centre on hiking
and biking trails and a nine-hole golf
course. A steady stream of visitors
heading through La Rosière to Italy
via the Little St Bernard mountain
Spectacular: balcony view from new-build Le Hameau de Barthélémy in family-friendly French alpine ski resort La Rosière
pass ensures that many of the resort’s
13 restaurants open all year round.
Turin is 90 minutes away, Geneva
airport is a two-and-a-half-hour drive
and there are hopes of linking BourgSaint-Maurice in the valley to La
Rosière by cable car from Séez,
possibly in a decade. This would let
skiers board a train in St Pancras and
reach La Rosière with one change.
NEW-BUILD SKI HOMES
Typical property prices in La Rosière
are a quarter of those in Val d’Isère
says Charles-Antoine Sialelli. Small
resale studios in the village centre
start from under £75,000 but
increasingly buyers want larger flats
with more bedrooms, both for
personal use and to maximise rentals.
Athena Advisers is selling flats and
chalets at Le Hameau de Barthélémy
where building starts this spring. On
completion at the end of next year
there will be 19 two- to four-bedroom
flats from 775sq ft priced from
£300,000 and one detached fivebedroom chalet of 1,615sq ft for
£928,000. All have mountain views,
balconies and underground parking
From £300,000: two- to four-bedroom flats and a detached five-bedroom chalet
at Le Hameau de Barthélémy, all with balconies and parking (Athena Advisers)
with management provided by the
developers, established French
company Terresens. Annual
maintenance starts from £1,700.
The homes will be in a group of
chalet-style buildings beside the treelined pedestrian path with all the
village facilities, including a
multilingual children’s club, within an
easy walk. The lifts are less than five
minutes’ walk away and skiers can
return within yards of the property.
Homes are all freehold and can be
purchased outright or through a
flexible lease-back scheme where
buyers can claim back VAT — 20 per
cent of the purchase price. In return
they must put their homes into the
rental pool for at least 83 days a year.
“La Rosière doesn’t have Val d’Isère’s
prestige but that is not what buyers
there want,” says Sialelli. “They want
to ski with their family in a beautiful
Alpine resort. In La Rosière they find
the spirit of the Tarentaise Valley, the
views, the sun and great skiing linked
to Italy, all at a good price.”
O Athena Advisers: athenaadvisers.com
(020 7471 4500)
O La Rosière Office du Tourisme:
larosiere.net
YORKSHIRE-BORN Simon Atkinson has
a fabulous claim to fame. Since 2011 he
has headed up the ESF — the École du
Ski Français — in La Rosière, the only
Briton to be elected director of any
French ski school.
“My parents were both teachers and I
went with them on annual school ski
trips,” he says. “My two dreams were to
become a ski instructor and to take
part in alpine cycle racing.
“In 1989 I gave up my job in printing
to work in the Alps. It took me four
years to qualify with the ESF, training
while I held down other jobs including
cleaning bars. The local ESF could not
have helped me more along the way.”
Atkinson has lived in La Rosière for 17
years and he and his French partner,
Colette, have two sons — Dylan, 16 and
Erwan, 11. He spends winters skiing and
working long days at the ESF, while in
summer he has time to devote to
cycling and racing.
“La Rosière has all the qualities of a
big resort but the friendliness of a
small, intimate one,” he says. “I see
people from all walks of life, from those
who want a simple holiday up to very
wealthy families. They all like the peace
and quiet here, and of course the great
snow and the sunshine.”
Loving the lifestyle: ski school boss
Simon Atkinson, his partner Colette
and their sons Erwan and Dylan
14
Homes & Property | Decorate
OIL OR WATER BASED?
FOR centuries, most paint was mixed
by eye in a bucket using linseed oil,
pigments, and turpentine to thin or
flatten. House painters knew basic
recipes by heart, mixed with a limited
range of cheap earth tones, such as
yellow ochre, green earth, lamp black
(from soot), white lead (from lead —
poisonous), along with precious
pigments such as blue made from
ground-up lapis lazuli.
From the Seventies, advanced
chemistry and concern about volatile
solvents including turpentine led to a
surge of acrylic water-based paints.
Pioneers were companies such as
Crown. Today, water-based paints
come in many finishes from flat to
glossy and can be really durable,
wipeable — and of course, they dry
fast. But demand for traditional oilbased paints has surged again, mainly
because they use natural ingredients,
they last even better —particularly for
outside woodwork — and look
gorgeous. Many smart companies
now offer them once more.
Crown’s Sun-Drenched City range:
yellows accented with pink, green
and copper, grey and charcoal flashes
Homes&
paint
the new
colours
Transform your home this Easter with the
sizzling new spring paint colours. Create
a feature wall or a fun kids’ room. Interiors
writer of the year Philippa Stockley
offers some inspirational ideas
Universally useful shade: this wall
is in Edward Bulmer Natural Paint
emulsion, in White Lead, £40 for
2.5L (edwardbulmerpaint.co.uk)
15
Decorate | Homes & Property
N
OTHING transforms a
room as fast as paint.
Do some trompe l’oeil
panelling, paint a
mural, cover a feature
wall in a fashionable
dark colour, or paint inside an
alcove to make a niche for a desk.
Run a citrus stripe along a skirting,
or paint a chair in singing flame for
instant zing.
Work with different tones of the
same colour on wall, cornices and
ceiling for an “architectural” look,
or put strongly contrasting colours
on walls and doors for elegant fun.
Use one strong colour, such as a
dark blue, on everything — or just
apply a shocking-pink band right
around a room like a wide ribbon.
Be a devil and do the ceilings a
darker colour than white — if you
don’t like it, change it.
Colour lifts your spirits. And since
even posh paint only costs about
£40 for a can that will coat the walls
of a smallish room, pick up a brush.
There are hundreds of colours, so
choose a brand, do some tests, and
get cracking.
Packed with pigment: a strong, stunning blue deserves to be splashed
across a generous-size space. Panelling in Azurite water-based
eggshell, priced £25 for 750ml, £70 for 2.5L from Edward Bulmer
Natural Paint (edwardbulmerpaint.co.uk)
It’s cool to contrast: Yeabridge Green walls and doors, opening to a
room in Vardo teal, both estate emulsion, £39.50 per 2.5L; Shadow
White woodwork in estate eggshell, £55 per 2.5L; floor paint in Manor
House Gray, £59 per 2.5L, all Farrow & Ball (farrow-ball.com)
GO ARCHITECTURAL
Until recently, the paintmaker Little
Greene was off most people’s radar.
Now it has a smart new showroom
in New Cavendish Street, W1. Next
month it will relaunch the Paint and
Paper Library, with its so-called
“Architectural Paints”, which were
developed by David Oliver, from
whom Little Greene bought the
company last year.
The architectural range has five
tones, marked I-V, of each of its 19
basic colours, so that you can use
grades of one colour for particular
effects. Paint a wall one tone, a
cornice another and the ceiling
another yet. The system ensures
that they harmonise.
Among Little Greene’s regular
paints, its five best-selling colours
include sizzling, orangey Atomic
Red and the soft, deep, warm Hicks
Blue, fantastic in a bedroom with
crisp white bed linen; or use as a
feature wall. Paint the guest loo
Atomic Red — visitors will love it.
From £38 for 2.5L (matt emulsion).
Continued on Page 16
Hit the highlights: this bright-white diner has
Trumpet yellow Intelligent matt emulsion from
Little Greene on its stair flashes. Priced £45 for
2.5L (littlegreene.com)
Standout shades: score with doors in a
sunny hue. Little Greene’s brightest yellow
is Mister David, £28 per litre of traditional
oil gloss (littlegreene.com)
Accentuate your features: Knightsbridge
Intelligent matt emulsion is used in an
alcove to help create a separate office area
— £22 a litre from Little Greene (as before)
16
Homes & Property | Decorate
Homes&
paint
... Continued from Page 15
UNBEATABLE AND TRADITIONAL
Get superb-quality paints and
exquisite colours from Papers and
Paints (papersandpaints.co.uk) —
which has been going for years in
Chelsea and has a deservedly
devoted fan base — and also from
Edward Bulmer (edwardbulmer
paint.co.uk). These premium firms
make sublime paints using very good
pigments, and sell hand-painted
colour cards so you can be sure you
like the shade. This saves painting
your own swatches, so it’s worth it.
Papers and Paints, run by Patrick
Baty, who advises historic houses
and palaces on colour, divides its
pitch-perfect paints into ranges. The
Historic range has some incredibly
vibrant colours with evocative names
such as Della Robbia Blue, Pale
Majolica Yellow and Sèvres Green.
Its Thirties and Fifties selections are
so gorgeous that the hand-painted
swatches look edible. These are
fantastic if you love strong colour.
The Traditional range features
colours used by English house
painters over the centuries,
including superb neutrals. Lovely to
work with, the paint costs from
The real deal: a
hand-painted
colour card,
below, gives a
true idea of the
shades (papers
andpaints.co.uk)
Create a mini home office: Crown suggests painting an
alcove or a feature wall darker than the rest of the room to
single out an area for your desk. This is new Peek-a-Boo
Blue, £18.49 for £1.25L emulsion (crownpaint.co.uk)
WHAT’S NEW?
Counterpoint: Chinese Emperor yellow
and Copper Beech create a colour-block
architectural look — £21 for 750ml
(paintandpaperlibrary.com)
£38.40 for 2.5L of matt emulsion. Its
paints are water-based, though
eggshell and gloss also come in oil.
Edward Bulmer’s well-chosen range
of 72 oil-based paints, and
distempers, go on like a dream.
Compared with other brands, these
well-made paints are, taken as a
group, chromatically relatively sober.
There are some really lovely greys —
bang on trend at the moment — that
work well in both historic and
modern interiors. Charleston Grey
is worth a look. If you want your
home to recall a Dutch still life, this is
the brand for you. The website is
very good. Prices start from £40 for
2.5L of matt emulsion.
Farrow & Ball has launched nine new
colours to celebrate its 70th year.
This widely loved brand (farrow-ball.
com), which sells only water-based
paints, revealed the new additions to
its appealing 132-shade range last
month.
Available in all finishes, the new
colours have an emphasis on freshly
fashionable drabs and greys. The
darker tones work well on their own
for elegance, or counterpoint them
with whites or brights — in both paint
and furnishings — for a contemporary
look. The names of the new nine are
historic and British, and include
Drop Cloth, Worsted, Cromarty (a
misty green-white), Yeabridge
Green (a Georgian green, good in a
bathroom or sitting room), plus a
good strong teal called Vardo.
The wide range of Farrow & Ball
finishes includes estate emulsion at
£39.50 for 2.5L, through to gloss and
floor paint. The company also makes
casein distemper — a traditional milk
protein-based paint with a soft,
chalky finish — from £47 for 2.5L, and
limewash, from £46 for 2.5L.
Dulux Magic (dulux.co.uk) offers a
really tough new water-based paint
17
Decorate | Homes & Property
Upcycle: give old furniture a new lease
of life. This chest, above left, teams
Crown’s Beige White and Soft Shadow
non-drip satin, both £14.99 for 750mls
suitable for children’s rooms and
play areas. Called Endurance+, it is
20 times stronger than regular
emulsion, and even crayon wipes off
it. It comes in 14 “playful” colours, so
use it for simple murals in children’s
bedrooms. From £20.99.
Dulux has some great ideas for
children’s rooms that anyone just a
bit artistic can try. Each uses a
maximum of four colours. Try its
Superhero, Jungle, or Storybook
bedroom designs. The company’s
clever Magic White, meanwhile, goes
on pale pink and fades to white in an
hour. So if you’ve ever had trouble
seeing where you just painted, this is
the answer. From £18.98.
Crown (crownpaint.co.uk), a triedand-trusted, and also innovative
brand, has some good ideas for using
contrasting colours.
It suggests painting a piece of
furniture in a geometric pattern of
different tones for instant upcycling,
using masking tape to get the lines
straight. Or paint a two-inch band
Stunning
combination:
Lamp Black
intelligent matt
on wall, left, £45
for 2.5L, is
teamed with
Shallows floor
paint, £61 for
2.5L from
Little Greene
(littlegreene.
com)
particular, it may not look as good in
certain lights. Pigments appear
different under electric and natural
light. It is worth spending a few
pounds more to get the best result.
Great for kids’
rooms: superhardwearing
Endurance+
paints used for
Storybook
scheme, right,
are matt Blue
Babe and
Jasmine White,
from £20.99, and
tester pots of
Goose Down and
Polished Pebble,
from £1 (dulux.
co.uk)
TEST IT FIRST: use a tester pot of your
top choices. This small outlay helps
to minimise mistakes. Paint a big test
patch on white paper, write the paint
name by it, and when dry, tack it to
the wall with masking tape. Look at it
in natural and electric light and move
it on to different walls to see the true
colour effect.
along the top of a skirting board for a
striking effect in a hall. A niche or
alcove painted a darker colour than
the rest of the room creates a minioffice area for a desk.
Crown’s new Hall & Stairs matt
paints are, like Dulux’s Endurance+
range, “20 times more scrubbable”
BRUSHES: buy good-quality brushes,
ideally with natural bristles. Cheap
brushes shed hairs, and picking hairs
out of a painted wall is just a waste of
time. At the end of the job always
clean the brush meticulously, with
white spirit if using oil paint, or water
and a bit of washing-up liquid if the
paint is water-based. A really clean
brush can be used over and over, but
one left half-clean will dry rock hard.
than ordinary emulsion. From £26.49
for 2.5L.
MONEY-SAVING TIP: it always pays to
buy quality brands. If you use cheap
paint, you will spend just as much of
your precious time applying it but
the result won’t be as good. In
AND FINALLY…. what about those halfused tins? As long as you close the tin
tight and use tape to secure the lid,
most paint will last about a year —
longer if you decant it into a suitable
smaller container; this removes air,
so helps prevent drying. But do label
it with name and type. Don’t pour
unwanted paint down the sink — take
cans to the local dump.
O Philippa Stockley was named
lifestyle & interiors journalist of the
year at the LSL Property Press Awards
this week. Twitter: @stockleyp
A rare opportunity to reside in one of four quintessentially
British designed penthouse apartments with stunning
roof terraces overlooking the River Thames and Grade II listed
Hammersmith Bridge. Nowhere is London’s historic river more
spectacular than at the Queen’s Wharf Penthouse Collection.
3 bed penthouses from £4,000,000*
Apartments also available:
1 beds from £780,000* | 2 beds from £1,050,000* | 3 beds from £1,425,000*
A R R A N G E A N A P P O I N T M E N T T O D AY
2 0 S T. J A M E S S T R E E T, W 6 9 R W
Q U E E N S W H A R F. C O . U K
020 7205 2809
20
Homes & Property | Interiors
KIT KEMP
HOTELIER/INTERIOR DESIGNER
reception desk at Ham Yard. And
Daniel Reynolds at Pullens Yard does
ceramics, mobiles and candelabra.
K
WHERE I LIVE
My home is in Kensington, which
makes it slap-bang in the centre of
London, yet I have so much greenery
on my doorstep: Hyde Park to Green
Park to St James’s Park. We have a
double-fronted Thirties house that
we bought 15 years ago. It’s quite a
carefree home. I get teased that I am
a cluttered minimalist. There are
fabrics everywhere and colour
makes me feel happy.
FAVOURITE FABRICS
London’s markets have got touristy.
I prefer to go to people like Susan
Deliss (susandeliss.com) who travels
to Turkey, Egypt and Morocco and
collects wonderful old and new silk
ikats, embroideries, kilims, velvets
and linens.
SECRET LUXURY
REBECCA REID
IT KEMP has been
splashing colour on to
London’s hotel scene for
the past 30 years. Her
Firmdale Hotels portfolio,
co-founded with her property
developer husband, includes the
Soho, Charlotte Street and Covent
Garden Hotels, as well as Ham Yard
in Soho, now a regular haunt for film
premieres and theatre after-parties.
An interior designer by trade, she is
a passionate collector and all her
hotels display art, craft and design
commissions. She says a good hotel
throughout “should have a sense of
arrival and adventure”.
Collector: Kit Kemp, left, covets one of
Lynne Chadwick’s bronze candlesticks,
above, and admires Fine Cell’s
prisoner-produced needlework, right
My design London
ondon
MY FAVOURITE SHOP
In Camden Passage, Caroline
Carrier’s tiny shop, Number One,
does vintage English porcelain and
Wedgwood, and hideously fabulous
old ornaments. It’s like the best
cupboard you’ve ever opened.
A Lynn Chadwick bronze candlestick.
We borrowed it from Willer in W8
(willer.co.uk) for a shot in my new
book but had to return it.
HOMEWARE TIP
FAVOURITE MAKERS
I discovered Hermione Skye O’Hea at
her graduate show at Chelsea College
of Arts. She has since been doing loom
artwork for us, including one over the
Favourite shop: left, Caroline Carrier’s
little vintage shop in Camden Passage
MOST COVETED
DESIGN OBJECT
I really admire Fine Cell Work, a
charity that teaches male prisoners
to be skilled in needlework. They
asked me to design some new
products for them, so we’ve come up
with a headboard and a footstool, a
mirror and a lamp shade.
WHAT I COLLECT
I love painter Juliette Losq. Her
artworks are created from collages of
photos taken in the suburbs of
London. I also love the work of artist
Morag Ballard, Anna Raymond’s
textile prints and the paintings of
Breon O’Casey. We should respect
our British artists more.
Walking to work down Exhibition
Road, which has been redesigned
boulevard-style, and past Imperial
College, the V&A and the Natural
History Museum, and the French
community shops in South
Kensington with lovely delis and
tasty cheese shops.
O Kit Kemp’s Every Room Tells A Story
is published by Hardie Grant, £30.
Bespoke fabrics: Kemp prefers Susan
Deliss to “touristy” market finds
By Liz Hoggard
!
$% ) %)$+ (, ,+"#
*'&!&!
22
Homes & Property | Our home
homesandproperty.co.uk
Calming shades: Natalya Nesterova, above with son Dante, four, chose gentle greys as a backdrop throughout the family home
My trade secrets for
an ultra-luxe look
Interior designer Natalya Nesterova spends millions on clients’ behalf but
transformed her Nunhead cottage on just £150k, says Ruth Bloomfield
F
OUR years working as an interior designer for super-rich
Russians living in London has
given Natalya Nesterova strong
champagne tastes — but, sadly,
still only a prosecco budget.
By day she helps clients spend sevenfigure sums upgrading homes in Chelsea,
Belgravia and the Surrey countryside.
The largest interiors budget she has had
to play with was £3 million, though this,
she explains, had to include a new swimming pool and staff quarters. By night
she returns to her family home in Nunhead, south-east London.
Nesterova, 41, and husband Alessandro
Mangiavacchi, 42, bought the three-bedroom Victorian terrace house, their first
property together, in 2011, paying
£405,000. Since then, as well as having
a son, Dante, now four, and setting up
Nesterova’s company, Nesterova Interiors, they have extended and remodelled
their house with a budget of £150,000.
“Pocket money to an oligarch but a
substantial sum for most of us,” she says.
A tight hold on the purse strings meant
this paid for extending the kitchen and
converting the loft, adding underfloor
heating and installing new sash windows, putting in a new kitchen and two
new bathrooms and furnishing the house
from top to bottom. Nesterova’s day job
has left her with an enduring respect for
quality and luxe finishes. From the limestone tiles on the hall floor to silk wallpapers and dramatic lighting, this is a
refurbishment which looks — and feels
— very expensive.
“I wanted to create a beautiful home
for us to live in,” she says. “I also wanted
it to have personality. Alessandro of
course likes grey and white and black,
he is an architect. But I like colour — and
he has come to like it.”
Born and brought up in Uzbekistan,
Nesterova’s training as an interior
designer sent her first to New York, then
Istanbul and finally London. After graduating from the University of Bedfordshire she got a job as an interior designer
with a firm of architects, where she met
Mangiavacchi.
EYE FOR AN ONLINE BARGAIN
The couple rented a flat in Manor House,
north London, where they saved hard
to put together the deposit and bought
their house shortly before Dante was
born. The place was “a bit of a wreck”
when they moved in and the reason
renovations have taken so long is that
they had to do the work piecemeal.
“We put all our savings into buying the
property,” explains Nesterova. With
cashflow constrained she turned to eBay
to furnish the house. Her favourite purchase was a classic G Plan dining table
and chairs, plus two armchairs, which
together cost £60. To make them look
expensive she had them stained almost
black and reupholstered. “They look
brand new,” she says.
In 2013 the couple had saved enough
to have their loft converted, a project
which typically costs £40,000. They
managed it on just £24,000, even though
it was not a straightforward job. In order
to create enough ceiling height in the
new master bedroom they had to lower
the ceilings on the first floor.
“Instead of getting the loft company to
do everything we only got them to do
the structure, and then we hired a
builder to finish it,” explains Nesterova.
“It was much cheaper that way.”
The following year they had saved up
again, and were able to extend their
kitchen into the side return, add skylights, and install bifold doors to the
garden. They also took down the wall
between the dining and living rooms to
give a single generous space and added
a window to give a view of the garden.
The hallway is decorated with a montage of family photographs taken from
the couple’s Instagram feed, professionally framed to give them a slick look. “I
am obsessed by square pictures,” laughs
Standout features: top, bespoke grey bookshelves, super-size artwork and bargain
pendant lights in the living room; above centre, stainless steel, plum splashback and
matching gloss paint in the kitchen; above, continuing the plum theme in a bedroom;
main picture, tasteful but practical finishing touches give a warm, family-home feel
Nesterova. Her husband, a keen cook,
designed the kitchen, choosing stainless
steel work surfaces and cabinets in a mix
of grey laminate and dark-stained oak.
Nesterova chose a deep shade of plum
for the glass splashback, and got her
joiner to build a timber cover for the
extractor and spray it with gloss paint to
match. At the same time she had timber
panelling made and sprayed the same
glossy colour to cover the cupboard
housing the boiler and water tank. “It is
not,” she says with admirable understatement, “a neutral house.”
23
Our home | Homes & Property
powered by
Open-plan: the dining/living room with
bifold doors, top; an unfussy but sleek
and timeless bathroom treatment, above
Little black book
Natalya Nesterova: nesterovainteriors.com
Builder: Robert Pawlus (07940 239114)
Upholsterer: Hennis Upholstery
(hennisupholstery.com)
Joiner: Mark Quinnell at Q Joinery
(07973 193824; info@qjoinery.co.uk)
Picture framer: David Mitchell Picture
Framing (28 Loampit Hill, SE13; 020
8469 0078)
Kitchen suppliers/fitters: Farnham
Furnishers (farnhamfurnishers.co.uk;
01252 715000)
Bifold doors: IQ Glass (iqglassuk.com;
01494 722 880)
TOP TIPS FOR LUXE ON A BUDGET
JOINED-UP THINKING
A good joiner was a crucial part of this
project. The same company also built
the bespoke, grey-painted bookshelves
which sit either side of the original Victorian fireplace in the living room, along
with the built-in desk and plywood
shelves in the study, and the walk-in
wardrobe in the loft.
Upstairs, the deep plum theme continues. For the master bedroom Nesterova
bought a battered French wardrobe and
a nearly matching chest of drawers for
£120 each, and painted them in Pelt by
Farrow & Ball — the same shade that she
so loves in her kitchen.In the en suite
bathroom, even the second-hand freestanding bath has been painted in the
same shade. “You can paint almost anything,” she insists.
Further eBay finds include the gilded
wood mirror that hangs above the fireplace and cost around £180. And so keen
was Nesterova to be faithful to the
house’s Victorian roots , she also bid for
a fireplace for the guest bedroom, where
the original had been ripped out. She
had her auction find sandblasted, and
then spray-painted it white.
While it is safe to assume that none of
her customers spend their free time lugging rusty old fireplaces to sandblasting
workshops, or rolling up their sleeves
and stripping wallpaper, only four years
after they joined the property ladder,
this house has lifted Nesterova and her
husband into the millionaire bracket, on
paper at least.
T
HE property has been valued
at £1.25 million — not a bad
return for their initial outlay
and the money spent on
renovations. And, with its
heady mix of rich colours, luxurious
fabrics and bespoke furnishings, their
simple Nunhead terrace house now
looks a million dollars, too.
Nesterova says a house with high ceilings
needs large artwork and light fittings.
Her sculptural white pendant living room
lights from Danish firm Normann
Copenhagen cost less than £70 through
clippings.com. Super-size artworks are
from a range at johnrichard.com.
When buying second hand, Nesterova
seeks out brands and favours Italian
design for its quality. She buys B&B
Italia, Minotti and Poltrona Frau, and
reupholsters as necessary. Expect to pay
about £250 to £300 to reupholster a
chair — bought new the same piece could
easily cost 10 times as much.
Rich colours require a calm backdrop,
says Nesterova. She chose three Farrow
& Ball shades (farrow-ball.com) for her
backdrop — Pavilion Gray on the ground
floor, Dove Tale on the first floor and
Elephant’s Breath in the loft. She
avoided bright white for the ceilings,
opting for an extra-pale grey instead.
Vinyl wallpaper has a subtle but
luxurious-looking sheen and is hardwearing and washable, so it’s ideal in
hallways and in homes with young
families. Nesterova bought her hall
wallpaper from Altfield (altfield.com/
home). Her husband wanted a super-size
chopping board for the kitchen, so he got
the kitchen fitters to cut him a metresquare slab of wooden worktop.
Photographs: Charles Hosea
24
Homes & Property | Reader promotion
Kitchens with 20% off
■ KDCUK designs, supplies and fits superb-value
Next125 glass-fronted kitchens from Germany. The
company is offering readers a 20 per cent discount on
its glass-door range until April 30.
Visit the showroom at Fieldings Road, Cheshunt, EN8
9TJ — take junction 25 off the M25. Or visit kdcuk.co.uk
to view more than 100 photographs of kitchens
belonging to previous customers.
For more information, email enquiries@kdcuk.co.uk
or call 01922 620777. Members of KBSA and Trustmark.
Union Jack chair at
huge discount is a
great British buy
BRING a patriotic vibe to your home
with the handcrafted Wingchair. In a
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With handmade studding on the
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classic style with comfort.
Normally £995, readers can claim a
70 per cent discount when quoting
ABN23MAR16 before April 13,
reducing the price to £299 plus
delivery. Visit wallacesacks.com or
call 0800 011 4642 to order.
Alison
Cork
Bargain
Barg
rga
gain ne
ga
new
news
ews
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Loll in comfort at half the price
POUF DADDY is offering
readers a 50 per cent
discount on two of its
poufs, The Daddy and the
Jubbly. The rectangular
Daddy, below, earned its
name thanks to its
impressive 1.7m x 1.3m
extra-large dimensions,
and the triangular
Jubbly, right, is similar in
Mirrored shoe cabinet
has room for 24 pairs
■ KEEP your shoes organised in this handy cabinet
from One Regent Place. Reduced from £199.99 to only
£99.99 and available in an attractive oak, black or
white finish, the cabinet holds up to 24 pairs of shoes
on six shelves.
Featuring full-length mirrored doors, this practical,
good-looking unit also includes brackets so it can be
fixed to the wall.
To order, visit oneregentplace.co.uk/cab23 or call
020 3504 1532 before March 31.
size. Coming in nine
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extra shipping costs.
To claim your offer, visit
poufdaddy.co.uk or call
0845 544 3055 and use
the code ESFIFTY by
March 30.
Chic coffee table for
lovers of Art Deco
WITHIN HOME’S Criterion
Collection features an array of Art
Deco furniture including the Halston
coffee table, above. Priced £545, the
Halston features a reinforced glass
top sitting on a gold-coloured
brushed-brass frame in an elegant
design with panel detail.
Readers are offered a £60 discount
on this sleek table when quoting
HALSTON60, reducing the price to
just £485. Visit withinhome.com/
halston60 or call 020 7087 2900 by
April 6 to order.
O The companies listed here are wholly independent of the Evening Standard. Care is taken to establish that they are bona fide but we recommend that you carry out your own checks prior to purchases and use a credit card
where possible. To offer feedback on any of these companies, email homesandproperty@standard.co.uk with “Bargain News” in the subject line. For more bargains, visit alisonathome.com or homesandproperty.co.uk/offers.
26
Homes & Property | Outdoors
Play a long game
with investment
plants you can count
on after the paintbox
patio flowers fade
Pattie
Barron
'(+0+)2
+ *+ 2'*+ ( %
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+ $ #& '11 , // .2 ' - + '*" * #% % !+.'2 '+" ). *" * ,
GAP PHOTOS/HEATHER EDWARDS
White beauty: even in a small garden, you can still get your magnolia fix with compact variety stellata
In spring, think ‘staying power’
offer it a container. The crumpled, starlike white flowers that open from
strokable, silken buds are very different
from the more familiar goblet blooms,
but just as beautiful. This is the finest
magnolia for a small garden.
Let delectable dwarf weeping willow,
Salix caprea Kilmarnock, transform a
lacklustre shady bed. Plant primroses
and pulmonarias, with their blue, lavender or brick-pink funnel flowers and
marbled foliage, beneath the catkinladen stems and, after mulching the
ground with bark chippings, rejoice in
your instant woodland glade.
Summer’s soup-plate clematis might
be the glamour girls of the family, but
the lesser-grown, shorter, spring-flowering clematis — the alpinas and macropetalas — have their own charm.
Dainty, nodding flowers in shades of
deep pink and stunning lavender blues
are followed by silvery seedheads that
last through summer. As a bonus, they
thrive in light shade. It’s worth buying
a support such as Gardman’s twisted
willow obelisk cone, nearly 5ft tall, at
many garden centres, to create a standalone display.
Buy bags of bulbs, corms and rhizomes to plant in pots that you can sink
into the border or drop into containers
this summer. Oriental lilies, agapanthus and begonias all provide great
value. If you didn’t plant allium bulbs
last autumn, buy potted alliums now
in leaf and bud. They will cost more,
but the investment will pay off with
mauve and purple drumstick heads
brightening the border in a month or
two. Another high-riser you can find
now, and that will multiply over the
years, is luscious strawberry foxglove,
Digitalis mertonensis.
Dressing the patio in spring finery is
simple, given the bouquets of paintbox
primulas and cheery-faced violas currently on show, but leave some space
for edibles and aromatics. A generous
potful of lavender within arm’s length
of a seat is essential. Half a dozen
French lavender plants, with their
decorative tufted heads, will deliver
that pine-infused fragrance redolent
of Provençal hillsides and, when the
flowers fade, the foliage smells just as
wonderful.
PRETTY AND PRODUCTIVE
Build up your potted herb garden with,
say, a strawberry pot planted with trailing rosemaries as well as low, wide
containers of sharp-scented lemon
thyme and spicy, felty-leaved oregano.
It’s a dilemma whether to keep snipping them for the kitchen or to hold off
until they are smothered with blue,
lilac or pink flowers that bees and butterflies adore. There is a great choice
GAP PHOTOS//FIONA LEA
Greet the season: dwarf weeping willow has silken catkins
GAP PHOTOS/RICHARD BLOOM
GAP PHOTOS/FRIEDRICH STRAUSS
W
HEN spring fever hits
we all rush off to the
garden centre to grab
everything in blossom
and bloom. What are
the best buys, though, that offer real
investments rather than flash-in-thepan flowers?
Photinia fraseri Red Robin is a great
buy, even though the flowers come
second to the foliage. Although this
handsome evergreen shrub produces
flat, white flowerheads in spring, the
point is the new russet-red glossy foliage, at its most vibrant when the plant
is sited in a sunny spot. If space is limited, buy photinia clear-stemmed, as a
small tree that is as content in a tub as
it is in the border.
Magnolia stellata will give you your
magnolia flower fix even if you can only
Brilliant blooms:
above left,
Pulmonaria
makes great
groundcover in
shady spots;
right, Clematis
macropetala
flowers before its
summer cousins
Gardening
problems?
Email our RHS
expert at: expert
gardeningadvice
@gmail.com
right now of young strawberry plants
for sale, such as weather-resistant
Fenella. Three planted up in a hanging
basket or deep metal colander, sited in
a sheltered spot until May, will deliver
a succession of berries this summer.
It’s too early for tomatoes and fruiting
vegetables, but you can buy young
plants of baby lettuces, rocket, radishes
and carrots. Abandon the plastic pots,
paint a wine box or three in Farrow &
Ball’s delicious soft green Arsenic, Exterior Eggshell grade, line with perforated
plastic before filling with multi-purpose
compost, and have yourself an instant,
small-scale kitchen garden that will
prove as pretty as it is productive.
O For outdoor events this month, visit
homesandproperty.co.uk/events
30
Homes & Property Property searching|
Spotlight on
Golders Green
Top-notch schools and handsome houses
make this classic London garden suburb a
magnet for families. By Anthea Masey
O
Leafy charm: magnolia in bloom in Golders Green Crescent
FIND IT:
GOLDERS GREEN is seven miles
north of central London with
Finchley to the north, Highgate to
the east, Hampstead to the south
and Hendon to the west.
Bread and bagels: Peyman Hakimi of Daniels kosher bakery
NE OF the quirks of
London’s geography is
that Hampstead Garden
Suburb, one of the
country’s best examples
of successful town planning, is not in
Hampstead — it’s in Golders Green.
The suburb grew out of a campaign
to save part of Hampstead Heath
from development and was founded
in 1907 by the east London
philanthropist Dame Henrietta
Barnett, who had a holiday cottage
near the Spaniards Inn at
Hampstead. Her aim was to create
homes for all classes and a healthy
and beautiful place to live.
Architect and planner Sir Raymond
Unwin, who had already worked on
the first garden city in Letchworth,
Hertfordshire, was hired and the
most fashionable architect of the day,
Sir Edwin Lutyens, was brought in to
design some of the houses and most
of the public buildings. The suburb
remains a beautiful and unique place
to live, even if Dame Henrietta’s aim
of creating homes for all the classes
has long disappeared.
There are roads of big, detached
houses in styles from Queen Anne and
Arts & Crafts to Art Deco and rustic
cottages. The overall impression is
leafy, with manicured hedges and
grass verges and an impressive central
square with two churches and a highachieving girls’ grammar school
named after Dame Henrietta herself.
Taste of Korea: Jin Jung of The Dumpling House, Finchley Rd
Healthy bites: Abdul Hannan and head chef Nikolai Ignat at SoYo restaurant
£485,000
£550,000
£599,950
£1.85 MILLION
THIS two-bedroom cottage in Falloden Way,
NW11, backs on to a lovely park and tennis
courts. Through Godfrey & Barr (020 8012 3232).
A TWO-BEDROOM flat in Crewys Road, NW2, with two
bathrooms, 10 minutes from Golders Green’s shops
and restaurants. Call Knight Frank (020 8012 3474).
MINUTES from Golders Green Tube station, a flat in
Woodstock Road, NW11, with two bedrooms and a
private drive. Through KFH (020 8012 2470).
THIS five-bedroom family house in Armitage Rd,
NW11, has a large garden and is close to Golders
Green Road shops. Foxtons (020 8432 1444).
To find a home in Golders Green, visit rightmove.co.uk
For more about Golders Green, visit homesandproperty.co.uk/spotlightgolders
31
Property searching| Homes & Property
HAVE YOUR SAY:
GOLDERS GREEN
By Sir Edwin
Lutyens: The
listed Institute
and Henrietta
Barnett School,
Central Square,
Hampstead
Garden Suburb
LOCALS TWEET THEIR TIPS
@donnlaw46
Le Bon Coin is wonderful. So is Café
Also.
powered by
@ReadRoper
@SuperPropertyUK shout out for
Novellino — great food and decent
wi-fi. One of our favourite places to
hang out and work.
@donnlaw46
Ace Hair in Golders Green Road is
excellent as are The Book
Warehouse and Hummus Bar.
Shopping hub: Golders Green Road in the busy town centre
BUYING IN GOLDERS GREEN
(Average prices)
One-bedroom flat £404,000
Two-bedroom flat £553,000
Two-bedroom house £713,000
Three-bedroom house £984,000
Four-bedroom house £1.2 million
@Century21_N1
Delisserie American-style deli-diner
for great menu and reasonable
prices — yummy.
@markpesci100
That’s Amore. Franco’s Napoli-born
pizza, best in London, at 1031
Finchley Rd NW11. Wow.
@donnlaw46
SoYo for delicious salads, soups,
sandwiches and frozen yogurts; Pita
for best shawarma and falafel; La
Fiesta Argentine grill
Vibrant mix: Golders Green is well-to-do and multicultural
Family choice: Willifield Way, near Henrietta Barnett School
THE PROPERTY SCENE
TRAVEL
CLOSE to the North Circular road,
Golders Green is on the Edgware
branch of the Northern line. The bus
station is next to the Tube station,
with National Express coaches in and
out of London. This Zone 3 spot is
well-served by buses, with the No 82
to Victoria, the No 13 to Aldwych via
Oxford Circus and the No 268 to
Finchley Road via Hampstead. Brent
Cross shoppers catch the No 102 or
No 210. Annual travelcard — £1,520.
THE shining star of Golders Green is
Hampstead Garden Suburb, where
the most expensive houses are in the
“Billionaires Rows” — The Bishops
Avenue, Winnington Road and
Ingram Avenue. Homes here have
either been altered beyond
recognition or knocked down and
rebuilt to suit the taste of Russian
oligarchs and Middle Eastern
potentates.
Elsewhere in Golders Green are
roads of Twenties and Thirties
detached houses and semis. The
Childs Hill area has a few streets of
Victorian terrace houses, while
Ossulton Way, in the Hampstead
Garden Suburb extension between
STATS CHECK
WHAT HOMES COST
the North Circular road and Falloden
Way, boasts a fine enclave of Art Deco
houses.
Estate agent Frank Townsend from
Savills says most buyers in the garden
suburb are upsizing to a house they
intend living in for the long-term — or
at least until their children leave for
university.
■ NEW-BUILD HOMES
The Beaumont on the corner of
Finchley Road and Helenslea Avenue
is a development of 24 apartments
with two, three or four bedrooms.
Prices start at £1.25 million. Off-plan
sales are launching soon and the
scheme is expected to be completed
RENTING IN GOLDERS GREEN
(Average rates)
One-bedroom flat £1,346 a month
Two-bedroom flat £1,884 a month
Two-bedroom house £1,973 a month
Three-bedroom house £3,036 a month
Four-bedroom house £3,636 a month
Source: Rightmove
FOR MORE, VISIT
by the summer. For information, visit
thebeaumontNW11.com or call
Glentree Estates on 020 8731 9500.
■ HOMES TO RENT
Savills rental manager Robert Lerner
says Golders Green and Hampstead
Garden Suburb are popular with
families who want to rent close to
local state schools and the private
schools in Hampstead and Highgate.
Many of his landlords and tenants
are “accidental”, including some
owners who have not been able to
sell, and others who are temporarily
in rented accommodation while they
do up their houses as an alternative
to selling.
O Use our School Checker to find
catchment areas and inspection
reports for local schools
O The best Golders Green shops and
restaurants
O Local arts, leisure and sport
O A guide to local green space — and
up-and-coming streets to watch
Photographs: Daniel Lynch
34
Homes & Property | Ask the expert
Help me rid my home of eau de fry-up
Q
Q
A
WHAT’S
YOUR
PROBLEM?
IF YOU have a
question for
Fiona McNulty,
please email
legalsolutions@
standard.co.uk
or write to Legal
Solutions, Homes
& Property,
London Evening
Standard, 2 Derry
Street, W8 5EE.
We regret that
questions cannot
be answered
individually, but
we will try to
feature them
here. Fiona
McNulty is a
legal director
in the private
wealth group of
Foot Anstey
(footanstey.com).
OUR LAWYER ANSWERS
YOUR QUESTIONS
I LIVE in a flat above a
café, which I thought
would be quite
convenient. However, the
café fills my home with cooking
odours. I am the leaseholder of the
flat and have made a complaint to
the local council environmental
health department, but have had
no reply as yet.
Meanwhile, the freeholder of the
building is doing nothing to help
me. I would like to seek legal
advice but I’m not sure where to
start.
A
FIRST off, establish whether
you have the benefit of any
legal expenses cover on your
home contents insurance, as
these policies often cover claims of
this nature.
You may have a claim in nuisance
against the café due to the smell, but
that would depend on the terms of
your lease, and on other
circumstances such as the length of
time you have been living in the flat,
how long the café has been there, if it
was there when you moved in, how
long the smell has been a problem,
and whether other neighbours have
complained.
Follow up your complaint to the
environmental health department to
see whether the local authority will
take action.
Contact the café owner to see if
there are any measures they could
easily take to mitigate the situation —
for example, by moving fans or their
bins. If the café owner is in breach of
the terms of their lease, you may be
able to get the freeholder to take
action.
If you do not have any legal
expenses insurance cover, you
should consider instructing a local
solicitor to advise you.
More legal
Q&As
Visit: homesand
property.co.uk
MY MOTHER died a number of years ago and
left her half of the house to me and my
brother. Our father then remarried and has
since written a new will, which gives us our
mother’s half, with the other half split three ways.
My concern is that my father is 86 years old, 10 years
older than his new wife, and if she survives him and
ends up going into a home where the cost of her care
will have to be paid for out of the sale of the house, we
could lose our inheritance.
FROM what you say, it seems your mother and
father each made wills leaving the house to you
and your brother on the death of the surviving
parent. In that case, on your mother’s death her
share would have automatically passed first to your father
if, as is most common, your parents owned their home as
joint tenants rather than as tenants in common.
If they owned the house as tenants in common your
mother could have left her half-share of the property to
you and your brother in her will.
However, as it seems that your father now owns the
whole property outright, this suggests there was a joint
tenancy, with him making a will leaving you and your
brother the half of the house she intended.
On your father’s death, you and your brother will be
entitled to that half-share in the house, split between you.
Presumably, you mean that the other half of the house is
to be split between you, your brother and stepmother. If
that is so, your stepmother will inherit a one-sixth share
of the house, so the rest of the property will not be
available to pay for her care as it will be owned by you and
your brother.
O These answers can only be a very brief commentary on
the issues raised and should not be relied on as legal advice.
No liability is accepted for such reliance. If you have similar
issues, you should obtain advice from a solicitor.
VisitEngland
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36
Homes & Property | Inside story
Get that grand piano
into an alpine chalet
MONDAY
This ski season I’m already averaging
nearly 1,000 miles a week handling
client visits and meeting developers,
so it’s a good thing the new company
car arrived this morning. Snow tyres,
four-wheel drive and a panoramic sunroof are necessities when viewing
properties around the Alps.
First stop is to meet a developer in Val
d’Isère. We have a chalet client with an
£8 million budget being flown to the
resort at the end of the week and the
developer will pilot the helicopter. I will
be praying for good weather. We need
to discuss the floor plans because the
client wants a pool and cinema in the
basement — a fairly standard request
these days. Before I start the next journey, to La Rosière, we have lunch in the
new Fondue Factory underneath some
flats we’re selling in the village centre.
TUESDAY
Waking up in La Rosière, about three
feet of fresh snow has fallen. It snowed
just about everywhere in the Alps last
night, enough to see most resorts
through until Easter.
The first job of a day is to rescue a
colleague who has mistaken a narrow
piste for a road. Fortunately for him he
chose his hire car well, and we make it
down the piste unscathed. Everyone
ago, but this is her first visit. I stand
back and let him debate the subject for
me. “Older properties require expensive renovations and the buying costs
are double.” But his reasoning falls on
deaf ears. He apologises and they leave.
Just before I call head office in London
to relay the bad news, I receive a text
from the husband saying he will convince her, he just needs time.
It’s not the first time this has happened. With mortgage rates so low and
buyers acting quickly to secure their
dream home in the Alps, it’s surprising
how many people move forward with
a purchase without giving their spouse
the full picture.
Diary of
an estate
agent
is noticeably twitchy during the morning’s viewing. Deep snow and blazing
sunshine beckon and after a few subtle
nods to the developer we hit the slopes
for some of the best off-piste we have
ever skied.
FRIDAY
THURSDAY
My prayers on Monday for good flying
weather today have gone unanswered.
“A bit choppy” is how the developer/
pilot describes conditions. The client
has already had a very bumpy ride into
Chambéry and it takes around 30 minutes for the developer to convince her
the helicopter transfer to Val d’Isère will
be fine. I wonder how anyone could fly
a kite in this, let alone a helicopter.
Flying by chopper cuts the transfer
time from two hours to 25 minutes, but
by the time we land the client is a gibbering wreck. Luckily, as we arrive on
the plot and start discussing the plans
the sun comes out, the view across the
village does the legwork and the flight
is quickly forgotten. An hour later a
price is agreed and we all shake hands
on the deal. A great end to the week.
“I don’t want a new build,” says the
wife of a client as we stand on the plot
of a new apartment project in Chamonix. The husband reserved six months
O Charles-Antoine Sialelli is the
French Alps manager at Athena
Advisers (020 7471 4500).
WEDNESDAY
Today I’m travelling to Châtel, a resort
that has become extremely popular
with British buyers. Châtel is one of just
a few resorts in the Portes du Soleil
where you still come across old farming
chalets that have cows living downstairs and people living upstairs. Prices
are still competitive here, too, at
around £5,120 per square metre for
ski-in ski-out property — Val d’Isère is
£19,700 plus.
My appointment is with a client who
wants to check on the progress of her
penthouse, part of a new project adjacent to the slopes. The viewing is going
well, when she slips in that she wants
her grand piano to fit into the apartment. There’s enough space but the
building is now watertight. When she
sees the costs for removing part of the
roof and the crane rental, she will probably decide to settle for an upright
piano instead.
“discuss” 37
Letting on| Homes & Property
Remember, you’re my
tenant — not my BFF
A
LANDLORD I know is
bitterly regretting
becoming friendly with
her tenant after the
relationship turned sour.
The tenant was already renting the
flat in south-east London when my
acquaintance bought it from another
landlord several years ago.
The pair met up and they got along
well. “I thought she was a nice lady,
so I let her stay and I didn’t put up
the rent even though she was paying
a lot less than the flat was worth,” the
landlord told me.
Over the following years, she didn’t
increase the rent because, as she puts
it, she didn’t want the tenant to think
she was a typical “London landlord”.
“The flat was my pension. I had
invested for the capital growth and
didn’t expect to make a lot of money
from the rent,” she said. As long as
the rent was covering her costs, she
was happy.
Fast-forward to last year — her
business took a dip and she needed
some money, so she put the flat on
the market. She was hoping to sell to
another landlord who would be
happy to let her tenant stay.
However, the low rent put off other
investors. The only offer was from a
Victoria Whitlock
explains why it’s best
for landlords to keep
their business and
friendships separate…
unless they’re happy
to be hit in the pocket
The
accidental
landlord
first-time buyer who wanted vacant
possession. The landlord accepted
the offer and gave her tenant notice.
However, the tenant refused to
budge. She ignored the Section 21
notice to quit, forcing the landlord to
go to court to seek a possession
order.
It was then discovered that the
letting agent who had found the
tenant for the previous landlord
hadn’t protected her deposit. As you
can’t evict a tenant if you are holding
an unprotected deposit, proceedings
had to be halted. The agent had to
return the deposit to the tenant
before a new Section 21 notice could
be issued, which delayed the court
hearing by 10 weeks.
At a subsequent hearing, the tenant
was ordered to leave within two
weeks, but she still refused to go. It
seems the local council, which was
paying her rent, had advised her to
stay, saying it wouldn’t rehouse her if
she left as she would be deemed to
have made herself homeless — even
though she had been issued with a
court order to leave.
The landlord now has to go back to
court to apply for the tenant to be
evicted by bailiffs, which will take
another four to six weeks.
It has been stressful for the landlord
and expensive for both parties. The
landlord has spent around £1,000 in
legal fees and the tenant has had to
pay court costs of £300.
“Basically, I made the mistake of
getting too friendly with her,” my
acquaintance told me. “Once I’d got
to know her I didn’t feel I could
increase the rent, but I shot myself in
the foot because when I came to sell
£530 a week: a smart one-bedroom furnished flat is available to rent in Flask
Walk, Hampstead, above, moments from pretty Heath Street and only four
minutes’ walk from the Tube station. Through agents Parkheath (020 8012 1886).
the flat, the figures didn’t stack up for
other investors. I should have
increased the rent by a small amount
every year, then another landlord
might have bought the flat and let the
tenant stay.”
She also felt let down by the agent
who had failed to protect the deposit.
“It was so unprofessional of them and
the delay to the court hearing cost me
money. Now I don’t have a deposit
and I’m worried the tenant will leave
the property in a mess, but the agent
is refusing to help.”
She admits the flat has been a good
investment, but says she was wrong to
befriend the tenant. Sad — but true.
O Victoria Whitlock lets four
properties in south London.
To contact Victoria with your ideas
and views, tweet @vicwhitlock
Brought to you by
! $ "
#
40
Homes & Property New homes|
Buy in Aldgate, get free
Tube travel for three years
IT’S A short walk to the
Square Mile skyscrapers
from Aldgate Place,
above, a swish scheme of
463 flats, but buy a home
there and you get a free
three-year all-zone travel
card from developer
Barratt.
This new E1 “quarter”
has a hotel, cafés and
restaurants, communal
gardens and a fitness
centre. Prices from
£745,000. Call 0844 225
0032.
Meanwhile, Camden
Council is making its debut
as a house builder. Plender
Street Apartments in
Camden Town are the fruits
of a Community
Investment Programme
that is bringing more than
3,000 new homes to the
north-west London
borough. By selling off land
and bulldozing old estates,
Camden is raising more
than £400 million for
reinvestment in new
neighbourhoods, with a
mix of public and private
homes. Profits from
private sales are ploughed
back into new social
housing, green space and
community facilities.
Plender Street has 31 new
flats across two blocks.
Prices from £515,000. Call
Savills on 020 7075 2832.
Other private sale projects
under way or in the
pipeline include Maiden
Lane Estate at King’s Cross,
Bourne Estate, Clerkenwell,
Tybalds Estate in Holborn,
and Abbey Road, just north
of St John’s Wood
Smart
S
Sma
Sm
mar
ma
mart
art
rt m
moves
Mayfair style
in the country
S
By
David
Spittles
MART AND prosperous
Hadley Wood is a hinge
between town and country.
The north London “supersuburb” lies in Zone 6 on the
edge of the green belt. It has a tennis
club and a renowned local golf
course with a Georgian clubhouse set
on a hill surrounded by parkland.
Large, detached early 20th-century
houses and grand Edwardian villas in
this neighbourhood are popular with
celebs and Premiership footballers —
Arsenal FC has a training ground
here — who value the close proximity
to central London. Into this world
has arrived Renaissance, a Mayfairstyle scheme of grand apartments
with the hallmarks of a house: up to
2,693sq ft of space, high ceilings,
underfloor heating, air conditioning,
From
£1.75 million:
apartments at
Miriam House,
Hadley Wood
Visit our online luxury section
HomesAndProperty.co.uk/luxury
THE TRUE MARQUE
OF PRESTIGIOUS LIVING
SHOW APARTMENT NOW OPEN
TO BOOK A VIEWING
PLEASE CALL 020 3538 1891
205 Holland Park Avenue offers a range
of 2 & 3 bedroom luxury apartments which
are ready to move into now.
Located in the desirable Royal Borough
of Kensington & Chelsea
Excellent transport links, 8 minutes from
Bond Street & 18 minutes from Kings Cross
Benefit now ahead of changes in stamp duty
Prices from £1.275m
redrow.co.uk/205hollandparkavenue
41
New homes| Homes & Property
Bike to work with Mayor Boris from a canalside flat
SOAK UP THE SEA VIEW
SOUTHEND APARTMENTS
state-of-the-art home entertainment
systems and dressing rooms. Set
behind gates, there is secure
underground parking, CCTV and
concierge. Prices from £2.3 million.
Call Statons on 020 8441 9555.
The same agent is selling Miriam
House, above and above left, a
boutique scheme of six luxury
apartments set back from
Cockfosters Road in Hadley Wood.
Prices from £1.75 million.
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REGENERATION isreaching into Essex
where, despite its Thames Estuary
industrial legacy, 70 per cent of the
county is countryside, with many
historic and pretty villages and some of
the country’s best schools.
Southend-on-Sea, right, known for its
pleasure pier — the longest in Europe —
is the biggest town in Essex and a
regional business centre, being
revitalised by expanding Southend
airport. The train commute to
Fenchurch Street takes an hour.
Weston Homes has created affordable
homes including Highbanks, left, with
sea views, 75 flats in a 12-storey former
office tower and 23 more in a new block
alongside. From £155,000, with Help to
Buy available. Call 01279 873300.
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ANAMY
SITES for homes along the capital’s
extensive canal network are still
being discovered in relatively central
areas. The Batten, left and right, is
part of a new neighbourhood being
built on the site of the former
Packington council estate, in a prized
position beside Regent’s Canal in
gentrified Islington.
It’s moments from City Road canal
basin, Camden Passage, Upper Street
bars and cafés, and Angel Tube. Boris
Johnson, a local resident, cycles to
work at City Hall and Westminster.
Launching next week, prices start
at £515,000 for a one-bedroom flat.
Call Hyde Homes on 0845 606 1121.

23 March 2016 - Homes and Property

Transcription

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