Newsletter January 2011

Housing Minister Grant Shapps has famously said that he wants to see “a more stable housing market, without the booms and busts seen in the past”. Whilst accepting that the highly specialist market we serve is hardly typical, we have to disagree that ‘boom and bust’ is in any sense an accurate description of a market which, over the decades, has shown a fairly normal pattern of positive long-term growth (see graph). Furthermore, despite Mr Shapps’ stated aim to make properties more affordable for first time buyers and his attempts this month to persuade lenders to increase the flow…

Demand from non-UK based prospective tenants, especially from the US, has remained the main driver this month, but we have enjoyed a marked increase in home-grown demand.

This has helped to push the number of new applicants registering with Beaney Pearce in the first weeks of the New Year up by 30% on last year (and 36% on 2009). This lends support to our view that, having risen by an average of a little over 10% in 2010, rents within and around Kensington and Chelsea will continue to climb.

Two bedroom properties due for a sharper rental increase

The cycle of rental demand tends to go from the…

Our recent involvement in the disposal of a substantial new build mixed use development site in a prime London location has highlighted the difficulties large developers face in securing new sites. Some - especially issues of funding and share prices - they can do little about. Others result from management processes which, from our perspective at least, appear counter-productive.

For the scheme in question, three major developers emerged from a competitive process as being fully funded and within the sale price target zone. All had submitted unconditional bids. A preferred bidder was chosen.…

A month after it was lifted, the demise of the Western Extension of the Congestion Charge zone still has some of us feeling like we've been cured of a long headache: we're just glad it has gone.

Traffic-wise, it doesn't seem to have made much difference. TfL has yet to publish figures, but we think it's mildly heavier, though the amount of jams due to road works make it hard to tell. In our own highly scientific poll (randomly asking a dozen or so staff plus a few other locals), as many were driving less than before, as were driving more. Amongst the 'less' camp, pure bloody-mindedness during…

A select few of us at Beaney Pearce are big fans of the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square, because it does proper, brand new plays, is brilliantly affordable (all tickets £20 - £28 and just £10 on Mondays) and so close by that we can dash to Culford Gardens and back during the interval on the odd occasion it has been necessary.

Their next production, The Heretic, by Richard Bean (who is, according to the Daily Telegraph “point blank, one of the most exciting British playwrights to have emerged over the past decade”), is about the social impact of climate change science. This got us…