Bye,Bye Saint Tropez. Bonjour Somerset.

Back in March I wrote about my hunt for a bargain in Saint Tropez.

We had found a perfect little doer-upper project : a small vineyard close to the beaches that could be redeveloped into a cute little holiday home complete with a few vines.

We agreed a price with the owner. We drew up plans for a modest expansion and redevelopment of the falling-down house. The notaires started off on their snail-like paper-trail.

Then the French shot themselves in the foot; they banned all development of agricultural property. No consultation. No exceptions. No discussion. Banned.

Now, lets get something clear. The redevelopment of this tiny property was not going to deprive some poor, EU subsidised vigneron of a living. It is so small its wine output couldn't support an alcoholic mouse let alone a local family.

The current owner is 93, doesn't live there, and just wants to raise some cash to bequeath to his daughter.

After some discussion, and a very substantial price cut, we still thought it might be worth a punt. A smaller punt on a very small house. But maybe still cute enough to be a good project.

Then the French took a machine gun to their foot: they said we probably couldn't build a pool or even enclose the property. It had to stay exactly as it was. An awful house on an uneconomic, unloved vineyard.

Like so often in France, the local Mairie and its planning department has a blinkered determination to maintain the status quo. However pointless and regressive that status quo might be.

The haughty arrogance and petty insularity of local bureaucrats would be hugely irritating if it wasn't actually terribly sad. The result of these seemingly irreversible national traits include high unemployment, zero growth and a general sense of malaise across the whole country.

Foiled by French Nimbyism. Not in my back (vine) yard. 

I genuinely love Saint Tropez and its surrounds. After 20 years holidaying and property owning there, it's like home to me. But without a lottery win of Euromillions proportions or the patience of a saint, it no longer seems a feasible place to lay my head.

So it was with renewed interest that I looked at the regular Rightmove alerts for properties coming to market in north east Somerset. This is an area we had identified as one we'd like to try for our first UK country home. The countryside around Frome is fast becoming fashionable, prices are rising and there are new shops, restaurants and hotels popping up all over the place.

Most of the alerts that arrive are for large old farmhouses that I sadly can't afford, or box-like new-builds that remind me of prison camps.

Then two days before we're due to visit some friends in a nearby part of Wiltshire, up pops the first interesting property I've seen in six months.

Amazingly, we have to beg the agents to let us see the house. They are too busy to show it the first Saturday it comes on the market!

Still, I'm glad we persisted against the negative attitude of a hopeless agent and persuaded the owners to show their house without an agent present (God forbid)..

The house turns out to be just what we've been looking for - next door to beautiful Mells, close to Frome and Bruton, and only ten minutes from the famous hipster hangout at Babington. It's big enough. Old enough. A bit eccentric in its layout. And, most importantly, has potential as a doer-upper.

With a bit of bridging while we complete another project, it is even affordable.

What's not to like (well, there's a few things, but general euphoria over-rules such practical stuff) ?

Not exactly the South of France. More West of Frome.

In truth, of course, I'd rather be in the South of France by a beach than in a very quiet English village by a lake. But the reality is that without actually moving to the continent we'd get very little time in a French house. With Somerset, on the other hand, we can be there most weekends.

Also, we've never tried our hand at an English country doer-upper. So it's out with Cote Sud magazine and in with the Cabbages & Roses catalogue.

Lots of checks. But no cheques.

If you're rich you can't borrow. If you're poor you can't borrow.

Only if you're a dull worker bee with a penchant for frugal living and a steady, going-nowhere job can you be pretty sure of securing a mortgage.

That's the apparent outcome of the recent tightening of lending checks.

It's absurd, it's counter-productive and it's not going to end well.

Over the last few days, I've listened to three of the wealthiest people I know complain that mortgage lending just doesn't exist for them any more.

Even though they might own a string of homes, a portfolio of equities and various business interests, their personal circumstances don't exactly fit the profile required to qualify for a loan.

The 21 year old Oxford Brookes sociology graduate with a clipboard and biro who they are forced to discuss their mortgage requirements with has a list of banal questions designed for a 30 year old supermarket deputy manager looking for a first home loan.

There are no experienced bank managers (high street banks can't afford real bankers any more), and there is no discretion, no variation, no common sense.

You might as well fill in the application online. There's nothing human about the process any more.

Even the so-called posh banks are little better.

By some peculiar accident of a previous life, I bank where the Queen banks. For 25 years I have borrowed from them against homes I have bought. I have always repaid these loans, always paid every monthly interest payment. Never once have I given them cause for even a flicker of concern.

For most of those years, they've never given me cause for concern either. If I was moving home or renovating a home, a quick chat with my manager was all it took to secure the funds required. Once, they even added an extra £100k to the mortgage offer just in case I needed it.

Their managers were always good sounding boards, providing reassurance or caution when appropriate.

I was in love with my bank, in fact. And took every opportunity to tell anyone who'd listen what a fantastic operation they were.

When I recently asked for a bridging loan however, the answer was an immediate no.

They didn't have a reason. There was no discussion of the case. Just a NO.

Eventually they did come up with an emailed reason: I was too old. They don't lend to people over 65, apparently. Trouble is, I'm not 65. Not for a few years, anyway.

Now, I accept that I don't fit the usual mould of borrower. My regular income is insignificant. I have neither an employer or a business with a track record.

What I do have though is a long history of financial stability, a couple of decent unencumbered prime property assets and a plan that would repay any bridging loan within 12 months.

I was asking for an LTV(loan to value) of only about 10-12%. So even in a catastrophic crash, the loan would still be well covered.

The risk involved was almost non-existent. But there is no longer any human process by which risk is assessed.

In its place there is now a facile fits-all check-list that permits no flexibility, no history, no individuality.

I'm sure the new guidelines will help prevent the granting of unrealistic mortgages, stop abuses of the system and slow the runaway train that is house prices. But at the same time won't it also curtail ambition, deter individuality and encourage conformity.

I am reminded of someone I once worked with who, in the 1980s, bought a house on a Chelsea square. At the time, even though he ran a hugely successful ad agency, the mortgage he had to take out frightened him. He wondered if he'd ever be able to repay it.

That house is now worth around £6m. His mortgage, I think, was for about £100,000.

The Search for a Margin: Mission Impossible?

Bargain Terrace, Opportunity Avenue and Doer-Upper Gardens. As far as I can see, these are the lost streets of London.

We have money sitting unprofitably in bank accounts. There are people who would happily help finance the right project.

We have trusted project managers, builders and all the other people required to turn a renovation round efficiently.

What we don't have are the opportunities.

Prime Central London and its bordering boroughs seem bereft of value.

Doer-uppers are going to best and final bids and achieving done-up prices. There's simply no margin for the likes of me.

It's a worry for me, of course. But it's also a potential disaster for the whole market.

If someone pays the done-up price for a doer-upper, they are basically assuming that property values will continue to climb.

They are gambling that the money they invest on top of an already excessive purchase price will soon be recouped by ever spiralling values.

I wouldn't be so sure.

The market up to £2m seems hugely over-heated. UK incomes simply aren't growing quickly enough to support today's prices let alone further big rises. And although the supply of cash-rich foreigners may still be strong, many prefer new-builds to tarted up old-stock.

Lets take Fulham as a near-Prime example of where prices are out of sync with reality*.

This area's role historically has been as feeder to Prime Central or to family-oriented areas such as Wandsworth's Nappy Valley. Young, aspirant, newly qualified professionals would buy their first homes in Fulham, or house share with friends from Uni. Now it's rapidly becoming as expensive as the better parts of Notting Hill. Horrible little houses needing renovation are going for the best part of £2m in roads most of us wouldn't have been seen dead in a few years ago. And a house in a perfectly unexceptional road near Stamford Bridge is on the market at an astonishing £3.5m.

I just don't see where the money will come from to justify further hefty rises. How many young people can afford £2m for a house?

Then there's Battersea, an area that might define the term 'mixed'. Close by the faux-smart Prince of Wales Drive, for example, there are housing estates that taxi drivers refuse to enter and police only venture into mob-handed. Yet the so-called middle-classes are pouring cash into the area like it's the new Belgravia, and overseas buyers are snapping up off-plan flats in that desert of any area around the Power Station. Yuk!

Others talk of Vauxhall as a sort of nascent Notting Hill. Have they ever been to Vauxhall, I wonder? Somehow I doubt it.

Even in areas such as Streatham and Brixton friends tell me the market is just as frenzied, with very ordinary flats attracting multiple bids over the asking price. (And those are asking prices that would have seemed absurd only a year or so ago.)

In Clapham extremely dull areas such as Abbeville Road have become hotspots just because (it seems to me) they've opened an over-priced, trendy new butcher on the street. I'd rather shoot myself than live in the anonymous streets around this area's 200 yard long oasis of uppish-market shops and restaurants.

More importantly, I just cannot see who will have the income to justify mortgages of over £1m to buy into the area. Especially once interest rates start climbing again.

Putney perhaps offers a few opportunities but the downsides include Nick Clegg as a resident and the appalling "poundlandesque' high street.

The house I sold on East Putney's Upper Richmond Road a few years ago has just gone back on the market at almost double our sale price, and six or seven times the price I originally paid. (And, by the way, it looks worse now than when I moved out!)

Wandsworth is basically already done-up and yet prices still keep going up. There's hardly a side-return, damp basement or mansard extension left to develop in the whole area. And if I see another set of Elephant's Breath painted plantation shutters I'll throw a brick through the window.

Back north of the river, West Kensington (or Baron's Court to the rest of us) seems to have discarded its itinerant residents as more and more people realise how close it is to Kensington proper. I paid under £20k for my first flat at Queen's Club Gardens. I'd need £500k+ for the same tiny top floor bolt hole now....and it still has no lift.

Now, I'm not the sort of publicity-seeking property commentator who drops the word 'bubble' at the first sign of a few homes being sold but even I think things are getting out of hand.

I've lived in London for 40 years, and owned a variety of properties across numerous parts of SW London. But I now feel priced out of the market both as a small-time developer and, more importantly, as a resident.

I reckon I'd need to be earning (at the age of 35) at least £300k a year to live the way I did in the 1980s, and afford the property we bought back then. (Especially if interest rates today were as high as they were then.)

About the only place I can afford to buy now is Pauper Place. Wherever that is.




* Fulham asking prices are apparently up 18% year on year. And you still think I'm being OTT?

£10,000 a square foot? Sounds reasonable to me.

A flat at One Hyde Park has apparently sold for around £140m, a price equal to about £10,000 per square foot.

It seems insane. But is it?

After all, it's almost certainly a very, very nice apartment. (The Candy brothers have an unerring eye for spaces that suit the aspirations of the super-rich, and there aren't many buildings by the legendary Lord Rogers that you can actually buy a flat in.)

It's slap bang in the middle of what is arguably the world's most desirable place to own a property. (Disregard those cynics who say the building overlooks a noisy road junction.)

And, of course, it's really not so crazy when you consider how much an Oligarch or Sheik will happily shell out for a yacht that starts losing value the moment it hits the water.

No, in a mad, mad world it's not such a daft price.

Of course for the likes of you and I (assuming my readership demographics haven't taken a dramatic upward swing) it's still absolutely bonkers. But so is spending £1m or so on a Bugatti Veyron, or £100m on a Francis Bacon triptych.

It's silly money. Like a kind of super-sized game of Monopoly

A few minutes along the road from the billionaire housing estate known as One Hyde Park, we are in the midst of renovating (more accurately, rebuilding) a sweet little cottage in a charming road off Kensington High Street.

By any normal standards Abingdon Road is also expensive. Current asking prices on the street are in excess of £2000 per square foot. Which is at the very top-end of Prime Central prices.

As the eagle eyed mathematicians among you will have noticed, however, this is dirt cheap compared to a 12"x12" patch of Candy coated construction.

So why the vast differential? Why is one worth FIVE TIMES as much as the other?

Buggered if I know.

Houses on Abingdon do of course lack several features that come as standard at One Hyde Park.

There are no smartly dressed, headset-equipped ex-SAS squaddies holding open the door for you. The Mandarin Oriental does not offer room service. There is no underground car park in which to store your fleet of blacked out limos. Harvey Nichols make-up department is not just across the road. And it's a bit of a slog to the nearest McLaren car dealership.

These disadvantages aside, though, Abingdon Road's not such a bad place to live.

Even though many of the houses are now worth a great deal of money (by the standards of us mere mortals), it still feels like London. It was built on a human scale. It has a sense of community. It's pretty. It's got two very good local restaurants (Kitchen W8 and The Abingdon). Waitrose is round the corner. Holland Park is across the road.

And at £2000 a square foot it's clearly a bit of a steal.

Perhaps with a bit of branding work, some canny international marketing and a few top-end connections into the Middle East and Eastern European elites we could raise this street's desirability levels.

It has to be worth the effort. After all, at £10,000 a square foot our little house would be valued at around £15m.

I'll take that.

The Doer-Upper Gossip Column......April

Further bite size chunks from the life of a small-time renovator in prime central. Not so much gossip as outpourings of ill-informed nonsense.


48 Hours in Barcelona

Many, many years ago I lived in Barcelona for a while.

I worked as an untrained and rather hopeless private English tutor (the untrained and hopeless bit seems to have been a common element in all my jobs) and met some interesting people.

There was the very wealthy couple I had conversation classes with each week who once took me to the city's most fashionable restaurant. The occasion was only spoilt by my extremely bad Spanish which resulted in me ordering, rather loudly, a roast prostitute!

One of my other students was an old school fascist and the Franco appointed boss of the City's port. His vast wood panelled office contained little sign of work but several large and elaborately framed photos of himself and the dictator. I always felt lucky to leave his office without being arrested for impersonating a teacher.

But, forgive me, this is a property blog. Not a history lesson. Where are the insights into the local market?

Well, I don't have many. Just one. I popped back recently for 48 hours to see an old friend, and it looks to me as though Barcelona is a busted flush.

Even this, the most prosperous of Spain's cities, is now a sad and disheartened casualty of the country's very painful recession.

The beggars look as though they used to be bankers and lawyers. The airport feels eerily quiet. The car parks are half empty. Trains carry almost as many buskers and hawkers as they do passengers. The people still working look far less well dressed than they did back in Franco's day. And everyone complains of rampant corruption in the government.

The nail in its coffin, for me, was the number of dreadful stag parties roaming the Ramblas and taking advantage of the cheap booze.

Of course, this probably means it's the perfect time to pick up a bargain at the estate agents. But only, I think, if you're prepared to stay in for the long haul. And I'm not.

Wood you credit it?

My wife gets immensely frustrated when we visit the Saatchi Gallery because my eyes are usually fixed on the floors rather than the walls.

I think Charles Saatchi's use of Dinesen Douglas Fir wide board flooring throughout his gallery is truly inspired. And I genuinely go just to drool over these majestic planks. (The art I am not so sure about.)

I have always wanted to install these amazing boards in one of our properties. But until now I've had neither the right property nor, I thought, a big enough budget.

This floor would be perfect in our W8 'wreck'. And much to my surprise it turns out my fellow ex-ad man is not the fool with his money that many seem to think.

At around £90m2, it may not exactly be a snip. But compared to the other floor I've always lusted after (which has the daft name of Lunar Larch), it's a veritable bargain. The Larch, you see, is an astonishing £163m2.

I once turned down the chance to work for Mr Saatchi, and I've always slightly regretted that decision.

I don't think I'll regret copying his choice of floor.


Merde! They said 'yes'.

In my previous blog piece, Le Bargain Hunter, I talked about a little place near St Tropez. Well, I eventually talked myself into making an offer (along with my old business partner, Murray).

And, after some negotiating about the conditions, it's been accepted.

In France this means the property is pretty much ours. Having signed a proposition d'achat, the sellers cannot consider another offer and we have until the end of April to sign proper contracts.

Given that our offer is a good 20% less than the property's original asking price, that's a result.

We've also managed to make it a condition of completion that we first get planning approval to redevelop and expand the property.

All sounds too good to be true....and I'm sure it is. This is France and ' le stuff ' happens. Watch this space.


Under Offer. And over the top?

On April 9th the BBC started broadcasting a fly-on-the-wall series about estate agents called Under Offer.

If you'd seen the trailers, you might have anticipated a bit of a roasting for the agents involved.

The excerpts shown didn't exactly seem to paint the profession in the most flattering light.

The programme itself turned out to be somewhat kinder than expected and a couple of the agents came out of it pretty well - especially the bright spark from Exeter called Lewis. (The guy from Birmingham was the only particularly unpleasant character.)

What's surprising is that Ed Mead, the much admired head honcho at Douglas & Gordon, agreed to be involved. I know this to my cost as he asked me to take part in a bit of filming.

The trailer for next week's episode showed our doer-upper in Egerton Gardens....where I had been filmed discussing how one room could be worth £1m.

Ed is one of the main, featured agents in the series and I do hope he comes out of this looking the genuine, intelligent, honest broker that he is.

For myself, of course, I just hope I don't appear at all.


Box Sash Rip-Off

We had a quote the other day to replace a few windows at the 'Wreck'. It's a small house. Not many windows. Three box sash, two or three very small French windows and a couple of tiny ordinary ones. £16,000 the quote said. Plus VAT.

Now, I don't know whether these idiots live in some kind of La La Land populated only with Oligarchs, Bankers and Premier League footballers...but this price came close to giving me coronary event of terminal proportions.

Frankly I'd rather spend several weeks renovating the existing windows myself than hand this bunch one single penny.

They may make brilliant windows, they may offer an unrivalled service, they may even offer me a thousand year guarantee...but even I can see when someone is taking the p***.


We want your business. But only if you'll wait 15 weeks.

Talking of windows, we had hoped to install a huge,very stylish, steel framed assembly to the back of the house as a refreshing change from the predictable 'sliding-folding whatsits'.

The trouble is there are really only two companies who make these (Clements and Crittall), so they're about as keen as whatever the opposite of mustard is. They don't need the business.

We were quoted up to 15 weeks delivery time.

That's a joke. These things are manufactured out of steel on a machine, not carved out of solid stone by artists. So why the hell don't they hire some more people, put on a night shift or invest in more kit and cut delivery times to something reasonable.

That's what they'd do in China or India or even the USA. But no, here in the UK, they can't be bothered.

Well, guys, I can't be bothered to wait. Someone else will be getting our business.

The Doer-Upper becomes Le Bargain Hunter.

Le Sporting is an unassuming little cafe on St Tropez's famous Place des Lices.

Even at this time of the year it's packed from breakfast through to dinner, mainly with locals.

Pushing my way through the crowded smokers terrace at 7.30 in the morning I felt lucky to get a table, a coffee and a chance to read the paper in the warm.

What I didn't feel so happy about was the bill. €4.90 for a cafe au lait.

Even the grossly over priced Gail's (or any of London's top end cafe chains) wouldn't dare charge that.

At these prices, I wonder how the French can afford to live. Except of course that these are not your typical French. These are the tradesmen, shopkeepers, notaires, vignerons and local landowners who have got rich on the back of a once booming local property market.

Across the Place is a large branch of Credit Agricole where some of those sipping their small espressos around me probably have credit balances running into millions.

Others around me are looking somewhat less content. The estate agents in particular.

For them, the last couple of years have been unusually lean.

Monsieur Hollande and the Eurozone financial mess have combined to make a second home in Saint Tropez a luxury few can justify.

Buying the house is one thing, owning it is another.

There are myriad local and national taxes, astonishingly high building renovation costs, daft hourly rates for gardeners, cleaners and maintenance workers and frighteningly authoritarian government powers.

(If you think I joke about French government powers, procure a copy of British Airways' High Life. In this month's issue John Simpson recounts how five police kitted out in riot gear took a battering ram to the front door to his Paris flat when he owed the local mairie €220.)

Homes from €1m up to €10m where people need finance have been hardest hit. Getting a French mortgage was always incredibly difficult, now it's almost impossible. The amount of paperwork you need to supply beggars belief, and the hoops you need to jump through would test an Olympic athlete.

As a result, I've never seen local agents with so many houses on their books (in stark contrast to those around me in Chelsea).

That MUST mean there are bargains to be had. And that's why I'm here, in an almost closed up town in the cold and wet.

I spotted what looked a good opportunity online, asked my trusty ex-business partner Murray to take a quick peek and then, on his say so, headed down to check it out myself.

It's a truly horrible house. Very small at around 84 m2. Derelict really. Neither old enough to have any character, nor recent enough to have been well built.

The problems don't end there. It's in an 'agricultural zone' so you can only add 30% to its size. There's a busy road only 300 yards away. And most of the one acre garden is in fact a working vineyard (I don't drink).

So why would anyone fly the best part of 1000 miles, then drive for 90 minutes and check into a shockingly grotty hotel in a dark, empty town for the sake of seeing this clearly useless property.

Because it's a bargain. And you don't get bargains in St Tropez. Or, you didn't.

For all its downsides, the property is a mere 3 minutes from one of the most fashionable beaches in the world - Pampelonne. Le Club 55 is just down the road. It is a hop, skip and jump to the beautiful, unspoilt hill town of Ramatuelle. And it is in an area that, come summer, will be at the hub of a multi-millionaires' playground.

The busy road at the bottom of its drive is the Route des Plages, a beautiful, snaking, undulating, umbrella pine lined road off which little tracks lead down through thickets of bamboo to the 5km long beach.

Johnny Hallyday, the naughty boy French version of Cliff Richard, lives a few hundred yards across the fields behind high gates to keep out le riff raff. Across the road, there's the grand holiday home of a once famous fashion photographer and his ex-model wife. And hidden away on single file back roads only traversed by locals, the lavish homes of bankers, northern european royals and assorted cashed-out business folk are pampered and primped like the spoilt offspring of Oligarchs.

To buy even the most unattractive property on an acre of land in this area for under €1m would have been unthinkable only a couple of years ago. Indeed, this property first went on the market well over a year ago and at well over that price.

Now the owner has reduced his expectations by around 15%, and is unlikely to get even that.

Buying it is an exciting if daunting prospect, and I leave Saint Tropez with a sketch book full of ideas and a detailed renovation costing from Murray.

For less than £1m we could end up with a small but beautiful 3 or 4 bedroom house with a pool set amidst the vines in one of the most desirable locations on the Med.

BUT, and it's a very big 'but', as my plane bumps and judders its way back up towards Heathrow, I can't help wondering whether I can actually face the personal turbulence of owning another property in France.

The never-ending bureaucracy, the taxes, the unfriendly neighbours, the slow grind of the planning process, the arrogance of their building trades,the uncertainty of their property market and the €4.90 cafe au laits.

Le Petite Vigne, as Murray and I have named the property, might appear, on paper, to be a bargain. But is it really a bargain if it comes with a lot of problems?

Back in London the talk is of bubbles not bargains.

In a frenzied market where desperate young people are over-paying for everything, my chances of buying an investment property to do up are remote. (Even with one of the best buying agents on my side.)

And our six month personal search for a retreat in Somerset has only turned up lots of over-priced characterless shoe boxes.

So, what do I do? Write a piece for the blog, of course.

The Doer-Upper Gossip Column....February.

I don't always have a soap-box to jump on or a disaster to report on. So, new for 2014, here's my first irregular Gossip Column:

Bloody Neighbours

We are about to start work renovating 'Wrecksville W8' and in preparation we had the front garden cleared by a terrific bloke called Andy McCormack who I found on Rated People.

As he was busy stripping out various overgrown plants in the pouring rain, the neighbouring front door opened and the elderly resident (she's actually Lady somebody or other) poked her head out. Most of us might have expected her to offer this hardworking, self-employed and rather wet gardener a cup of tea.

Not this little old Daily Mail reader. She simply shouted "Bloody Foreigners" and then slammed shut the door again.

Fortunately, being more English than most of us, Andy took no offence. (He did suggest, however, that the next time I visited the house I should take my passport with me.)

I'm now rather worried how she'll react when there's a whole troupe of Polish builders on site in a couple of weeks time.

Blame the agents

I have an American friend who lives in Streatham. Strangely, he seems to like it.

Anyway, he and his new wife are keen to add to what I call their local buy-to-let property portfolio ( a slightly pretentious description of their 3 flats).

Such is the demand in this unassuming part of London, however, that he's having trouble buying anything. One bedroom flats are going to sealed bids the day they come to market. And then selling for unheard of prices.

Last week in his frustration he wrote to say "estate agents are now charging crazy prices."

The phrasing of this is interesting in that it assumes that agents just make up the prices. And I wonder how many others blame the agents for driving the rise in prices.

Even a drop-out from economics studies like myself understands that it's the market not the sellers that determines prices. But such is our national distaste for the role of the agent that we're happy to blame them for anything and everything. Including a housing market 'bubble'.

If it wasn't for the fact that their commissions keep getting fatter, I could almost feel sorry for them.

Somerset, the level-headed approach

For about six months now we've been looking for a small place to buy in Somerset.

The fact that this county has recently become a very large inland lake is a bit of a worry. And, to be honest, has rather put me off the idea.

So I emailed a friend who already has a house there and asked if his property was affected.

His reply was as follows: "we resisted buying in any area with the words 'levels' , 'lower' , 'under' , 'bottom' , 'brook', 'mill'  or 'lake' in the address."

Sensible man. Brilliant answer.


France Calling

As readers of this blog and my Tweets will know, I have a love/hate relationship with France.

We have owned 5 properties there and done well out of them both financially and in terms of lifestyle.

The country is fine, the problem is the French themselves. Many are lazy or unpleasant or just deeply suspicious of anything that smacks of Anglo-Saxon enterprise. Their taxes are onerous and spiteful. Their paperwork ridiculous and antiquated. Their rules and regulations unfathomable.

These days even their food is often below the standards of a decent English country pub.

Because of this, I swore we'd never return.

But, in truth, I love Saint Tropez and its surrounding area. Especially when it's not August and not packed with the chavs and chav-nots of Greater Europe.

Out of peak season it's a quaint town, with quiet, unspoilt beaches. Rural but sophisticated. Developed but not over-built (unlike the Cannes end of the coast).

So, when I saw a tiny little place right at the heart of its beaches priced at what looked like 'le snip' my resistance melted.

Ok, so it's only 1000 sq ft and close to a busy road. Ok, so it comes with an acre of vineyard (and I don't drink). OK, so I can't afford it and there's lots of work to do.

But if I let my head rule my heart, I'd never buy anything.

Whether we'll actually buy it or not, I don't know. But I think it's proved that I don't really want to live in the wetlands of SW England.

Property Doctor

On Saturday I'm due to take a look at a west London property owned by a GP practice. The doctors are thinking of retiring early....and they can afford to because years ago they bought the freehold of the building in which they have a surgery.

The floors above the surgery they have always rented out as flats, but they're now thinking of redeveloping the whole building and selling off the flats one by one.

After owning it for about 20 years, it could prove to have been the ideal (if accidental) pension plan.

They've already calculated that they could earn more from redeveloping the property than they have in their entire GP careers.

I'm not sure whether this implies we undervalue GPs. Or over value property.


Location, Location, Square Footage

I don't remember ever knowing the square footage of the first few houses we bought.

The one in Putney was a pretty big semi, the one in Fulham was sort of standard size terraced, and my flat in Queen's Club Gardens was the size a one bedroom flat should be.

We bought them because we fell in love with them, the price was sort of right and they were where we wanted to live. It would never have crossed my mind to check the price per square foot.

Now, it seems to me, that's all changed.

Agents have taken property and turned it into a mathematical equation rather than an emotional judgement.

We're all obsessed with pushing out every wall, roof and basement to create more of the most valuable thing in London - square footage.

And property viewers are as likely to turn up with a calculator as they are a colour chart.

I understand why its gone this way, and I'm as guilty as anyone when it comes to checking the value of a property.

But it's still a shame, somehow.

It is perhaps the most telling example of how property has become an investment first, and a home second.