Posts filed under ‘News’
Exclusive: Pictures of Duffy’s flat before the fire
One of London’s most expensive penthouse apartments went up in smoke last night after a serious fire gutted the property, which earlier this year was up for sale at £8.75 million.
The apartment, which features a swimming pool, huge fish tank, private parking, four bedrooms, a cinema and two roof terraces, had been rented out to the ‘Rain on my parade’ singer Duffy while she records her new album in London. The Welsh warbler had, last night, been about to vacate the penthouse on the 10th floor of Abbot House off Kensington High Street when the blaze broke out.
Up in smoke: the gorgeous and celebrated interior of Duffy’s penthouse apartment before the blaze.
Duffy, along with around 20 other residents, had to evacuate the building late in the night as some sixty fire fighters tackled the blaze, which ripped through most of the penthouse before being doused in the early hours of the morning.
Two songs of Duffy’s point prophetically to the fire (well sort of) including ‘Smoke without fire’ and ‘Big flame’ but what many will lament are the penthouse’s now lost interiors, created by artist and architect Francis Machin who modelled many of London’s landmarks including Ransomes Dock on Battersea Embankment. His father, a designer, created the current Queen’s heads featured on UK postage stamps.
Lucky escape: singer Duffy had to flee her rented luxury apartment in Kensington, London as a fire ripped through the property.
While the blaze is a blow for design, luckily the apartment’s interiors were preserved within the property history section of Zoopla and after a bit of digging we found these. We can only hope they can be stored to such a wonderfully former glory (pictured above and below).
Royal Wootton Bassett
This is a legacy post from the findaproperty.com blog which is now maintained as an archive within the Zoopla blog. Links have been preserved.
Royal Wootton Bassett has joined a select group of towns to be given royal status after the town was renamed this week during a ceremony led by Princess Anne.
The role of Wootton Bassett in the repatriation of British military personnel killed in war has made this small market town famous in both the UK and abroad and the Queen decided to rename the town by Letter Patent to Royal Wootton Bassett following a petition by the Prime Minister, David Cameron.
It has been 85 years since a town was last given the royal prefix, when George V confirmed its right to use the title in 1927, but the list of towns with a regal prefix is in fact short – a handful of towns are also officially royal. These are (in date order): Windsor (13th century), Leamington Spa (1838), Tunbridge Wells (1901), Kingston upon Thames (1927), and now Wootton Bassett. Two London boroughs are also royal (Kensington and Chelsea, Greenwich) and one county (Berkshire).
As well as new roadsigns, Royal Wootton Bassett will have a new coat of arms.
Want to move to the town and join in the celebrations? Then for the latest properties for sale in Royal Wootton Bassett, take a look on FindaProperty.com
Isn’t it time we reformed the home buying process?
This is a legacy post from the findaproperty.com blog which is now maintained as an archive within the Zoopla blog. Links have been preserved.
If the home buying process were applied to anything other than bricks and mortars, there would be protests.
Buyers and sellers losing thousands of pound to a whim; weeks and sometimes months of hard work being lost to a simple change of mind; buying chains collapsing unnecessarily. None of this would be tolerated when buying cars, washing machines or computers. So why homes, which are worth so much more?
Decades after our property ‘conveyancing’ process was established, nothing has been done about improving it – except the Labour government’s ill-planned (if you’re charitable) and lamentable (if you’re not) attempt to tackle the problem with Home Information Packs.
Moving cause: why is the UK’s home buying process still so problematical?
So what can be done? Most of the problems of home moving are about the so-called ‘exchange black hole’ – that stomach-clenching period of uncertainty between offer and exchange of contracts.
It’s when buyers can say they’ll buy a property without committing a penny or ounce of moral currency to the sale and then pull out without notice, drop their offer price at the last moment (gazundering) or the vendor raises the price very late in the day (gazumping).
FindaProperty.com thinks it’s about time to have another go at nailing this and we’re glad to hear Guardian journalist Hilary Osborne has also taken up the cause recently. The Con/Lib coalition seem at best reluctant to get involved, and everyone else is a bit jaded about the prospects of success.
But if everyone shouted loud enough something could be done.
And it’s not as if we don’t have successful systems to gaze at longingly. In France buyers commit to a property at a much earlier stage than in England and Wales. As soon as a price is agreed, a verbal agreement is soon followed up with a written one drawn up by a notaire. While in England and Wales it takes, on average, 14 weeks to buy a property, the process in France is much faster because the contracts are signed earlier.
Countries like Australia, New Zealand and of course our northern neighbours in Scotland, offer viable alternatives too – as does the US where home buying and selling is made neat, tidy and fast by the use of a buying agent who acts openly for the buyer, while the contract at point of offer avoids time wasters, gazumping and delays for all.
The issue is already on the agenda in the UK through the E-Homebuying Forum, led by Sir Bryan Carsberg, a former director of the Office of Fair Trading. He wants to bring in a ‘preliminary contract’ and deposit which would punish either party if they pulled out without good reason.
The E-Homebuying Forum has also floated the idea of a pre-offer survey – a quick way for the buyer to get more information about the property they’re interested in before an offer is made.
But that smells too much like another HIPs system, some say. So what do you think – have you been gazumped, gazundered and generally worn thin by our buying process. Tell us here – shout loud – either leave a comment or vote in our one-click survey.
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Best beach huts: We follow the search for a winner
This is a legacy post from the findaproperty.com blog which is now maintained as an archive within the Zoopla blog. Links have been preserved.
If, like us, you love the idea of a Victorian bathing machine with no wheels then we’ve found something that will have us both splashing around with joy.
These wooden gabled sheds are now firmly in the British icon realm with sale prices on the rise for the past decade. Beach hut hotspots include Mudeford Sandbank in Dorset, Southwold in Suffolk and Wells-next-the-Sea in Norfolk. And it’s not just us who’ve gone beach hut mad, celebs have also been splashing out on them including, crime writer PD James at Southwold, chef Aldo Zilli at Hove, Madness singer Suggs at Whitstable and Rolling Stone Keith Richards at West Wittering
Good news then that the folks behind the coveted Beach Hut of the Year award have just extended their competition by another two weeks. The final day for entries will now be Thursday September 1.
This year the competition is fiercer than ever and entries span the full gamut – from small £6,000 huts to larger ‘industrial’ ones costing over £100,000. These will be nominated in different categories including Best Presented Hut, Best Beach Hut Association, Best Beach Hut Story and Best Beach Hut Neighbour. They’re also including a Best Beach Hut Photograph for those who don’t own a hut but are keen photographers.
Built in their thousands by bathing Brits in 1950s, the exact number of beach huts on Britain’s coast isn’t known, but seaside historian, author and now one of the judges of the competition Dr Kathryn Ferry estimates it to be a whopping 20,000, so there’s plenty to choose from.
Functional, pretty and by the sea. What’s not to love about the humble beach hut?
Win: A signed Phil Spencer book
This is a legacy post from the findaproperty.com blog which is now maintained as an archive within the Zoopla blog. Links have been preserved.
The FindaProperty.com office was all a buzz a couple of weeks back when we got to interview none other than the nicest bloke in property – Phil Spencer.
The Location Location Location star told us all about his latest book – How to Buy Your First Home (And How To Sell It Too) – a very practical tome aimed at, as you’d guess from the title, those who want to buy their first home.
Not only did Spencer – who along with Kirstie Allsopp is one half of the UK’s most famous property couple – tell us that he thinks first-time buyers are key to ensuring the long-term health of the market, but he served up some tips for those who want to get on the home ladder as quickly as possible.
“Try to choose a property that will suit you for the longest period of time,” Spencer told FindaProperty.com. “Also, try to chose a property that you can add value to during the time that you live there … because the market isn’t going to help you move in the future.”
All good advice from Mr Spencer. Oh, and he was nice enough to sign five of his books for five lucky FindaProperty.com readers. Just email competition@findaproperty.com with Phil Spencer in the subject line and you’ll be in with a chance to win one.
This competition has now closed.
