Posts tagged ‘x factor’
X Factor’s Kelly Rowland eyeing a London home?
Could North London be about to get another sprinkle of American star dust?
London calling: Kelly Rowland has said she may move to the UK if she lands another series in the X Factor judge's chair
Hot on the heels of Hollywood starlet Cameron Diaz, who recently snapped up a home in Belsize Park, comes news that X Factor judge Kelly Rowland is planning to move to Blighty if she’s invited to return to the Simon Cowell talent quest juggernaut next year.
The singer, who took her place at the judges’ table alongside Tulisa Contostavlos, Gary Barlow and Louis Walsh, has admitted she would love to return to the show in 2012 and is a fan of celebrity enclave North London.
She told the Daily Mirror: “There is no place like UK X Factor. If Simon wants me back next year then that would be good.
“I’m definitely considering buying a house over here as I love it here.”
However, the former Destiny’s Child singer, who currently calls a Miami beach house home, admitted she’d need to take her family into consideration before making the final decision to move to the UK.
“My mother would have a problem with me moving because it’s so far away from home so she may have to move with me,” says Rowland, who sold her five-bedroom Texas property back in 2005 before relocating to Miami. “She doesn’t like that long plane ride so I’ve got to make sure I make her happy.”
Rowland still has a bit of time before she needs to start house hunting on this side of the Atlantic. X Factor bosses are yet to confirm whether any of this year’s judges will be returning in 2012 and a decision isn’t expected until April or May next year.
But in the interests of helping Rowland out, we’ve picked out three North London homes within easy commuting distance of the show’s Wembley live venue, in which we think Rowland could be very happy.
She might even meet Ms Diaz at the local Starbucks for a Chai Latte.
The bling factor
Perfect for next year’s Judges House segment, this seven bedroom home in Templewood Ave is set back behind a gated driveway: all the better to keep prying eyes away. There’s also a 100 ft mature garden, a smart reception room (for those tough love chats she needs to deliver as mentor) and a master bedroom with huge en suite dressing room (somewhere to keep the frocks). This home is just a short trot to West Heath too, so Rowland won’t ever miss her morning jog.
The home is for sale for £15 million through Knight Frank
The glamour factor
Rowland could channel a bit of old school British glamour in this seven bedroom detached home in Frognal Lane, which was home to the actor Dame Peggy Ashcroft for 40 years from 1946. Manor House is Grade II listed and even has its own staff annexe. Also, if Rowland gets homesick for Miami she can just look out the window into a west facing garden and admire her very own water feature: surely that will help her cope with living away from the sea and sun of Miami beach.
The home is for sale for £8.9m through Goldschmidt and Howland.
The village factor
This six-bedroom, six bathroom Victorian terrace would deliver Rowland the much envied celebrity village lifestyle of Belsize Park already enjoyed by the likes of Cameron Diaz, Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin. This period home has a contemporary look inside with a state of the art kitchen, spacious bedrooms and a bijou garden (all the better for a sophisticated woman like Rowland).
The home is for sale for £5.9m through TK International
Found: Cheryl Cole’s London bolthole
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.
As Cheryl Cole finally resurfaces after her X Factor humiliation, the six-bedroom home where she has been laying low has just come on the market, FindaProperty.com has learned. The price tag for the 5,000 sq ft property, in the affluent north London suburb of Hadley Wood, is £3.15million.
Cole, who paid a reported £3,500-a-week to rent the new-build mansion – where she escaped the world’s media after being so publicly fired and lived in, up until very recently – was no doubt impressed by the Poggenpohl kitchens, Villeroy & Boch bathrooms, cinema room, ‘ilight’ system (that lets light pour into a room so that the walls look like giant windows) and the very long private driveway overlooking landscaped gardens that takes you to the main building.
The interior design scheme is monochrome, and the master bedroom comes with a suitably large dressing room to house all those sequinned off-the-shoulder numbers, and enormous bathroom with ample storage space to house the hairspray-addict’s products.
Hadley Wood, a semi-rural part of London in the borough of Enfield and close to Barnet, where you’ll find huge footballer-friendly homes, clearly holds good memories for Cole. A few miles away lies Wrotham Park, where Cheryl and Ashley married in Hello-tastic style in 2006; Hadley Wood is also where the couple shared a home in 2007.
The area’s detached properties with gated fronts mean it’s a magnet for celebrities, and a private security firm roams the area to keep them all safe. Singer Emma Bunton, rugby player Kyran Bracken and Tottenham Hotspur midfielder Niko Kranjcar all live here, while Amy Winehouse escaped the pubs of Camden by moving here (she has since moved on).
“In total, I’d say between 2,000 and 3,000 people reside here – of those, quite a few are successful business people as well as celebrities,” says Justin Godfrey, associate director of the Barnet office of Savills. “We also get a number of footballers because it offers easy access to both the Tottenham and Arsenal training grounds – and with Tottenham building their new training grounds close by, I expect we’ll see even more footballers in the future. It’s a very discreet area, so celebrities can go about their business undisturbed, and it has a village feel with lots of green open spaces – yet on a good day, you can drive to Mayfair in 35 minutes.”
Typical prices for detached homes are predictably steep, starting at £700,000, and going up to £9million. These homes are not for the understated: in the most desirable streets – Beech Hill (where Cheryl Cole’s rented home lies) Camlet Way and Hadley Common – the houses here measure between 5,000 and 10,000 sq ft.
Words: Jessie Hewitson
X Factor graduate Sean Rumsey’s got home owning plans
Sean Rumsey performs on the X Factor tour in 2008
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.
As one fifth of 2007 X Factor boy band Futureproof, Sean Rumsey made his mark singing pop sings with his band mates. Three years on, the now solo singer-songwriter is focused on developing his soul-pop repertoire and getting onto the property ladder, as he told FindaProperty.
Rumsey, who was mentored by Simon Cowell while on X Factor, currently lives in south east London’s South Norwood where he rents a flat from kfh.co.uk letting agents. He told me that he’s loving the experience of sharing with a mate and taking advantage of his easy access into London.
“I really like it and there are some really great parts, actually,” the Warwickshire-raised 23-year-old told me. “Not too far from where I live there’s a really nice park with a nice lake and stuff, which I can go jogging in.
“I was brought up in the countryside, so it’s quite nice to have a little get away area close by if I want to escape from the city and that’s why I really like the area in particular.”
It’s also just ten minutes from Norwood Junction to London Bridge, which means Rumsey is in easy reach of the music industry meetings he needs to attend in central London.
While renting is good for now, Rumsey’s keen to explore his options about getting on the property ladder and at the moment has his heart set on Kent or Surrey for when it comes to looking for a home for sale.
“Financially, I’m about to be ready, but at the same time, I want to have good net savings behind me – I’m one of those people who want to be really secure,” he tells me. “ So it’s a plan for the mid-term at this stage.”
“I want to live just outside of London, either, for instance, Kent or nearer to Surrey. Somewhere in the suburbs because I like the countryside feel and also it’s not too far of a commute to London and to get to Stansted.”
Rumsey is currently on tour in support of Britain’s Got Talent winners, the dance troupe Diversity and when I spoke to him was literally about to quit his South Norwood bolthole for Glasgow, the tour’s next stop.
But, just like most of us, he’s spent the past few months, in front of the telly every Saturday and Sunday night, keeping up with this year’s X Factor goings on.
“I thought the deserved winner won – I definitely thought Matt Cardle was the strongest singer in the final twelve,” Rumsey tells me.
He also liked One Direction, the boy band that, like Futureproof, was mentored by Cowell and put together on the show.
“I really thought they were going to win,” he laughs. “I thought all the young girls would vote for them and also, no boy band’s ever won the show before , so I thought they’d have a really good chance.”
How about Cowell? Does he still catch up with the X Factor’s famously straight- talking multi millionaire mogul creator ?
“I’m not in contact with him, but he is a very nice bloke,” Rumsey tells me. “I just think, he’s one of those guys who knows exactly what he wants.
“He’s a charmer as well and just has that quiet power I think because his vision is so strong. I think he’s a great business mind as well.”
Olly Murs is buying a home in Scotland
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.
Look out Lady Gaga, the latest celebrity to declare a possible move to Scotland is X Factor runner up Olly Murs.
The Essex boy, whose new self-titled album is out Monday, was in Scotland recently to perform and attend the Radio Forth Awards bash in Edinburgh where he told everyone who would listen that he always gets a warm welcome any time he visits the tartan nation.
“I love Scotland. I think I’ve come up here more than I’ve been at home,” Murs gushed to the Daily Record.
“That’s not even a joke and I’m definitely going to be moving here in the New Year or definitely getting a place up here anyway.
“I’ve been to Edinburgh. I’ve been to Aberdeen. I’ve been to Paisley, Glasgow, Inverness and Cawdor Castle too. I need a bit of guidance as to the best place to stay in.”
The 26-year-old singer was particularly complimentary about Scotland’s legendary drinking culture. “For example today, 4pm and they’re all downstairs drinking having a great time.
“And certain people don’t do that, [they say] ‘we only drink in the evening’ but I feel that with the special Scottish people they really love having a good time and I think that I’m that type of character and that’s why I love them and why I think, I hope, they love me for being the same type of person.”
Meanwhile, Lady Gaga is said to be packing her meat wardrobe to move to Scotland.
She is reported to have said she will buy Yester House near Edinburgh and is looking to invest something like £8million. Yikes!
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.
