Posts filed under ‘Renting & Letting’
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).
Why is renting so expensive?
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.
How much do you spend on your monthly rent? And if you’re no longer a renter, how much did you pay the last time you had a landlord or letting agent to keep happy? Unless it was a very long time ago, you probably spent a pretty penny and certainly more than you wished you had. So spare a thought for those who rent now, especially the growing numbers of single-person households living in small homes.
That’s because the latest FindaProperty.com Rental Index reveals the cost of renting a flat has reached an all-time high. Rental asking prices for studio flats have increased by nearly 7% in the past year to reach an average £718 a month, while one-bedroom flats increased by 2.5% to a record £660 per month.
It’s all smiles when you get the keys to your new rental home, but affording the monthly rent isn’t always so much fun
Overall, asking rents have increased in the first quarter of 2012 and are now at £868 per month, 1% up on the same time last year, but below the record high of £890 in September 2011.
But it’s the proportion of take home income spent on letting a home that brings the renting story to life.
Tenants are now spending on average 38%, or £10,416, of their typical £27,242 net salary on rent. In London, it’s even more – households spend 71%, or £25, 824, of their average £36,384 net income on paying rent. Or think about it another way – the average rental household in London spends nearly as much on their rent in a year as the average UK household takes home as income.
There’s an important regional story here too. Renters in South East England spend the next highest proportion with 42% of take-home income going on rent; in the South West it’s 39%; in the East of England it’s 33%; and in the West Midlands, Wales and the North East it’s 32%. Those in Scotland spend 31% of their take-home income on rent; in the North West and Yorkshire it’s 29%; and in the East Midlands it’s 28%.
But what’s causing this? Quite simply, rents have risen because of stricter lending rules which have made it harder for aspiring buyers to get a foot on the property ladder. As a result, less of us are buying, more of us are renting and the increased demand for homes to rent have forced asking prices up. The good news is that mortgage lending was 30% up in March compared to January, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders.
And while some of that increase is down to buyers scrambling to complete their sales before the end of the stamp duty holiday for first-time buyers, it’s still a good sign. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait too long for the trickle down affect on rents.
Are you playing it safe with renting?
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 you’re a renter, or have ever rented a home, you’ll already know the toe-curling truth about the sector – it’s expensive and involves, at least at the beginning of a lease, an awful lot of money changing hands.
The other thing about renting is that it’s a wholly unregulated industry, which means anyone can set themselves up as a letting agent. This becomes a problem when inexperienced letting agents go bust or disappear overnight taking renters’ (and landlords’) money with them.
Thank goodness then for SAFEagent – a scheme created by agents to help make the lettings industry “safer” for renters. And what better time to remind ourselves of the positive work the scheme is doing than during SAFEagent Awareness Week which was marked today in the House of Commons.
Are you safe? Look out for the SAFEagent kitemark when using a letting agent. SAFEagent Awareness Week was marked at the House of Commons today.
In a nutshell, SAFEagent is an income protection scheme that aims to stamp out the devastating stories of renters being left homeless, cashless and without a legal leg to stand on when their letting agent collapses. The idea is that would-be tenants (and landlords) look out for the SAFEagent kitemark (pictured above) and choose their agent knowing they have income protection in place. This simply means that renters (and landlords) are protected if the letting agent goes bust or tries to rip off its customers.
It’s of course worth remembering that the vast majority of letting agents are reputable, however, the unregulated nature of the industry means risky agents do exist.
Today’s gathering at the Palace of Westminster was a great opportunity to hear from SAFEagent about their success. After launching to the public in September last year, SAFEagent already has close to 2,000 agents signed up and plans to expand even further. It’s backed by some big names including the Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA), the National Approved Letting Scheme (NALS), the Law Society and Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).
So whether you’re a renter or a landlord, the next time you use a letting agent, check they’re a SAFEagent first. It makes sense to be protected.
A quarter of Brits don’t know their neighbour’s name
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.
Perhaps the Queen had an inkling of how bad things were when she used her historic speech to Parliament last month to call on the nation to celebrate her Diamond Jubilee by being a good neighbour.
Noise tops the list of the UKs top neighbour complaint, while Wales is our most neighbourly region
Turns out 13 million of us (or 26 per cent) don’t know the name of the person who lives next door, 22 per cent don’t know what they do for a living, 7 per cent have absolutely no idea who they are and 3 per cent feel threatened by them, according to new research by FindaProperty.com.
But the days of borrowing a cup of sugar might not be completely behind us, as the survey reveals that a fifth of us (or 19 per cent) say they would actually like to have a better relationship with their neighbours.
Part of the reason we now feel more isolated from our neighbours is down to the fact that we move home more frequently. As renting a home continues to loose its stigma and becomes the norm for increasing numbers of us, we’re staying put for the length of our tenancy agreements, rather than the longer stretches traditionally associated with buying a home.
Have you thought about holding a street party to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee? They’re considered a great way to get to know your neighbours
Add to this changes in the way we engage with each other through the rise of social media and the result is that we’re increasingly staying in our living rooms with our eyes trained down on laptops, phones and tablets. Many of us would rather tweet our local knowledge questions than knock on the door of the person at number 2 to ask about the best local locksmith or curry house.
But are we missing a trick with our “unneighbourly” attitudes? Knowing the person next door can improve security and quality of life. We all want to feel safe and comfortable in our homes and the strength of our relationships with the people who live nearby affect this.
Of course, not everyone can get on with their neighbours. According to the figures, 11 million (22%) people in the UK have fallen out with the person next door in the past five years. Although the majority of these disagreements were verbal, 744,000 Brits admit to having had a physical fight or scuffle with their neighbour over the same period and a million say the disagreement resulted in damage to property. Unable to resolve these disputes, 1.1 million people were forced to call the police and just over half a million (646,000) resorted to legal action.
Noise was the most common cause of disputes between neighbours as cited by 37% of those who said they’d had a disagreement. Parking (15%), pets (13%) and children (12%) also appear high on the list.
But bear in mind, if you do fall out, it could make things difficult when the time comes to sell your property as sellers have an obligation to disclose details of any complaints made against their neighbours to future buyers. Oh, and tenancy references often ask whether you’ve ever had an issue with a neighbour too.
Food for thought for the next time you cross paths with your own neighbour.
Home alone: What’s the cost?
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.
Spare a thought for the growing numbers of people who are choosing, or in many cases finding themselves because of circumstances out of their control, living alone. Latest figures from the Office of National Statistics show the number of people living alone in the UK has now risen to 29% of all households.
Not much room – the rise in single occupancy households means studio flats are in more demand than ever
From a housing perspective this demographic shift has coincided with restricted mortgage lending the result of which is that we’re just not buying homes at the same rate we used to. And this means more of us are renting a home, increasingly alone and predominantly in one bedroom and studio flats.
This demand for apartment living is making the rental market extremely buoyant and while that’s good news for buy-to-let landlords, it’s a challenge for renters, especially those who live alone.
The latest FindaProperty.com Rental Index shows the cost of renting a flat in the UK has now pushed up to record heights as tenants feel the effects of being forced to pay a premium for smaller properties.
The average monthly asking price for renting a flat in the UK has reached £833 a month – the highest on record – and 2.5% above prices this time last year. The average cost of a studio flat has risen to £713 a month, again the highest price on record; 5.9% greater than this time last year and 8.5% more than the current cost of renting a one bedroom flat.
Despite being cheaper to rent than a studio, monthly asking prices for one bedroom flats are also at their highest, averaging £657, which is up 3% on this time last year. This is not the case however for two bedroom flats, which saw asking prices fall 0.1% last month.
While it’s true that studio flats tend to cluster in urban areas where there is more demand for single occupancy, the drastic price increases are also telling us something about this demographic shift to living alone – a move that clearly catching on, despite its effects on the bank account.
