The rollercoaster ride begins

I hate rollercoaster rides. Always have. Always will.

If you're in property, however, I guess you have to expect the violent ups and downs of the sales process.

The euphoric highs when a great offer comes in. The sick making punch in the gut when it falls through.

After only one viewing of our first property, I experienced both these emotions.

That one viewing produced an offer. A solid offer, apparently. From an investor, not an unreliable individual buyer. And at the full asking price.

On the advice of our agents we reluctantly agreed to keep it off the market (we hadn't even actually put it ON the open market at this stage) for 10 days, while they exchanged.

It all looked good. Draft contracts and information went out. After a week, I even began to feel a slight sense of confidence and was making that fatal mistake of calculating the profit.

Then the sickening call from the agent:

"The client has pulled out, I'm afraid."

"Why?"

"They are worried that it doesn't have a bath, just a shower."

"So? Isn't that absolutely normal in a small flat?"

"They think it might affect its future resale value."

"It only had a shower when they saw it. What's changed?"

"I know."

"Mmmmmm"

There's not a lot else you can say in this situation.

It's probably not even the real reason. But they had to come up with something when they changed their minds.

I wouldn't have minded so much (really, I wouldn't) if it had been a normal private sale. But here was an investment company, guided by a buying agent, supposedly acquiring three small prime flats for long term returns and apparently absolutely committed to our flat.

There's something wrong with a system that allows this to happen, in quite this way.

Perhaps we need to introduce a new financial layer to property acquisitions, such as a significant non-returnable deposit in the event that a buyer simply changes their mind mid-way through the process.

If there was a problem in the survey or a legal glitch or the information provided wasn't up to scratch, then of course the deposit would be returned.

But if the offer is made just to get the property off the market while a buyer thinks about it, that isn't good enough.

The "buyer" for our flat stopped the property being properly launched on the market and may have permanently damaged its chances of achieving a full price. This shouldn't be allowed to happen, without some form of financial consequence for the potential buyer.

At our last home, in Fulham, we had two buyers pull out for reasons that had nothing to do with the house. And by the time the third (and final) one came in our price expectations had dropped quite considerably because we'd lost confidence and the agents were desperate to get the house off their books.

I reckon the first two, time-wasting offers on that house cost us around £50,000. The cost to the agent of this drop was, however, only about £750.

And there's the rub.

The agent loses only 1.5% -2% of the drop! We lose 98%.

Interestingly, one of the agents we didn't appoint on our first 'doer-upper' came up with a clever commission offer.

He would take a lowish percentage up to £1m and 10% of anything over this. This really incentivised him to get the highest possible final price. And only at the top end of the proposed asking price did he get near to a 'full' commission.

It's a good idea. And one I hope more agents will take up.

But I still think there should be some kind of penalty for buyers who simply put in offers to get a property off the market while they consider it more seriously.

I know I've been tempted to do this in the past. And if I have, you can bet everyone else has.

So which agent did we appoint? Well, anyone with a google search box can quickly see that we chose W A Ellis.

This so-called 'boutique' Knightsbridge agent has a great record in the market and has sold several similar properties to our own over recent months, achieving very good prices.

I also liked the fact that it's a single office agent, that it's focussed on a narrow area of the local market and that it has a very high-end profile (even within a high end market).

In an ideal world, I'd have appointed the other agent too.

But it's not an ideal world, as the collapse of our first offer only goes to prove.

Yes, it only has a shower. But you are bathed in natural light all day long.

The Doer-Upper Done Up: An Exclusive Preview.

It's finished.

It's 500 square feet of light filled 'pied a terre'.

It's in a super prime SW3 location.

It's been valued by two great agents.

It's been pimped and preened (well, sort of).

And next week our first project will be launched on an expectant market (ha ha).

So, will it sell? And if so, how quickly and how close to the asking price?

Readers of this blog can have a sneak preview and make up their own minds.

Next week: Which agent did we choose and why?

Photos by: TOM PAGE  (tompage87@googlemail.com)

How the property world solves the government's unemployment problem all on its own.

Having seen the way the property world operates, I'm not surprised that our unemployment figures continue to fall even as our economy stutters between dips.

Here's a list of people potentially feeding off my latest project:


         - Buying Agent
         - Estate Agent
         - Solicitor
         - Building Surveyor
         - Building Plans Surveyor
         - Structural Engineer
         - Quantity Surveyor
         - Asbestos Surveyor
         - Asbestos Removers
         - Tree Consultant
         - Party Wall Surveyor
         - Building Regs Consultant
         - Planning Officer
         - Project Manager
         - Architect
         - Builder (inc labourers, plumbers, painters, electricians, plasterers, roofers, bricklayers etc)
         - Scaffolders
         - Garden Designer
         - Garden Builder
         - Kitchen Designer
         - Kitchen Installer
         - Builders Merchant
         - Plumbers Merchant
         - Timber Merchant
         - Electrical Wholesaler
         - Tile Showroom
         - Tiler
         - Flooring Showroom
         - Floor installers
         - Interior designer
         - Photographer
   
I could go on, but it's far too depressing.

I'm all for people having a job. (In fact I'd quite like one myself.)

Since when, however, did we need this many people to do a little renovation project?

No wonder London property is so expensive.

Architects. Love 'em or loathe them, we still need them.

Wetherby Gardens is a very smart prime Kensington address.

Large lateral* apartments sell for millions, the community is ultra cosmopolitan and the street is regularly blocked with Boffi trucks delivering yet another wildly expensive new kitchen.

It was also my first address in London.

A £3.5m 'lateral' flat today.
Not exactly how my bedsit looked. 

When I lived there, however, the street's grand buildings were somewhat less grand inside. Most were subdivided into minuscule ugly rented bedsits with paper-thin walls.

I shared one of these disgusting rooms with two macro-biotic eating mates from Cambridge (the A-level college not the university, sadly). It was very cosy, as an estate agent might put it!

This was at the tail end of the Swinging 60s and into the beginning of the Economically Challenged '70s. We still wore 'loons' from Kensington Market along with with velvet jackets and long hair. Faux French bistros and US styled burger joints were newly hot. Many pints were downed in The Drayton Arms between watching movies at a legendary local flea pit called the Paris Pullman. And the only imperative in life was to obtain sufficient drugs to not sleep each weekend.

Yes, it was as horrible as it sounds.

The old Paris Pullman. Now demolished and replaced with some rather ugly flats.

Why am I dragging you down this one way memory lane? No reason really, other than the fact that it was during this period I got to know an architect for the first time.

Back then, Britain had little use for 'architecture'. Buildings, yes. Great buildings, definitely not.

The country had other priorities. Quantity was more important than quality. Ugly, inhuman tower block estates replaced terraced streets, NCP turned bomb sites into muddy car parks, appalling planning decisions destroyed town centres and many people outside London still lived in what looked like magnolia painted portakabins (prefabs, as they were known).

The social structure in terms of property was much simpler than today. The so-called upper classes merely 'maintained' the property they'd owned for generations (they didn't build subterranean swimming pools or glass extensions). The middle classes were happy taking out 25 year mortgages on suburban semis. And the working classes were still waiting for Mike Leigh's Abigail's Party to show them how to become aspirational.

In the 70s us working classes learned how to become 'middle class'.
Well, sort of.

The architect I got to know at that time was in fact still a student, but Jez proved to be just like most architects I've since met.

He was deeply committed to and passionate about his chosen career but terribly sensitive to any perceived criticism or even mildly negative comment. In temperament, he was far more an artist than a professional.

At that time, the human context of a building seemed to be of little importance. Making some kind of a statement was the ambition ( if rarely the reality in such straightened economic times). For many, the pared down concrete inhumanity of Frank Lloyd Wright was that ambition made real.

Jez's great 'influence', however, was Antonio Gaudi, the eccentric Barcelona architect whose work can be seen all over that city and includes the extraordinary Sagrada Familia which is still unfinished many decades after the great man's death.

The Sagrada Familia. Started in 1882. And still not completed.

Jez and his passion for Gaudi was my first introduction to architects, and in some ways to architecture itself (we didn't go in for high-falutin' concept buildings where I came from in the flatlands of rural Cambridgeshire).

A few years later I went to live in the Catalan capital, and grew to love Gaudi's work at least as much as my Wetherby Gardens 'friend'. In what was then a country still blighted by Franco's oppressive fascist sensibility, Gaudi's playful, colourful (Parc Guell), non-linear structures were refreshing and almost revolutionary.

Returning to the UK, we all became richer through the late 80s and 90s and so too, it seemed to me, did the level of architecture. We could afford to indulge ourselves, creativity became prized.

At the end of the 90s, I was fortunate enough to meet Richard Rogers (now Lord Rogers).  His work shares little, of course, with that of Gaudi. But he is just as much an artist. I could look at his Pompidou Centre or Lloyds Building all day. Even One Hyde Park looks powerful and defines a certain London when seen from my dog walks round the Serpentine. And glimpses into his Chelsea house are tantalisingly exciting.

The home of Lord Rogers. Hidden behind a classic Chelsea facade.

My lifelong love of architecture hasn't, though, always extended to those in the profession. Over the years I've had some very difficult 'relationships' with architects.

One young (moonlighting) architect and I ended up in court battling over money when I refused to pay for designs I didn't like and didn't use. He won, by the way.

Another bunch took me to the cleaners on my Fulham house, wasting both time and money and delivering very little that was ultimately useful.

More recently I lost a very good friend who is also an architect (we'll call him Nick, because that's his name) when I questioned his interior design skills and jokingly alluded to his inability to keep to a schedule (he had spent 10 years NOT finishing his own house). Nick hasn't spoken to me since and as a result a multi-million €uro project in Saint Tropez fell apart.

It isn't surprising that a flawed control freak like myself, who also happens to have the odd spark of creativity, sometimes finds it difficult to work with architects.

Architects can seem challenged or threatened by a client who wants a partner rather than a dictator; all too often they will fall back on their 'artistic temperament' rather than adopt a more professional attitude.

For this reason, even after a career managing 'creative' people, I'm still very nervous about managing architects.

It's an issue that worried me as we came close to appointing one for our second project - the little terraced house in W8.

We shortlisted three, which might seem a little excessive for such a modest house.

I chose one firm - a thriving, super cool Notting Hill outfit. My business partner (and stepson) nominated another  - a small trendy Mayfair firm, where an old school friend of his now works. And our project manager suggested one that looked so fashionable it was positively Arctic.

I was already intimidated just thinking about them. I imagined they'd laugh when we asked if they'd consider working with us. Especially when we mentioned, very quietly, the budget.

Things must be very tough out there, however, because all three of these fashionable London firms with international reputations and experience across numerous sectors seemed positively keen to work on such a modest house renovation.

I almost began to feel sorry for them.

Having now met two of them face to face, I really am feeling sorry for them. Frankly, they seem to be the ones who are now intimidated, cowed and defeated.

Their problem doesn't seem to be clients so much as the ever changing, unpredictable and claustrophobic planning environment.

The government may boast of relaxing planning regulation, but London's planning process has actually become even more stiflingly conservative, grindingly slow and depressingly negative.

I am all for curtailing the vanity projects of hedge funders overburdened with cash; especially when their subterranean plans cause long term local disruption and potentially undermine the integrity of surrounding properties.

However, I am not in favour of emasculating our architects to such an extent they become little more than replicants of Quinlan Terry.

For all my qualms about architects and their egos, we stifle their creativity at our peril. This is a profession (art?) in which we are world leaders, but without a strong and supportive home market this leadership will, like so many others in the past, wither and die.

Palladio. London's latest hot architect. (One of these buildings is new, would you believe.)

Of course a small house renovation might seem irrelevant in this grander context, but it's on these small projects that young and radical architects often get their first opportunity to shine.

At our little W8 terrace, we will faithfully (and happily) restore the original pretty facade, the charming low fence and the cute front garden. But why shouldn't we be able to shock and surprise and delight with how we tackle the rest of the building?

Why shouldn't we be able to extend, inconspicuously, into the apparently 'protected' V-shaped roof?

Why shouldn't we be able to remove a tree so big it's more suited to Richmond Park than a 10'x10' garden?

Why shouldn't we be able to create something thrilling and dynamic, allowing the architects freedom to inject much needed vitality into the area?

Perhaps we could if we were prepared to do battle with council paper-pushers for a year or two, but that process would be so negative and so dispiriting it would compromise the very nature of what we want to achieve.

And here is the point...architecture at a residential level in London is in danger of becoming predictable, and little more than an antique restoration business. Planning departments are smothering creativity, ingenuity and modernity in the name of misguided conservation.

In all our conversations with architects I sensed a resigned attitude; resigned to having to do something unexciting, unchallenging that they knew would get past 'jobsworth' planners

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for preserving the best aspects of London life, its wonderful stucco fronted streets, elegant garden squares and beautifully proportioned houses. But not all of it, and not at the expense of stopping all progress, all modernity.

Plantation shutters. The first sign that the 'middle class' has arrived in an area.

I've just read that the 'Royal Borough' is thinking of turning Lots Road and the nearby terraced streets into a Conservation Area. What the hell are they trying to conserve? Some very boring houses in a few dreary streets. Very soon every house in the area will boast plantation shutters, side extensions, a mean little loft conversion and a big price - but no architectural merit whatsoever.

When I walk down Wetherby Gardens today, I sometimes wish it had been knocked down and replaced with something more interesting and much taller by Foster or Rogers (or any number of great London architects).

Or, at the very least, had something interesting created behind its facade instead of the set of predictable bourgeois apartments the planners push architects to create today.


* Lateral. A description once confined to flats extended laterally across more than one building, now used liberally by Estate Agents to hype any property in which you can swing a modest sized cat. 

A license to print money (otherwise know as a Party Wall Agreement).

As I may have mentioned before, the structure of our second project - the little house in W8 - is not great.

It's an end of terrace that would like to see itself become a much posher detached property, and is moving rapidly away from its neighbours.

There are cracks all over the place. Serious ones in places. And these are affecting not just our house, but next door too.

Our structural engineer has recommended some fairly simple but still vital remedial work that involves tying the terrace back together using concrete 'whatsits' at various points round the walls on two floors.

At the same time as we do this it makes sense to remove the chimney breasts that take up a huge amount of space in all the rooms.

It's clear that this work could affect 'The Party Wall'. So we need to discuss it with the neighbour -  a titled widow of very advanced years.

Having been told by the estate agents opposite (who sold us the property) that Lady X next door was desperately keen to meet her new neighbours, my ex-public school project manager and I thought we'd pop round and discuss the works with her at the same time as introducing ourselves.

Ushered in to a comfortable, if very small, upper middle class sitting room of a certain generation (the only thing it lacked was the drinks trolley) we put on our most obsequious manners and had a charming if somewhat confusing half hour conversation.

Things got off to a good start when it turned out that each of her (now deceased) two or three husbands had shared my christian name. This bizarre coincidence seemed to delight her, and in terms of obtaining her permission to do work that might affect the Party Wall my confidence soared.

I should say at this point that we had/have no intention of doing anything underhand, or without ensuring that our neighbour is protected at all times.

However I have an aversion to paying fees for pointless things like Party Wall Surveyors.

What kind of person grows up and decides to be one of these? It's a bit like deciding to be a posh traffic warden.

My guess is that people who choose to specialise in this area have failed at anything interesting. Or have a pathological obsession with meaningless pieces of paper.

As far as I can tell, a Party Wall agreement is very, very simple. Until, that is, you get two Party Wall Surveyors involved, at which point it gets expensive, slow and complicated.

If in the process of any works on my house there is any damage to my neighbours property, it's obviously my responsibility to put that damage right.

So how come it costs several thousand pounds and requires two bloody surveyors (one each), a virtually indecipherable legal document and many wasted weeks to agree this.

This link below to a web forum illustrates the immense frustrations created by this absurdly stupid system.

http://forum.building.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?tid=496

Did you know that no special qualifications are required to be come a Party Wall Surveyor? (Just the ability to endlessly obfuscate, churn out paper slowly and not laugh when presenting a large and unjustifiable bill.)

Anyway, back to my little story.

Lady X happily agreed that we should produce a Condition Report covering her house, and on the basis of this sign a letter agreeing our responsibilities. She seemed happy. We were happy - and feeling very protective of this lovely little old lady. It was all very simple, amenable and encouraging.

Oh foolish us.

A few days later Lady X's daughter calls saying "mother was a bit confused" by what we'd said. Ha ha, very funny. This is a perfectly lucid Miss Marple like lady. A bit deaf maybe. That's all. Otherwise sharp as a button (what a silly phrase that is).

It turns out that one of Lady X's sons (brother to my caller) is a local architect and will now represent her regarding a Party Wall Agreement. I have a sinking feeling, knowing that this call comes with a ludicrous bill attached as well as delays.

Sure enough, I then receive a rather pompous email from the son demanding a formal Party Wall Notice. No conversation, discussion or variation would apparently be permitted.

What was very peculiar was that he referred to his mother only as his client....never admitting that it was in fact his mother. Bizarre.

This isn't going to end well, I fear. Which is a shame.

I am an honest and, hopefully, considerate neighbour. I genuinely cared about Lady X, before the email from her son.

Now I shall be forced to become as pedantic myself and consider insisting that they repair a badly cracked garden wall that is in danger of collapsing into my property, revisit the legality of their right to rear access via my garden now that I own the freehold as well as the leasehold, and possibly withdraw my plans to remove a large tree that shades their house all summer.

It could all have been so much simpler, nicer, friendlier and much, much cheaper.

I bet it's not like this over at Candy & Candy.

On returning from India, our first project, the cute little flat in one of SW3's smartest enclaves, was looking bigger, brighter, better.

I couldn't believe how fast the builders had transformed it, or what a clever chappie I'd been to buy it.

I should have known not to expect the self congratulation to last. Not when there are builders involved.

Since that short-lived moment of pleasure when all looked to be going to plan, things have gone just a little pear-shaped.

I am now over budget, over-wrought and definitely over the honeymoon period when it comes to property.

The builders somehow managed to construct a bathroom smaller than on the plans, and now want a silly amount to correct their own mistake.

The services for the kitchen are all in the wrong place because our kitchen design has changed. (Hands up, that's my fault, no question.)

The windows turn out to be a hugely complex old design that means they require not just a light sanding, but completely rebuilding - God alone knows how much that will cost.

And the wall of wardrobes I thought were included in the builders quote turn out to be extra. A big extra, because they're being made offsite by bloody 'craftsmen' and spray painted by artists armed with gallons of Farrow & Ball Pavilion Grey.

I could go on. And on. But I think you get the picture.

It's not pretty. Especially when you look at the budget. We're already looking at going £30k over.

While this may be little more than the price of a few titanium taps to the chaps down the road at One Hyde Park, to me that's a large chunk of any potential profit. (If there's any profit it all, that is.)

With this in mind, I've turned my attention to how we're going to 'dress' the flat for sale, who we're eventually going to market it to and, more importantly perhaps, how we're going to value it.

All these questions are, of course, interlinked. And I don't have the answer to any of them.

Like everybody I've ever met, I see myself as a bit of an interior designer. How foolish is that.

Any properties we've done up in the past have been been for us. Our taste. I didn't have to think about appealing to anyone else.

Now that I'm faced with 'dressing' a flat for sale, however, I simply don't know where to start.

The research I've done seems to point to this postcode having two extremes. At one end there's the Candy & Candy school of interiors - a glossy, glitzy, hotel-like world where taste seems to be less important than expense. At the other end there's the Bland & Bland school - so neutral, so generic, so characterless it's almost invisible.

Frankly, neither is really me.

The trouble is there's only two or three places in the world that I want a 'home' to look like.

One is the bleached driftwood, pale blue table cloths and plump white outdoor sofas of Le Club 55 in Saint Tropez. Another is the wonderful Colombe d'Or hotel in Saint Paul with its Picassos, Calders, old stone walls and dark tiled pool. And finally there's J&J's extraordinary houses in Holland Park and France, which I won't try to describe because I simply don't have enough superlatives.

Suffice to say, none of these inspirations quite suit a very small red-brick mansion flat just off the Brompton Road. I suspect, more relevantly perhaps, that they wouldn't suit potential buyers either.

But who is the target buyer for this smaller than it looks one (mezzanine) bedroom flat?

I suppose it could be a senior executive tired of staying in hotel rooms on his/her frequent London visits.

Or, as with the buyer of our old flat in Paris, a rather naughty and wealthy provincial man wanting a discreet place in town to bed his misstress.

Or a young city type more interested in location than square footage.

Or a retired couple wanting a base in town for cultural visits (whatever they are).

Or.......well, anyone who wants to live in one of SW3's most exclusive streets without paying top dollar.

Which, rather neatly, brings me to valuing the place. I've spent hours on Zoopla looking at recently completed sales and current offerings in what's officially called The South Kensington Estate (my parents would rather innocently have assumed that signified a council estate).

Leaving aside those properties on the Lower Ground Floor (or basement, to you and I), there's still a wide price spectrum. It goes from little more than £1500 a square foot right up to well over £3000. Across the road, houses can fetch a staggering £4400 a square foot.

The idea, therefore, that London prices are now increasingly priced by their size doesn't actually hold too much water (if you see what I mean).

We could of course just get a few agents round to value it. But do I trust them? Do I think they've done more research than me? Not really.

By way of example, the flat next door just sold at the asking price to the first viewer on the first day it went on sale. Something tells me that agent didn't get his pricing quite right!

So, to all these questions, I've concluded there is only one answer:

There is no answer.

Instead of science and maths, therefore, we will create a flat that I'd like to live in, price it as high as I think we can get away with and market it to anyone and everyone.

Simple, really. (Well, I'll let you know on that one.)

Postcard from India: One Giant Doer-Upper Project.

I don't know what I expected as we landed in Mumbai.

Of course, I knew the city would reveal stark contrasts between rich and poor. I had seen on countless documentaries the appalling degradations in seemingly endless slums.

I was also well aware that amidst this squalor others, the new Indian, glided past in air conditioned limousines, apparently immune to the surrounding poverty as they travel from newly thriving businesses to new and ultra luxurious residential compounds.

What I didn't expect, however, was the anger I felt when I saw it for real.

Over 50% of Mumbai's inhabitants live in slums; in conditions we would consider criminally cruel even for animals. ( See http://mumbai.metblogs.com/2006/01/09/mumbai-slums/ )

The streets aren't paved with 'gold' for these immigrants from the countryside but with the excrement of the millions living in abject poverty, without sanitation and without anything we regard as worthy of the word 'living'.

The city of Mumbai is quite frankly a disgrace on every level. The infrastructure is crumbling, if existent at all. The filth and lack of civic pride is shocking and horribly sad. The utter chaos is an obvious symbol of a lack of any real overall progress. The whole is little more than one big sewer, within which a few, fat, almost Dickensian, overlords extract seemingly endless riches for themselves.

Although from a working class background, I have never been a slave to my roots. I always felt that in the UK anything was possible, that I had every opportunity to move on, move up. Nobody was ever really 'above' me. And whether by luck or hard work I have been fortunate to prove this to be true.

In Mumbai, however, the gulf between rich and poor is so extraordinarily massive, so outrageously unfair and so bitterly divisive that for perhaps the first time ever I begin to have communist tendencies.

Here is a country Mr Cameron asks us to flatter, pander to, even look up to for its 'economic miracle'. That is one very sick joke.

This country is so messed-up you have to walk through metal detectors and have bags searched just to enter hotels or very ordinary shopping centres.

In Thailand they have reduced the numbers living below the poverty line from over 40% to just 7% in a mere 20 years. India will take several lifetimes, I would guess, to get anywhere near this progress.

Basically the country seems constipated by inefficiency, slowed to virtual standstill by bureaucracy, and ruled by outdated class systems and elites.

Don't bother telling me about the success of groups such as Tata or Reliance. I don't care.

Tell me instead why the authorities don't tear down the slums and create basic housing using Portakabins or old shipping containers or prefabs like the ones that sprung up all over Britain after the war?

Tell me why some of the vast wealth supposedly being generated isn't used to build safe, modern, public transport systems that people don't have to crowd onto like animals on their way to the abatoir?

Tell me why the newspapers and magazines are full of ads for high end apartments costing more than a whole slum would cost to clear?

This is a city that is one great big vast Doer Upper project. But I'm not sure the 'project managers' are capable of achieving anything much.

The people I have met are gentle, hardworking and desperate to please. But their managers are hopelessly lost and clearly useless.

For example, a simple small cafe at the domestic airport in Mumbai made Fawlty Towers look the very model of efficiency. Eight staff couldn't serve twenty customers without making endless mistakes, arguing with eachother, shifting blame on to co-workers or wasting time just wandering aimlessly around with a big grin.

It summed up India, for me. Too many people doing not very much, not very well...but seemingly with a smile on their face.

I probably won't publish this blog until we return to the UK. And I certainly can't imagine ever wanting to return to Mumbai....or invest in the fallacy that is India's economic miracle.