Newsletter April 2011

We are delighted to announce the extension of our services into Notting Hill and Holland Park with the opening of our new office at 8 Ladbroke Grove, just thirty yards or so off Holland Park Avenue.

This office – which offers both sales and lettings services – is a natural extension of the work of our South Kensington operation and completes our coverage of the Royal Borough. Reflecting growing demand from our applicant base, it is also a major step in our strategy to increase our share of the top end of the market in houses and larger apartments.

The office is managed by Rowland…

Keeping your ear to the ground and listening to the word on the street is all very well, but sometimes it pays to just stand back and look at the numbers – especially when they’re much better than the ‘vibe’ might suggest.

Q1 2011 has felt like a tough one. Even faced with a widely-reported and serious shortage of stock, prospective buyers have been looking at everything they can, often two or three times, and then taking their time. To get it over the line, each deal seems to involve a greater intensity of negotiation and nurturing than the last. Add to this a background of fears…

We are seeing significantly more activity in the market now, with an increase in availability and a greater willingness on the part of existing tenants to move. This is a clear change.

The previous eight months have been characterised by a shortage of stock, rising rents and tenants anxious simply to stay put. Higher rents are, of course, one of the factors that have eventually brought about the greater fluidity, encouraging more landlords into the market and most tenants to at least check their alternatives before running with the standard RPI increase – now at its highest since 1991. Other…

The bulk of the activity in investments and developments at the moment is with the smaller, private players, buying at up to around £3 million with up to as much again to spend. For them, opportunities such as the £1.9 million Notting Hill freehold pictured here are ideal, involving figures barely large enough to dent a banker’s bonus.

Larger players, for whom the numbers only start to work with a total investment of around ten or fifteen million, are no less eager to get involved, but most still lack the access to cash that is enjoyed by, to name perhaps the most obvious example, Berkeley…

John Wilcox reflects on thirty years working in and around this perennially classy, local parade  

In recent years, it is the likes of nearby Westbourne Grove and Ledbury Road that have grabbed the media’s attention for becoming, we are told ‘mini-Bond Streets’: local parades of phenomenal quality and real style, that are also genuinely handy. This may be true, but I would argue that it is Holland Park Avenue which long ago set the blueprint for such local shopping and which, like its comparatively newly-trendy neighbours, faces a continual battle to get the balance right. 

The…