Canary Wharf Plc has sold 15 Canada Square, a 400,000 sq ft building site in the heart of the Docklands, to big four accountant KPMG for £260m; making it the first major accounting firm to locate its headquarters in the area. Construction is due to be completed by April 2009.
The popularity of the latest Bond flick "Casino Royale" is igniting fantasies of gorgeous women, fast cars, hi-tech gadgets and did we mention gorgeous women?
According to Nemony Cooper, an interior designer at upscale furniture store Maskreys; Casino Royale comes at a time when we’re seeing the revival of the bachelor pad. Cooper recommends leather as a must have for the James Bond inspired pad; "warm in the winter and cool in the summer, leather is very resistant and will look better with age. It’s also slick, trouble-free, easy to clean and very low maintenance."
Cooper also recommends good lighting to "set the mood." Choose lighting that fits the dimensions of your home and with the ability to change the mood at the flick of a switch.
No Bond style home would be complete without some strategically placed martini glasses on the table or in the kitchen. Invest in a cocktail shaker and some olives for the finishing touch. Shaken, not stirred!
The brands Cooper recommends having a look at include:
Steven Spielberg, is flat-hunting in Florentin, a southern Tel Aviv neighbourhood, according to Ynet. Representatives of the Hollywood director are reportedly negotiating the purchase of a “In Florentin” luxury penthouse apartment with a sea view, retailing at around $600,000.
If rumours are true, Spielberg may add fuel to a simmering controversy over posh new housing in Florentin. The trendy area, popular with musicians, artists and writers, is also one of Tel Aviv's poorest districts, with a long-standing community of Mizrahi (or Arab) Jews. Exacerbating the tension over gentrification, two construction workers were killed and local homes were damaged back in February, when a crane working on a new development collapsed onto nearby Eilat Street.
[via Economist]
According to Freakonomics
Nestoria's "large database of property listings" led them to take a look at how estate agents describe their properties and according to Ed; "we can't find a single bad property!"
Back to Freakonomics:
On page 68 of the bestselling book, the writers proclaim information as "the currency of the Internet." According to Levitt, the net is "brilliantly efficient at shifting information from the hands of those who have it into the hands of those who do not. Often ... the information existed, but in a woefully scattered way [but the internet] has vastly shrunk the gap between the experts and the public."
Levitt cites a study of estate agents in the US revealing how agents attempt to convey information in the for sale ads they write:
A phrase like "well maintained," for instance means that a house is old but not quite falling down. A savvy buyer will know this (or find out for himself once he sees the house), but to the sixty-five year old retiree who is selling the house, "well maintained" might sound like a compliment, which is just what the agent intends.
An analysis of the language used in real-estate ads shows that certain words are powerfully correlated with the final sale price of a house. This doesn't necessarily mean that labeling a house "well maintained" causes it to sell for less than an equivalent house. It does however indicate that when an agent labels a house "well maintained", she is subtly encouraging the buyer to bid low.
(Ed also revealed that he spent the last year in a bedroom where he could "touch all four walls," and although he's about 6'3 - 6'4, it still came as a shock to him that there were so many 'spacious' properties available. Who knows, maybe he should have got a better agent, and of course because Nestoria wasn't around back then we'll have to give him a pass.)
* Properties are more than twice as likely to be "spacious" as they are to be "massive".
* There are more "excellent" properties then there are "stunning" properties
* Fewer properties "boast" features than "benefit" from features
), a guy who - it appears - really had no professional background in real estate.Following Nestoria's example, London's estate agent has just launched a third-party development tool enabling webmasters to display content on their website.
From the Foxtons blog:
Webmasters can choose between sales, lettings and short lets properties and also by region. It is also possible to display the properties as a text list, with thumbnail images or even just large colour photographs for maximum impact.
We're proud to have played an organizational role in Kendra Todd's Nubricks podcast interview.
Entrepreneur and Apprentice winner; Kendra opens up about her Apprentice win, working with Trump and where to invest in the US to beat the bubble. Well worth having a listen
Knight Frank, is planning a £600m European property IPO. The move comes amid a surge of new investment on the continent by an array of international investors, notably from the US and the UK. Investors are drawn by commercial property yields of 6 per cent or higher. In Britain and North America this margin no longer exists for many grade-A properties.
Anna Nicole Smith's scheduled October 31st eviction has been postponed; the former topless model has filed an injunction at the Bahamian Supreme Court, claiming ownership of the million dollar mansion known locally as "Horizons"; whose ownership is also being contested by North Carolina developer G. Ben Thompson.
In a press conference last week, Thompson claims that Smith "never paid a nickel on the house," and that all the money to "facilitate the purchase" came directly from him. Thompson who admitted having a “short relationship” with Smith now wants her evicted from the property.
[Developer G. Ben Thompson (center) flanked by his son-in-law and attorney]
Thompson also admitted having no knowledge of Smith’s finances, but was apparently of the opinion that she would have repaid him the money either from photo shoot work, or from the settlement she's expecting to get from litigation surrounding the estate of her late husband J. Howard Marshall.
Smith claims that Thompson gave her the house "as a gift"; and Thompson's son-in-law admitted that the deed was "conveyed in her name," because she "needed utilities to be cut on" but was never recorded.
"We had numerous conversations and I have e-mail correspondents up until the 27th (of October) where she in her e-mails stated that she would start making payments. We told her as far as payment for the house, we did not want her to pay us back the next day. We considered it would take a year for her to pay us back. We told her to pay us when she could but we needed the note and mortgage signed to protect our interest" claims Thompson's son-in-law.Outside of the "whose your baby daddy competition", the Smith scandal is creating significant political embarrassment for the Bahamian government, with the explosive accusation made by Smith's lawyers that a popular local government minister accepted $10,000 in order to "fast-track" Smith's Bahamian residency application.
We found this via FREM this morning:
Currently in beta, Zoomf is aiming to officially launch in Q1 2007, offering property listings in London before expanding its coverage to the rest of the UK and abroad. ... Zoomf will be competing with the likes of UK-based Nestoria and California-based Trulia, which we think remains one of the benchmarks in vertical search.Joel Burslem feels that Zoomf (or‘Zoom F’ or ‘Zooomph’ - honestly, we're still trying to figure that out as well) may look familiar to his US audience, because "its search results pages look awfully similar to Trulia’s" and that imitation "really is the sincerest form of flattery."
The new Land Registry House Price Index was published for the first time yesterday, with data going back to April 2000. As mentioned last week, the LRHPI measures average price changes in repeat sales on the same property giving like for like comparisons, and arguably making it the most accurate index currently available.
