Marylebone freezes

23 out of 33 London councils have already proposed or agreed on figures for council tax bills in 2009/2010. Others should reveal the numbers by next month.

We dug out the average Band D figures for 2008/09 + the percentage change last year for comparison.

*Residents will receive £50 which will equate to a net cut in council tax for most.

- Proposed figures from Evening Standard.
- 2008/2009 figures from Londoncouncils.gov.uk

Council tax is a local tax based on the value of the property in April 1991 and raised by local authorities to help pay for local services. The bills are sent in March for the following financial year -  1. April – 31. March.

This truly is an honour – to be recognised by the people behind FindaProperty.com, one of the oldest and largest property portals in UK!

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!

See the article at Winging It.

Floor-plans in rental property listings will not be such a rare sight soon!

No description or photo could ever give renters the information a plan does, so we were glad to hear Justin from MyPropertyGuide tell us that many energy inspectors are now offering to do floor-plans at a small additional fee while they’re at the property preparing the EPC.

Independent energy assessor Neil Hammond confirms:

The EPC data requires measurement of the property floor area as standard. As a natural extension to this service, floor plans can be created at the same time as an EPC by extending the measurements to include room details.

Some of the london letting agents we know are displaying floor-plans in their listings already:
Egerton Roche
Foxtons
Marsh & Parsons
Knight Frank
Savills

We did a little search on the web to see a hint of how much it would cost to order a floor-plan along with that EPC:

EPC Plan

London Energy Assessors

Out of date listings on the Internet? No kidding?

What can we renters do about it?

The Times suggests writing a complaint to the site admin. Hmm, good idea but most of us probably won’t have time to do that.

Another option is to use a website where only Association of Residential Letting Agents ARLA member agents list. It’s called PropertyLive.co.uk. Problem is there are not a lot of rentals there – still only has 122 for London. The certified agents are more disciplined but there are no guarantees.

It is quite impossible to tell which ad is still up because it was really – just rented out – or which one is there just to get the tenants to call in.

Wonder if “Report listing”-type of button would help? We’d have time to press that! Some bigger sites might have or consider the same system as the newspaper comment sections have. Say, if 3 people have alerted the site owner, an automatic E-mail would be sent to the site owner and the agent.

Any other ideas?

What a great way to advertise yourself as a tenant, don’t you agree?!

Alan is a journalist in his fourties, looking to rent a room in South East London (preferably not much further than Brockley). The video was posted on SpareRoom TV yesterday.

Just checked that SpareRoom.co.uk currently lists 2111 “Room wanted” ads in London alone. Wow!

*Nido Student Living

Property consultant King Sturge predicts that London’s student accommodation market will become property’s star performer.

“This sector of property is bucking the trend.” says Huw Forrest, Partner, King Sturge. “There is a major imbalance between demand and supply of private sector student accommodation. From the 250,000 students in full time higher education in London, only 1.5% can access commercially operated private sector accommodation” says Forrest. “And in our opinion 50 to 75% of university housing stock is out-dated by modern standards. There’s an urgent need to build more and the time is right for both developers and universities.”

King Sturge Student Accommodation Group

Source: Europe Real Estate

(c) Chesterton Humberts

Chesterton Humberts just opened a new branch at 60 Sloane Avenue, London SW3 3DD. Giles Cook has been named as branch director. He was previously Chesterton’s Central London sales and lettings director and prior to that, the company’s Kensington branch director. He has over 15 years of industry experience in both sales and lettings.

EAT reports of Marsh & Parsons plans of opening a new branch in Mayfair. The lettings side will be run initially by Claire de Wolff, lettings manager at the firm’s Pimlico office. NB! NB! NB! Applications for a full-time Mayfair lettings manager are currently being considered!!!

Google Translate is an excellent tool for foreigners looking to rent a flat or a house in London. The translations are not by far perfect yet, and can even be quite funny but nevertheless – seems like it could  become very helpful for the renting business in the future.  There is a slight risk of total misunderstanding today, as many words are not translated correctly, so I can’t really advise the agents to put the links to the translated versions on their website.

To see Chard estate agent’s website in Spanish, click here.

We’ve translated “Apartment for rent in London” to all the languages that Google translates:

Albanian – apartament për ta marrë me qira në Londër
Arabic – شقة للإيجار في لندن
Bulgarian – Апартамент под наем в Лондон
Catalan – pis de lloguer a Londres
Chinese (simplified) – 出租公寓在伦敦
Chinese (traditional) – 出租公寓在倫敦
Croatian – Apartman za iznajmljivanje u Londonu
Czech – byt k pronájmu v Londýně
Danish – Lejlighed til leje i London
Dutch – appartement te huur in Londen
Estonian – korteri üür Londonis
Filipino – apartment para rentahan sa London
Finnish – huoneisto vuokrattavana Lontoossa
French – appartement à louer à Londres
Galician – apartamento para alugar en Londres
German – Wohnung zur Miete in London
Greek – διαμέρισμα προς ενοικίαση στο Λονδίνο
Hebrew – דירה להשכרה בלונדון
Hindi – लंदन में किराए के मकान
Hungarian – lakás kiadó Londonban
Indonesian – apartemen yang bisa disewa di London
Italian – appartamento in affitto a Londra
Japanese – ロンドンの賃貸アパート
Korean – 런던에 임대 아파트
Latvian – dzīvokļu īre Londonā
Lithuanian – Butas nuomai Londone
Maltese – appartament għall-kera London
Norwegian – Leilighet til leie i London
Polish – mieszkania do wynajęcia w Londynie
Portuguese – apartamento para alugar em Londres
Romanian – apartament de închiriat de la Londra
Russian – Квартира в аренду в Лондон
Serbian – Апартман за изнајмљивање у Лондону
Slovak – byt na prenájom v Londýne
Slovenian – apartma za najem v Londonu
Spanish – piso en alquiler en Londres
Swedish – lägenhet uthyres i London
Thai – อพาร์ทเมนต์สำหรับเช่าในลอนดอน
Turkish – Londra’da kiralık ev
Ukrainian – Квартира в оренду в Лондон
Vietnamese – căn hộ cho thuê ở London

More interesting details from our friends at FindaProperty.com!

Here is the list of top 20 London postcode areas searched by renters on FindaProperty.com in January 2009.

The most popular postcode W2 in the very heart of London covers areas such as Bayswater, Hyde Park, Marble Arch, Notting Hill, Paddington, Westbourne Green, Little Venice (part). Click here to see London W2 property to rent & area guide by FindaProperty.com.

More details from the portal’s kitchen: Winging It

Good question from our fellow twitterer Bill, who asks: “What does it say about a property if it makes it into the most viewed list?”

Mike O’Flynn, content editor of FindaProperty.com, explains:

With lettings, the top properties are no doubt driven by three key factors: price, location and recency.

However, there are some tips we provide to agents to help them maximize their ads – in a nutshell, the more detail in your ad the better. And the more up-to-date your listings the better.

At list level:
- Short description outlining the key features of the property
- A high quality photograph
- Where exactly the property is located. Ensure you use full postcodes so that distance from transport links appear

At full details level:
- More pictures – the more the better
- Additional info: Floor plans, Energy Performance Charts, Brochures
- Full postcode to ensure exact placement on map
- Detailed description: people want details – room dimensions, key features, some local information, etc.

FindaProperty.com is one of the most popular property portals that Londoners use. Read Winging It to get more inside information from the website’s team.

We are proud to present you some important numbers from the popular property portal FindaProperty.com.

Here are the top 20 of most viewed London rental properties in January 2009:

Jump to FindaProperty.com.

Property mogul Barbara Corcoran suggests the tenants in the United States to ask their landlords for:

- One to two months of free rent
- Flexible lease terms, including a month-to-month arrangement or an extended lease of two to three years
- A signing bonus that could include, for example, a $300 fee or a free refrigerator
- An apartment upgrade, including a better view or higher quality appliances
- Free amenities, such as a parking spot or gym

Source: MSNBC

Planning on seeing some apartments in London today?

First – good luck with commuting.

Secondly – make sure you read THIS in order to understand why the landlord is asking more questions than usual.

Hope the case will be resolved fast and fair.

Screenshot from EAT, edited.

I kept checking the date as I read this piece in the beloved Estate Agent Today.

People skiing on Vauxhall Bridge Rd (c) DPS Flickr

Skiing is not the only new and exciting sports for Londoners these days.

Apparently the latest craze is blackmailing the landlord who has failed to register the deposit within 14 days after signing the tenancy agreement. Daily Mail reports that for 3 times the deposit money many tenants are actually hoping and waiting for the landlord to miss the deadline to register or notify the tenants.

There’s no excuse for the landlord not following the procedures but that’s just ridiculous.

Now landlords are relieved to hear that a letting agency has just won a case against some students exploiting the loophole in the law, read it HERE.