A tale of two markets. The agonising story of our first sale.

A few weeks ago now we finally exchanged contracts on the sale of our first project.

I cannot believe how long its taken to sell this little studio flat in SW3. Literally months.

Anyone who tells you the Prime Central market is a doddle clearly knows diddly squat. I had read the PR headlines and, as a result, rather assumed the world would be queuing round our elegant Chelsea garden crescent to make outrageous over-the-asking-price offers. They weren't.

Actually, that's not quite true. Within 24 hours of our original agent being hired, we did have an offer at the full asking price. But after that offer fell through we had months when almost nothing happened.

We added another agent. Dropped the price (considerably). Still nothing worth discussing.

The agents all said how wonderful the flat was (well, they would, wouldn't they). But of actual offers there was a severe drought.

We thought about pulling it off the market for the summer, but it hardly seemed worth the bother. Would anyone actually notice? Would it really make any difference?

Then, in August of all months, a couple walked past the Knightsbridge agent's window and took a fancy to our flat.

'Walk-ins' as the trade calls them are usually regarded with immense suspicion. These days nobody looks for a property on the street; they look at screens, portals and agents' websites. Only bored tourists, nosey-parkers and fantasists walk in off the street and ask to see a property.

So it took quite a bit of convincing by our buyers to get the agent to take them seriously.

Eventually they were permitted a viewing. And they loved it. Or at least, the wife loved it.

The husband thought it was far too much for one room (and he comes from Hong Kong where prices are as ludicrous as London).

Not surprisingly, their first offer was way off.

We and they hummed and harumphed via the smooth talking agent, and eventually the offer grudgingly nudged up £25k. Still not enough we said. And that's where it seemed to stall.

The buyer went off abroad for a while, the conversation petered out and any optimism I felt went with it.

A week later I was persuaded by a different agent to take an 'exclusive sneak preview' of another 'opportunity' on the same road as ours.

It was so 'exclusive' that I found myself outside the flat with six other potential buyers and an embarrassed agent who hadn't got the keys.

I fell into conversation, for want of anything else to do, with a very pleasant couple who seemed as disinterested in the viewing as I was.

Within minutes we discovered that they were the potential buyers of my flat, the front of which we could actually see from where we were waiting.

It transpired that they'd just landed from a few days in Geneva, and only as the plane's wheels hit the runway back at Heathrow had the husband admitted to his wife that their offer on my flat had been turned down.

The wife wasn't best pleased. So, after a cursory peek at a dreary little flat with all the other 'exclusive previewers', we retired to my flat - the one they'd hoped to buy.

We clearly all got on, and after a bit of haggling shook hands on a price £25k up from the one I'd rejected.

Before exchange took place, we then had to contend with the idiotic posturing of the buyer's solicitor who was about as pragmatic as North Korean diplomacy. This held things up for weeks as we argued about wood floors, building control and the managing agents paperwork.

More important than all this detail however is the wide difference between the perceived state of the PCL market and the reality.

A Knightsbridge agent just published a report proudly boasting that their sellers were achieving 97% of guide prices. Well, in our case the agent achieved around 85% of the original guide price....and it took four months and my help to achieve that.

Not quite the booming, fast moving market we're led to believe.

Oh, and by the way, that other flat on our street I went to see is still on the market after two price reductions. And the agent for that flat said (with a straight face) that we had to see it that day in August as it would probably sell within HOURS.


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PS. Some might think that this piece runs counter to my previous blog about buyers being the dodgy ones, not the agents. Not at all. The agents I mention here are all perfectly honest, good guys. Just a little too quick to believe their own and others' hype, sadly.

It's not the agents who are dodgy in London, it's the buyers.

The other day Channel 4 ran a much trumpeted 'expose' on the questionable practices of some estate agents when it comes to mortgage finance. I didn't see it, but Twitter was awash with reaction, recrimination and, in one case, regret.

It all sounded terribly obvious, and so NOT news.

With the possible exception of a John Lewis salesperson, when would you ever completely take the word of someone trying to flog you something?

Whether it's a major political leader, a humble used car salesman or an Eton educated estate agent, you just know that their own interests come way ahead of yours.

What would make a far more original and contemporary report Mr Channel 4 Commissioning Editor would be an investigation into the iffy characters now buying up London property.

I can't quite believe some of things that have been happening on the sale of our second project, a small Kensington house. I need to write them down just to confirm to myself that they're real.

The first deal, agreed off-market, became mired in murky eastern european 'mafia' connections, and the second, on the open market, produced a dodgy offer that had more than a hint of tax avoidance.

Unbelievable though it may seem, I am NOT joking.

The first buyer apparently worked for a controversial billionaire rumoured to be connected to the shadowy head of a powerful organised crime syndicate.

Because of this, our buyer's application for a mortgage (probably not sold to him by the agents) sparked a bank enquiry into his connections.

I could understand this if we were talking oligarch sums, but we're not. The amount he was seeking to borrow probably wouldn't fill the fuel tank of a super-yacht.

It seems the bank's extensive credit checks even run to a Google search these days, and a couple of clicks had quickly exposed the question marks surrounding our buyer's employer.

Whether these rumoured connections are in any way true, I have no idea. For all I know it's just an unjustified smear put about by political rivals. That's the problem with the web, it's full of unsubstantiated rumour.

Sadly, after a few weeks, we had to rule this guy out. It just didn't look as though the banks were in the mood to lend to him.

The second buyer, who was one of many dozens to view the property, seemed altogether more solid.

He was from southern Europe. So, from my point of view, still a bit of a worry. But the agent had done her homework and reassured me with details of the buyers prestigious London address and impressive worldwide portfolio of past and present property projects.

All looked set fair for a fast exchange. But I just couldn't get rid of the slightly churning sensation in my gut which usually signals worry and uncertainty.

And sure enough, a couple of days after agreeing the deal a disturbing email arrives. His solicitor asks if I could meet with their client to discuss "the nature of the deal".

"What the f...k does that mean", I not so politely asked the agent.

Told that he just wanted my view on planning issues, I pretended to be out of town and offered to call the 'buyer' rather than meet him.

The moment the slow, heavily accented voice answered the mobile I just knew we were in trouble. It was like there was virgin olive oil seeping out of my handset, such was the oozing, slippery nature of the conversation.

No, he had not agreed the price, apparently. (Even though he'd signed a written offer specifying the amount, and even though he had aggressively pushed me and the agent to accept this offer.)

No, all along, apparently, we were supposed to know that he had really only ever offered £250k LESS than the offer we had in writing.

Funnily enough this would bring his offer magically below the £2m Stamp Duty band. Well, well.

No (and I keep starting sentences like this because he did), he couldn't go above this but.....as he owned various properties around Europe perhaps we would like to take holidays in these places by way of compensation for our disappointment.

I don't know about you but £250k is slightly more than my usual holiday budget. Not only that, the offer was clearly dodgy, almost certainly illegal.

Both the agent and I quickly, and very thoroughly, washed our hands of this appalling time waster.

The man was either completely mad, or something rather more sinister.

Postcard from Provence. Saint Remy Vs Saint Tropez.

I have driven through Provence literally dozens of times. The A7 and A8 autoroutes are now so familiar I could write a decent guide-book to their service areas.

When we reach Provence, we usually we speed straight past the Luberon (to the left) and the Alpilles (to the right), and head directly to that little coastal bit called the Var and our normal home-from-home, Saint Tropez.

This year we did just the same on our way down, hurrying past Peter Mayle country to spend a paltry three nights in our favourite beach haunt. It's the shortest holiday visit I've ever made, and even after a wasp-ruined lunch at Le Club 55 we were still desperate to stay longer.

However, we had booked a house in the vrai Provence, somewhere between the Plateau de Vaucluse, the Petit Luberon and the Alpilles (the borders of these areas are somewhat blurred - especially by estate agents).

Having been priced out of anything worth owning in St Tropez, it seemed a good idea to find out what attracted so many second-home owners to the inland part of this vast and largely very rural region.

We've been here a week now, and I still haven't worked out what that attraction is.

Ok, so it's pretty warm in summer. But it can also be bloody windy (the mistral buffeting us today is rumoured to make people insane, so please excuse me if I become even more psychotic than usual).

There are some very pretty small hill towns like Bonnieux, Gordes and Menerbes (known as the 'golden triangle'). But these settlements are in many ways even less real than St Tropez. Life as you and I know it is almost extinct in these expensively preserved environments.

About the only thing you can buy in these villages is a postcard or a naff napkin. For anything to sustain normal life you need to battle for an early parking spot at crowded but wonderful morning markets, or traipse into towns like Cavaillon to a horrible hypermarket and pay about 50% more than you would in the UK.

You will hear from many that our own high streets aren't a patch on those in France, where small, high quality independent stores are still supposed to flourish. But here in Provence they've torn up the script and opted instead to turn almost every high street into a source of pointless tourist grot.

We spent almost an hour trying to find a food shop in L'Isle Sur La Sorgue one morning, and by the time we found a place to buy fruit and veg it had closed for lunch! Closed for lunch? Which century do these people live in? Next thing, they'll be closed on Sundays. Oh yes, sorry, they are.

Frankly, it would have been a lot easier to furnish a house with over-priced antiques than feed a hungry family.

Anyway, I digress, let's get back to property.

Close by is the phenomenon that is Saint Remy de Provence; a small town nestling at the base of the Alpilles, famous for providing Van Gogh with a lunatic asylum during the last year of his life and the setting for one of his most famous paintings - Starry Night.

Oh, and the whole town was once owned by Monaco's Grimaldi family (useless guide book info #1).

This otherwise fairly inconsequential town is surrounded by multi-million Euro second homes filled to the brim in summer with design conscious Parisians and is the spiritual home of France's most achingly stylish interiors magazine - Cote Sud.

A short walk from the brasserie where we ate dinner we found a cluster of estate agents that wouldn't look out of place on Sloane Street or Rue Faubourg St Honore. Sotheby's Realty, Michael Zingraff (Christie's), Emile Garcin, L'Agence des Alpilles, Janssens...to name but a few. These agents' windows were crammed with large country estates all done up like magazine spreads with box hedged gardens, pretend olive groves, polished cement floors and exposed stone walls. But why are they here? Why do people choose to holiday 75 kms inland, on a flat plain beneath some fairly plain hills (to call them mountains would be overly generous)?

The simple answer, it seems to me, is that people attract like-minded people. So, once one pretentious Parisian family set up camp just outside St Remy, others felt compelled to do likewise.

It's the same almost anywhere.

Back in the UK we've been looking at houses near Frome in Somerset. Not because we know or love the area, but because one or two people we admire and look up to have bought there...and this has started a wave of interest from like-minded London souls.

For all its artistic and cultural pretensions, St Remy still feels decidedly parochial compared to St Tropez. The traffic buzzes but, unlike its coastal counterpart, the town doesn't. Perhaps that's what people like about it.

Here they can play 'le grande poisson' in a much smaller pond. And still shop at Villebrequin for their swimmers.

This part of Provence is self-consciously interior designed. It may pretend to be relaxed and casual, but it isn't. Even in the ugly little crossroads town Coustellet, there's a shop selling Farrow & Ball paint.

St Tropez, on the other hand, is bohemian to its roots. It actually tries at times to be less relaxed, more formally designer led, and always fails. Brigitte Bardot's town lets its hair down on a daily basis, whereas out here in St Remy they seem to spend half their time in hairdressers (there are more of these than anything else on the high streets) having it put elaborately up.

A €3m bastide outside St Remy would cost closer to €10m in St Tropez. And I guess this is another, not inconsiderable, reason to choose the countryside over the seaside.

I think however that money and a wish to cluster together are only superficial reasons for St Remy's popularity among Parisians (and a few overseas buyers). The more fundamental reason is snobbery.

French snobs make our own breed look decidedly amateur. These masters of haute pomposity and the 16th Arrondisement are loathed throughout France in a way that Londoners cannot comprehend.

When the Parisians that do make it to St Tropez finally decamp for home in late August, the local waiters, barmen, beach honchos and hotel maids all celebrate. (I have never seen the old barman at Club 55 happier than the day after their mass departure.) They all prefer the courtesy, if nothing else, of the British, the Dutch and even the Germans.

The Parisian's snobbery and unpopularity accounts not just for their desire to holiday in clusters like St Remy, but also their decision to forego the pleasures of the coast.

Out here in this vast, rural, wind-blown fruit farm they can still pretend that they are THE rightful inhabitants of la France profonde (as they pompously call the culture and lifestyle of the countryside).

They have lost Gordes, Menerbes and Bonnieux to international Mayle followers, but St Remy still (just) remains theirs.

Outside the wind blows ever more angrily, as if it knows I am being mean about Provence. But I'm not really. There is much to recommend both St Remy and St Tropez.

But I know which one I would choose. And it has salt, not snobbery, in the air.

Stress, Strife and Stuttering Sales....the life of a Doer-Upper.

There was a time I rather liked stress.

Tight deadlines and unreasonable clients were a daily part of life in advertising, and in many ways I thrived on it.

These days, however, I find even the slightest pressure or the smallest set-back almost unbearably stressful.

Having two properties 'Under Offer' is close to life threatening on my personal stress-O-meter.

We have two 'legal' problems on the flat sale. And while the buyer is being patient and understanding at the moment I don't know how long that will last.

The issues are, frankly, so complex that I can't be bothered to explain. But the reality is that I didn't get all my ducks in line when it came to the post-renovation paperwork.

I could blame solicitors, builders or managing agents until I'm blue in the face (and about to have a heart attack), but the truth is I f****d up.

Yes, the buyer's solicitor is being a complete arse and her points are pointless (as the Managing Agents, Building Control consultants and my own solicitor all confirm).

But I should have anticipated this kind of rubbish from some box-ticking, power-crazed lawyer.

I hate red tape, regulations, rules and jumping through bureaucratic hoops, but I'm learning fast that lacking respect for these aspects of the property game can come back and bite you rather ferociously in the rear.

One way or another I guess we'll get through these issues, but whether there'll still be a buyer is questionable.

On our house, I have absolutely no clue what's happening. Last time I heard, the buyer's solicitor was waiting for the local searches and the client's deposit money.

It turned out our overseas cash buyer isn't actually a 'cash' buyer and needs to finance the deal! So when that deposit money will arrive is anyone's guess.

Nothing, it appears, ever quite runs as smoothly as it should. And it's the most I can do not to scream at some innocent party.

I'd hoped to get at least one property exchanged this week, before my stepson and business partner's wedding near Lyon this Saturday, but that now looks about as likely as Gareth Bale actually being worth €100m.

The Agent from Hell....or possibly Latvia.

A colleague of my stepson in Hong Kong arrived in town last week searching for a two bedroom investment flat.

Although an estate agent herself, she knows little about London and its myriad little property markets so I happily agreed to view a few apartments with her and show her round a few areas.

On our second viewing trip she was accompanied by two other Hong Kong Chinese ladies, both of whom might also be in the market for flats.

They were delightful clients; keen as mustard on London, tough as old boots when it comes to money.

This particular trip we were due to view four properties stretching from Lot's Road to Earl's Court, all with the same agency - a multi-office south west London specialist.

It was, from where I was standing, probably the most horrendous time I have ever spent with an estate agent.

To say she was off-hand, bullying and arrogant would be to let her off lightly. More importantly she was rude and incredibly unprofessional.

At two properties, she clearly hadn't made appointments with the owner/resident. But still she charged in, even brushing aside a man still getting dressed at one address (according to one of the clients).

Our agent was 'glamorous' in a way that reminded me of the girls/women who frequent Saint Tropez night clubs. Predatory is the only word that springs to mind. In this case, the prey is gullible overseas property buyers.

The first flat we viewed was clearly a developer product - done up to the nines, in other words. Nothing wrong with that, except that the client was looking for something with potential to improve.

When I mentioned this, the agent - who hadn't even bothered to introduce herself to me - turned on me and simply said, "It is a wonderful flat, perfect. Has it's own parking space. Look you can see it from here" marching off towards some minute balcony that would hardly sleep a cat let alone let you swing one.

"All interior furnishings are from Andrew Martin" she continued, as if a recently arrived visitor from Hong Kong should know this somewhat specialist store on Walton Street. If they did come from Andrew Martin (which is about 200 yards from where I live) then the developer successfully managed to buy the very few items of bad taste ever stocked there.

Her manner made Kirstie Alsopp seem like a pussy cat (what is it with me and cats today?).

Still, what did I care. I wasn't buying. Just observing.

The third property the client viewed with this agent happened to be in an Earl's Court street I know pretty well. I actually lived in it once.

"This flat is in the English Style " our agent shouted as she pointed at some distinctly French Style armchairs. I have no idea what she meant, it was all meaningless bluster anyway.

By now I was becoming extremely tired of the barrage of bullshit, the patronising treatment of the clients and the complete and utter disinterest in anything but her own views. These clients were clearly of no consequence to her.

I don't know about you, but I think I can spot local authority housing or flats rented out to council supported tenants. There are some fairly obvious tell tale signs such as the front doors all being the same colour (usually a rather horrible, drab colour), balconies and gardens that are dumping grounds for rubbish or unsightly washing lines etc.

Looking out of this almost £1m flat I noticed that the buildings opposite were run-down and clearly not 'owner-occupied'. There's a reason for this - they back onto the widest, noisiest section of the Cromwell Road.

Anyway, mentioning this quietly to my Hong Kong ladies, who had expressed an absolute dislike of anywhere that might have local authority housing nearby, I was verbally assaulted by the agent.

" You think you know everything. They are definitely not local authority. Prove it." Taken aback by this, I said " If you like, yes I can easily prove it. I may be wrong, but I don't think so."

"What do you know, " she said, " I mean, do you even live in London?"

Perhaps if she had taken 30 seconds of her no doubt invaluable time to ask who I was, what I did and why I was there...she might have known the answer to this. But of course she hadn't.

She clearly thought we had all 'just got off the boat".

At this point I made my excuses and left (as they used to say in the News of the World). I had something much more interesting to do in Shoreditch.


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For the record, no she wasn't from Foxtons. In fact on an earlier viewing spree we'd had a very helpful young negotiator from that much looked down upon agency....who took time to find out why I was there and was even grateful when I helped explain the good points of one of the flats she was showing. Indeed, while I know their reputation for being a bit 'fast' is probably true, I've never had anything but great service from Foxtons. So there.

The latest Ups and Downs of a Doer-Upper.

Having avoided the issue for some time with posts on Corfu, St Tropez and Planning, it's time to take stock of where we are with our own doer-upper properties.

The truth is, not much further on than we were 2 months ago.

Our first project in Egerton Gardens went on the market in May and still hasn't sold.

It all looked so good as we hit the market at a very 'toppy' asking price (toppy - agentspeak for outrageously silly price). But it seems that we, and more importantly our agents, may have overestimated just how much even this supposedly frenzied PCL market is prepared to pay for a studio flat.

I had hoped to sell before external works to the building cast a scaffolding shadow over the flat's main feature - a light filled room. But that hasn't happened. And we now face 10 weeks of less than ideal selling conditions.

Still, I say to myself, when it's finished the building will look fantastic (as it should, given the residents of this small property are paying Knight Frank £99k for the external refurb!).

The big decision we need to make is whether or not to withdraw the property from the market while this work takes place, and then re-launch in the early autumn. Perhaps with a new, or enlarged, set of agents.

I like both agents we are working with, but it took a threat to withdraw our property to get one of them to start communicating with us properly. And the other one hasn't quite lived up to its efficient, approachable, communicative image.

On the plus side, I'm still proud of the work we've done to the flat. It's a great space, and I feel sure that it will eventually sell at a very good price.

It's just irritating to still have our money tied up. I'd be much happier if we were out scouting our next project.

After much indecision, we actually turned down one offer as too low. We would still have made decent money on our investment, but I just didn't like the constant bid and counter bid situation.

Still, I absolutely hated saying no to close on a million.

Over in W8 our little end of terrace house still sits waiting for work to begin.

If the Royal Borough has anything to do with it, we'll be waiting for another few months yet.

The borough has introduced a 'scam' called the Pre-App. Basically you pay £440 to have a planning officer do what they used to do free - give you a quick, professional, but non-binding opinion on your plans.

This takes about a month. Add that to the two, three or four months to get through the planning stage proper and you're really looking at up to five months to get the council to agree that you can extend the back of your property. In our case, the extension we have applied for is a legal right under Permitted Development. (Technically we don't even have to ask for permission, but I'm advised we would be ill-advised to go this route.)

If you want a new basement or anything more complex, you're looking at six months or more. Sometimes a lot more. How does anything ever get done, I wonder? (I wish I had a monopoly on the supply of 'red tape'.)

Because I'm the most impatient person I know, we've resorted to seeing if we can sell the house now at a decent profit. The answer is, maybe.

We bought at a discount because there was only a short lease officially for sale, plus the potential to negotiate the purchase of the freehold from someone else. Not many, as I've said before, were prepared to take this risk. We did, and now we own the freehold it's a much easier 'sell'.

I haven't put it on the market, but asked one of Notting Hill's coolest, youngish agents (no names, no recriminations) whether they know anyone who'd pay enough to make it worth us selling.

Their enthusiasm, energy and optimism is infectious. I just hope it 'infects' the buyer they showed round sufficiently to unlock her bank account. We'll see.

Petty, Potty and Pointless. What the 'P' in planning really stands for.

I'm all for Planning, but not necessarily for planning.

With a capital 'P' it stands for 'the bigger picture'; the macro shape and structure of towns or neighbourhoods and conservation of the better parts of our heritage.

With a small 'p' it means petty, pointless and potty - small-minded, very conservative control on a micro level.

All too often, it seems to me, planning departments opt to focus on nit-picky irrelevant little things and lack the vision or the skills to look long term at our wider urban landscape.

Our little W8 house, for example, is going through the planning process as we speak. And it's a pretty soul destroying exercise for the architect.

Not one single interesting element of his ideas passed the so-called Pre-App stage (sounds like some historian's pre-ipad catch phrase).

It's an end of terrace, so we applied to put windows into the end wall. Several other ends of terrace in the same road already have windows. REJECTED.

The rear of the house faces the solid end wall of another terrace. So with nothing to look over, we applied for a raised ground floor terrace. REJECTED.

There is an existing small rear extension reaching up nearly to the full height of the building. To improve the usability of the internal floor-plate, we asked to increase its height by a mere 0.6m. REJECTED.

For some reason the planners wish to 'protect' the 'v' shaped roofs of our terrace from the evil that is mansard extensions....even though from the road you can't actually see the roof at all. NOT EVEN CONSIDERED.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

There is NO logic to any of this.

For example, I live in the same borough in a little terrace house that looks out onto the back of another row of terraced houses. Currently one house that backs onto our garden is being redeveloped. It has permission to build a raised ground floor terrace that looks directly into several houses and will be a serious invasion of our privacy. Explain, therefore, Mr/Mrs Planner, why, in the same borough, we can't have a terrace that looks directly over nobody! It's a bloody nonsense.

It seems to me that some of the best urban planning in central London is being driven not by the boroughs but by the large private estates like Grosvenor and Cadogan. Now, as readers of this blog will know, I'm no great fan of these estates and their managers, but at least they take a long view and try to enhance whole neighbourhoods (for their own gain, of course).

Just look at how Cadogan has transformed the area around Duke of York's Square, or the work Grosvenor has put into shaping the future of Mount Street in Mayfair, or how the de Walden estate (I think) has lead the rejuvenation of Marylebone High Street over several decades. These have all added to the quality of London life.

All the local boroughs seem to be interested in is a narrow-minded kind of conservation. Or, perversely, creating dangerous new road schemes like the ridiculous Exhibition Road revamp and the lethal road crossing outside Sloane Square tube.

The big estates (and I hate to say it, I really do) have done far more to retain the character, quality and elegance of our city than any borough.

In the case of our little W8 house, it is actually questionable whether houses like this should be left standing at all.

It was very badly and very cheaply built. It is, of course, in no way 'eco-friendly'. It was designed to serve a population happy to live in pokey rooms to cope with inefficient heating systems of old. It is completely unsuited to a 21st century resident. In fact, if you were being honest, the whole terrace of 5 houses should really be knocked down and make way for something more suitable.

But this is so politically incorrect I could probably get into trouble for even saying that.

In fact, there's only one 'P' that really sums up the attitude of planners: Pathetic.