Posts tagged ‘House’
Oooh look, it’s The Apprentice house exclusively revealed by Zoopla.co.uk #apprentice
The 2011 Apprentice House - estimated value of £4,669,636 by Zoopla.co.uk
We love all things property here at Zoopla.co.uk and firmly believe information and good research is the key to making smarter property decisions.
So, whilst watching the first two episodes of the BBC’s The Apprentice earlier this week, we couldn’t help become a little curious as to where exactly this year’s stunning house is located.
We knew the property would be on Zoopla because we list every UK home (all 27m) in our home values section. So, we were hopeful we’d be able to unearth some juicy inside info on this year’s house for you. We weren’t disappointed…
We’d seen the front of the house in the show in Tuesday’s episode (9.03 mins in on BBC iPlayer) where the sixteen hopefuls would call home as they compete to win a £250,000 investment to start their own company, with Lord Sugar as their business partner and so we were hunting a huge pad with a sizeable value tag to match – see below.
The next clue came as Apprentice narrator, Mark Halliley, repeatedly stated “Richmond” as this years location for the house. So, a little navigation in map view (we’ve incorporated Google Street View on Zoopla), then a quick trip to confirm our suspicions and now we can exclusively reveal that the house is actually located on Christchurch Road, East Sheen, London, SW14.
So, what specifics can Zoopla.co.uk tell us about the area and the house?
Average property values in East Sheen are currently £667,199
The average value of property in Christchurch Road, SW14 is £1,266,477
The current Zoopla property value of this year’s Apprentice house is £4,669,636
Then if we look at the property details page on Zoopla we can tell you that the house is a 7-bedroomed, detached, freehold property with 6 bathrooms, 3 receptions and is currrently valued at £4,669,741. We suspect that one of the other rooms (games room / study) is being currently used as a bedroom so that the sixteen (although now 14…games room returns?) hopefuls can each share an en-suite room.
Digging deeper and into the Zoopla Property Archive, where we store historic records of properties from across the UK that at one time have been for sale or to rent on the open market in the last 10 years, we can also see that the property was previously listed for sale on 31st Mar 2004 for £1,800,000 and detailed as a 5-bedroom detached house at that point.
Our sold price records (we have over 16.6m dating back to 1995) show that the Apprentice house was sold on 23rd Apr 2004 for £1,715,000…£85,000 less than the original asking price.
We’ve also done a little more research and found out that the property that was bought in 2004 was then demolished and the stunning property we see on our screens was born!
As always, please feel free to share and use this information, all we ask is that you credit the source as Zoopla.co.uk and link to any of the links above or Zoopla.co.uk. Thank you.
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£4.75m to be Damien Hirst’s landlord, anyone?
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 a mud-strewn houseboat mooring could ever be described as glamorous, then the patch of Thames embankment put on the market this week for £4.75m comes pretty near. ‘Dragon’ Simon Woodroffe and pop artist Damien Hirst call it home and previous residents have included actors Sir Laurence Olivier and Nigel Planer and musician Nick Cave.
These starry residential moorings are opposite Chelsea‘s Cheyne Walk – which itself has been home to celebrities such as Keith Richards and Mick Jagger – and comes with a a boatyard and work shop, offices, a car park and one of the most lucrative advertising hoardings in London (which can bring in a million on its own, it is claimed).
Do you fancy a slice of this? The iconic Chelsea Yacht and Boat Company residential houseboat moorings are on the open market for the first time
In general houseboat moorings on the Thames offer a bohemian atmosphere, sometimes bordering on the hippy but this one is the most famous, glamorous and from a practical point of view, safest.
But who would want to become the landlord here for £4.75m? The main attraction is that it’s a potential money marker. As one of the most prime locations in London, this is a unique opportunity and revenue streams include lease renewals and standing charges, the advertising hoardings, houseboat repair and maintenance work and the opportunity to rent out the site as a film and TV shoot locations.
These houseboats suggest an easy existence living the louche lifestyle but it’s not just the ‘arty’ types but a growing number of wealthy professionals, entrepreneurs, doctors, architects and writers moving in. It’s easy to see the attraction as these floating homes have changed dramatically over the past twenty years from basic tubs to floating luxury pads costing as much as £300,000.
They’ve come a long way: The view towards Battersea Power Station in the 1950s
If you’re interested in buying a residential boat there are a number of costs involved including mooring fees – at Cheyne Walk this can cost approximately £1000 a month; the annual car-parking fee, the insurance and a mooring license (which can be difficult to come by in London-you can pay £20,000-£50,000 every ten years). Then there’s also the cost of maintaining your floating home – the boats have to be dry docked every decade and the hull cleaned and resealed.
The weird world of X Factor houses
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.
Great excitement among X-Factor fans this week after the address of the contestant house was revealed as a ‘Spanish style’ mansion in Hyver Hill near Borehamwood, Hertfordshire (pictured, above).
The property, which is up a private road and among thick woods, is a world away from previous X Factor contestant houses, which are usually in suburban areas of North London.
But one thing millions will be wondering is – what’s it like to be in the house when the show is in full swing? Earlier this year I had a rare peek into this high octane world of TV stardom, tabloid headlines and dormitory living when the owner of last year’s house gave me a tour of the property.
It was, at the time, on the market for £5.65 million after being rented out to X-Factor for £50,000 a week.
That house (pictured above), which is a starkly modern new-build on West Heath Avenue, Hampstead, was famously mobbed by local school children day and night as the X-Factor final loomed and neighbours including the Chinese ambassador looked on in horror at the fans’ antics, which included writing lewd graffiti on its perimeter wall.
But aside from the hysteria that the contestants attract, what’s the property story behind these houses? Simon Cowell’s production company usually approaches owners through local agents and in the Hampstead property’s case owner (and developer) Matthew Frayne was asked if X Factor could rent the house for 16 weeks.
The production company’s usual strategy is to find large and upmarket homes that are for sale and then offer to rent them out at fairly inflated prices. And given that owners can make around £600,000 in rent from the deal, no wonder they are happy to take their properties off the market and submit them to the X-Factor hysteria.
In reality these houses are not ‘homes’ but a boarding school crossed with a TV studio. The contestants, however glamorous, sleep in bunk beds in ‘dormitories’ and the rest of the house is used to film interviews for each week’s show and as a photographic studio for publicity stills. Only the really young or vulnerable contestants get their owns room, I was told.
The latest X-Factor house is a sprawling, seven-bedroom villa in Borehamwood, Herts that until Simon Cowell’s henchmen turned up, was on the market for £3.5 million. Then the owner, lawyer Stephen Goldberg, “decided to rent it out” and make a fortune from renting it out to X-Factor. It had been listed by agent Stattons at £2,500 a week but X Factor will probably be paying a lot more than that.
One thing I would warn Mr Goldberg – the house will be trashed by the end of the show if last year’s house is anything to go by. But on the other hand the exposure might help sell it; the 2009 X-Factor house in Hampstead now has a new owner.
UPDATE: The house is now on the market, according to the Daily Mail, for the same asking price early on in 2010.
We’ve launched our first national TV advertising campaign
Finding that special one can sometimes be a bit tricky.
Some are a bit cheap, some a bit scruffy, some too flash and some inadequately sized. Maybe you’re looking for one that’ll gain a few pounds, perhaps you want to know what they’re worth or maybe you like to keep an eye on the older ones?
Luckily we have all the information you need to really find that special one…property, that is!
As a nation we’re obsessed with property. We all love to play the nosey neighbour game, snoop around a celebrity pad, or find out what our home is worth or what our neighbour paid for theirs.
Since we launched back in January 2008 we’ve grown at an unrivalled pace, however our marketing to date has been largely focussed online…
…today, this all changes. We’re making our TV debut as we continue our quest to turn Zoopla into a household name targeting property buyers, renters, sellers and landlords. The initial campaign will run for five weeks to the end of September and is part of an extensive multi-million pound TV, print and digital campaign to run over the coming months. 87% of adults will see the TV ad at least once during the initial five-week period and the TV campaign will include a number of prime-time slots across ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and the Sky digital channels.
The TV ads centre on the theme that finding the perfect property is much like finding the perfect partner and reinforce our core philosophy that free and easily accessible information helps buyers, renters, sellers and owners make better-informed property decisions.
So, why not improve your chances in the property market with Zoopla.co.uk.
Let us know what you think about the advert below, on youtube or twitter.
The official announcement can be found here
Green House Effect
In last week’s Brighton-focused Five to View, I featured a pea-green house as the first property.
Granted, it might be a shade too lurid to suit all tastes, but I think it’s a great example of the many brightly coloured homes that are dotted around Brighton.
Coincidentally, a couple of days later I read a Telegraph article based on a survey by Sandtex Paints, which said that the colour of house you live in can reveal a lot about you.
And poor old green, bless it, was at the bottom of the house colour pecking order with typical occupants earning low salaries in unskilled jobs and driving second hand cars.
In contrast, inhabitants of blue houses typically earned the top salaries, drove the best cars and often had domestic help such as nannies and cleaners.
Looking at the list to see if there was a category for the peachy-pink façade boasted by our house I found, to my dismay, that it came second lowest in the list.
However, resident of unsuccessful, low-earning pink house or not, I still have the mental capacity to know that this fun survey is best taken with a pinch of salt!
Here’s what you’re supposed to earn, according to the colour of your home:
Average Annual Earnings by House Colour:
(Sandtex Paints Survey)
Blue £38,000
Red £23,500
White £23,400
Magnolia £23,100
Beige £20,800
Orange £20,000***
Purple £19,600
Grey £19,000
Yellow £18,500
Brown £18,400
Pink £14,500
Green £13,100
***Can I just point out that I have never in my life seen an orange house…does such a thing even exist?
