Like it or not but from now on we will be introducing the letting agents’ offices in photos! Just to give the renters who are looking online some touch of reality.

First in the line is: CHESTERTON Covent Garden
Address: 196 Shaftesbury Avenue, London WC2H 8JF
Jump to Chesterton’s homepage.

Rental flats and houses by Chesterton can apparently also be found on property portals Rightmove.co.uk and FindaProperty.com.

Office location on the map:

Click here to see our large map.

Should you have some photos of London estate agent offices lying around - we would be more than glad to post them along with your credits. Send your photos to: info at royalsofrent dot com.

We already know that Polish renters prefer Hammersmith and Ealing but where do the preferences of other nationalities lie? EasyRoommate.com would know, and so they say that:

It is noticeable that Australians prefer Earl’s Court and Shepherd’s Bush.

No wonder Earl Court’s nickname is Kangaroo Valley! Facebook’s Aussies in London group members say that Shepherd’s Bush is the new Earl’s Court. Acton NW10 and Willesden Green NW10 are also said to be full of people from down under. Areas around Walkabout bars also seem to attract more Australians.

But how are they as tenants? I actually had an Australian flatmate a few years back. That free-spirited young man in his mid-twenties could be described as very polite, considerate, and very respectful towards his flatmates. Always paid his rent on time, never had problems with cleanliness. We managed to live under the same roof for 6 months very peacefully. If I had to, I’d give Australian tenants a rating of 9/10.

Facebook Groups: Aussies in London, Australians in London
Read Australian Times, the newspaper for Australians living in London
An Aussie in London Stories from expat in London
Gumtree Classifieds ads site, which is popular among Australians

Video from YouTube: brettedgerton

Historic Café Royal, which has occupied 68 Regent Street for 143 years, will close to the public for good at the end of this year, reports the London Paper.

Israeli developers Alrov bought a 125-year lease on the site for £90 million from Crown Estates, and have no plans to keep operating the legendary Café Royal – which has played host to the likes of Oscar Wilde, Cary Grant and Elizabeth Taylor over the years. Instead, many of its decadent private rooms will become hotel bedrooms in the redevelopment.

Nightclubs Chinawhite, Paper & Dolce also got an eviction notice and need to move. Read all about it here.

A new research by Deposit Protection Service (DPS) disproves the common myth that tenants and landlords are always at odds. According to the new poll the vast majority of tenants get on just great with their residential landlord!

The new figures show that:

- 84 percent of tenants get on well with their landlord and
- nearly a quarter of these described their relationship with their landlord as ‘fantastic,’ while
- 39 percent of tenants described their relationship as ‘OK’.
- Only 16 percent of respondents said that they did not have a good relationship with their landlord.

We have been lucky with landlords, or maybe we’re just such good understanding tenants, as we are definitely in the group that describes their relationship with the landlord as just fabulous!

Via: Residential Landlord
Absolutely Fabulous friends poster from Urban Posters

Telegraph reveals the location and details of the home Miss Hilton was renting in Hampstead N6. Apparently the house was also used to film the British version of her new TV-series Paris Hilton’s My New BFF. Fans rejoice - the 8-bedroom recently refurbished house on Hampstead Lane is now available to rent for £4250 per week!

The house, refurbished by developer Harrison Varma, was chosen because it “felt modern and aspirational”, says producer Jake Attwell. “The light and airy spaces gave ample room for camera crews to work around contestants. The heated pool added to the luxury lifestyle we were creating, and a gated property meant security and privacy.” It has had an even starrier neighbour: Pierce Brosnan lived next door while playing James Bond.

Estate agent Savills describe the house as an impressive ambassadorial residence. Newly refurbished 8 double-bedroom (5 en-suite) house over three floors with large private garden, swimming pool, tennis court and off street parking.

The photos of the interior above are from a Savills ad, which you can see here.

Read also:
Famous London Tenants: Paris Hilton RoR
What Can You Rent For £7500 Per Week In Hampstead? RoR

In the past 3 months the number of investors seeking help from Landlord Action, a company that specialises in evicting bad tenants, has jumped 25 per cent, reports Landlordzone.co.uk.

‘As unemployment rises, so do the rate of rent arrears. It happened in the last recession and it will again,’ says Paul Shamplina, whose company serves 15 eviction notices a day.

Make sure you pay your rent is paid on time! Landlords are very sensitive to any arrears at the moment. Extra sensitive are those rookie/forced landlords, who depend on the rent to cover their mortgage payments.

The Evictors, Landlordzone.co.uk

The latest Halifax survey reveals most expensive residential streets in England and Wales based on property sale transactions made from 2004 to 2008.

The most expensive residential street in Britain is The Vale in Kensington and Chelsea, London SW3.

This was the least expensive rental I found available in The Vale, from Primelocation.com. 1-bed flat for £450 per week, offered by Chard.

The most expensive one was a 5-bedroom house. Offered by WA Ellis.

Telegraph lead us to an organisation called Residential Property Tribunal Service, which provides an independent and fair tribunal service for resolving disputes between landlords and tenants. Participants don’t need a lawyer, they can represent themselves, and in the majority of cases they don’t have to pay any court fees later, as the problem gets solved.

The service does not have the power to deal with all types of dispute about rents, and cannot become involved in disputes about commercial property. They resolve issues with:

- Rent When the landlords want one figure and the tenants want another;
- Service charge When tenants dispute the maintenance charges for the common parts;
- Buying the freehold When tenants can’t agree a price with the landlords;
- Leasehold extension When a tenant wants to extend their lease at a new rate;
- Breach of lease When landlords say a tenant has breached his lease, and the tenant disagrees;
- Right to buy When local authority landlords won’t sell to the tenants.

On their website they have a record of the decisions they have made on their file, if you want to have a look.

Hoping to see a bit more of the surrounding area, we decided to take a bus there. Hopped on no. 49 in Kensington, which took us straight to Shepherd’s Bush tube station (central line), and Westfield, which is just next to it. The traffic was terrible on Sunday around 3pm but it gave us more time to explore the residential property on one of the roads that lead to the newest and biggest shopping centre.

The bus moved  v e r y  slowly on Holland Road W14, allowing us to take some pictures. Most of the houses on this street looked as if they were abandoned. We didn’t see more than maybe 2 people on the street.

The positive side to living on this street would be it’s proximity to shopping facilities, and the short 5-10 minute walk to the tube station. Bus station in front of your house, and the traffic jams in such narrow street could be very disturbing though.

Beautiful period houses in bad condition.

Will Westfield’s completion help renovate Holland Road?

Globrix found us some 35 rental property offers at Holland Road W14:
1-beds from £290 per week
2-beds from £375 per week
3-beds from £550 per week

Looking at Westfield from in front of the tube station.

Lounge area. People sipping on champagne in the middle of the day.

The Village (designer shops) area was created by leading US architects Michael Gabellini and Kimberly Sheppard.

Glass roof.

HOBBs store.

Touchscreen guide of the mall.

Would be interesting to see what Holland Road looks like in 2 years time.

The key points for the new RICS UK Residential Lettings Survey Q3 2008:

- Growth in new instructions outpace growth in tenant demand;
- Rents fall for the first time since April 2003 while rental expectations drop to the lowest level on record;
- Gross yields rise as house price falls outpace rental falls.

Here’s are some comments from the London market experts:

Christopher Ames MRICS, Best Gapp & Cassells [Belgravia]
“I would like to give you figures, but haven’t let anything. Asking prices have come down, but there is
nobody looking.”

Mrs Caroline Appleby MRICS, John G Dean [Balham]
“As tenants have a larger choice of properties, it is important that the property is in good condition and is
offered at the correct rental level. Anything that is in a tired condition seems to be rejected.”

Richard Beltran Esq, Chancellors [St John's Wood]
“Fewer applicants are registering in the area, which is a direct result of the financial instability in the
economy: many of our applicants work in banking and choose St John’s Wood because of its closeness to Canary Wharf by tube. Demand for properties over £1000 p/w is slower, but still very busy between £300-£700 p/w”

James Gubbins MRICS, Dauntons [Pimlico/Westminster]
“Renters are not looking to spend as much. Supply is outstripping demand. Rents are reducing as vendors turn to Rentals.”

Benjamin Sloane, Chancellors [Highgate Village]
“There is very little activity on properties renting above £600 per week.”

Tim Henson FRICS, Clarke Hillyer [Walthamstow]
“Typically more owners are choosing to let out their properties as opposed to selling. A lot of people have over-mortgaged and can’t afford to rent out their properties for less than that figure. In the last month or so the market has deadened dramatically, even for lettings, making it harder to achieve the market prices.”

Jeremy Leaf FRICS, Jeremy Leaf & Co [East Finchley]
“Supply and demand for rented flats and houses increased, particularly in the last few months in response
to weakness in the sales market. However, concerns about unemployment have meant that rents have softened and some contracts have been cancelled or not been renewed recently. We expect supply and demand to be more in balance over the coming months as lender rates, as well as mortgage lending criteria, ease.”

Edward Reeve BSc FRICS, Edward Reeve [Pimlico]
“Rents for one & two bedroom flats in the £1350-£2000 per month range have increased but it is apparent there is less demand for higher priced flats over £2600 per month and rents are falling. One recent letting at £2,900 per month was achieved after a 2 month void. The previous letting was £3,445 per month.”

Ben Temple BSc MRICS, Temples (Clapham) Limited [Clapham]
“Summer seemed to have come early this year and then tailed off. We were busier than normal in the early summer months and then quieter in September and October. We have seen an increase in the supply of property, vacancy rates have increased, and rents have started to fall, particularly for larger properties.”

Mark Wilson MRICS, Globe Apartments [London]
“Batten down the hatches. Landlords should expect rents to continue to fall as tenants’ effective demand reduces. Added supply will add to the problem.”

Couple of interesting services on their website caught our eye:

Value Tenant enables prospective Tenants to meet financial rating requirements through electronic means, without the need of documentary proof, which is often time-consuming and frustrates the process of quickly finding a property for rent or to share. Price £18.99.

IDTenant Prospective Landlords or Tenants are able to establish proof of identity remotely, using an authentication index. Price: £6.99.

You can then post your profile on the site, and show the badges of these certification there, although it’s not mandatory.

They have about 100 properties for rent in London, and just one tenant profile at the moment. Not sure if these are all from private landlords as most ads have reoccurring first names in the contacts.

Have you used this site? Successfully?

Let us know if you have!

Ad in Loot, the classifieds paper, which contains rental listings as well. Published 3 times a week, and costs £1.50.

Here are the traits that every landlord dreams of:

1. Pays the rent on time every month;
2. Treats the property with respect;
3. Is happy to look after the garden, if there is one;
4. Does minor maintenance himself. All the little jobs around the house is the tenants responsibility, and not that of the agent or landlord;
5. Stays for long long term - more than 6 months;
6. Leaves the property in the condition that they found it;
7. Understands that the agent/landlord cannot spirit boiler parts out of the air.

So keep those things in mind if you want the landlord to be top-notch, make sure you are doing everything right on your side, too.

And it isn’t just a nose-job!

What’s changed? From Rightmove.co.uk:

Improved search

* Use maps to find your location
* Search for detached, semi-detached and terraced houses
* Find properties specifically with parking or a garden
* Filter for auction, “part buy, part rent”, retirement properties and more
* See your search results simplified (number of properties with gardens / parking etc)

New ‘myRightmove’

* myRightmove is now your one-stop shop for everything Rightmove. See your saved properties, manage email alerts and more in one place.
* Stay signed in between visits to the site.

Technology

* Updated technology. More features to come in 2009.

Jump to Rightmove to test it out.

Quite a few London letting agents have started to provide feeds of the flats and houses they offer on their website. We recommend this option to those of you who don’t like receiving offers by E-mail. I must say that of those 5-6 rental update lists that are sent to me during the day - I rarely look at them before deleting.

Using Google Reader suits me personally much better - it’s so much more comfortable than the HTML letter in my Outlook inbox. The only downside with RSS is that you can usually filter the offers by areas only, not by the number of rooms or by any other specification. So using the reader can be a bit time consuming, be warned. But it is ideal if you are unsure about what you want to rent. Some sites, like Primelocation.com, do allow you to refine the feed.

Here is a screen capture of estate agent Foxtons‘ listing in my reader:

If you want to subscribe to RSS feeds from Foxtons - just pick an area, and then look for this sign on the right side of the listings’ page. Click on it to subscribe.

Here is our small collection of RSS feeds for London rentals. Click on them to subscribe:

Belgravia properties for rent by Foxtons
Camden properties for rent by Foxtons
Clerkenwell properties for rent by Winkworth
Crouch End properties for rent by Winkworth
Hampstead AND surrounding areas properties for rent by Foxtons
Islington properties for rent by Winkworth
Kensington properties for rent by Winkworth
Knightsbridge & Chelsea properties for rent by Winkworth
London latest properties for rent by Knight Frank
Notting Hill properties for rent by Winkworth
Paddington and Bayswater properties for rent by Winkworth
Pimlico & Westminster properties for rent by Winkworth
Shoreditch properties for rent by Winkworth
South Kensington properties for rent by Winkworth
St James Park properties for rent in Primelocation.com
St John’s Wood properties for rent by Winkworth
West End W1, WC1, WC2 properties for rent by Winkworth
Willesden Green properties for rent by Winkworth

Which way do you prefer to get listing updates? Please vote in the POLL section on the right hand side of the page!

Attention, teenagers, and others young at heart - if you’ve never heard of tenancy deposit protection before, click here.

Staying in is the new going out, declares MailOnline, and it’s true.

What does this mean for renters? Are we no longer visiting the estate agent’s offices? Can we rent an apartment without leaving home?

FINDING A RENTAL
Property portals and agent websites have become quite advanced, and we have no problem finding a selection of seemingly suitable places without leaving home.

WHAT’S MISSING? We need to get a better feel of our future home. Floorplans with exact measurements can help but it’s not enough. Videos are the good. 3D visualisations would be excellent but the making of them is time consuming and expensive.

It is also difficult to know the area without being there, although it is very important that you do. It will take time for  Google Earth to develop into something like Second Life but until then, satellite photo maps are good for exploring the surroundings. Lauren sent us a link to Earthware’s streetviews (see Picadilly Circus here) - you can now take a virtual stroll on some of London’s streets.

SIGNING THE CONTRACT
Even though I see a lot of risks with that, there is no problem with getting the initial contract signed without having to go to an estate agent’s office or without meeting the landlord. The renter usually just has to provide copy of the ID, references, and transfer a deposit. It is however very risky, in our opinion. How can you be sure you are talking to the right person, and not some fraudster? We’ve heard too many horror stories to trust anyone.

WHAT’S MISSING? Some sort of verification system. It would be great if somehow I could be sure that this person/firm has indeed got the right to rent this apartment to me, that there is an apartment, that the bank details he/she gives me are indeed correct. We could seal the deal without ever leaving home.

We would definitely use Gumtree again, if they could only verify the advertisers somehow.

Some things will always be worth the walk - like Chard’s new office in Fulham Broadway - it looks so pretty on the outside:)

Our question was: Which property website do YOU think London tenants should use for searching rental flats and houses from estate agents?

We hear it’s wise to search from more than just one website these days - some agents use only Globrix, some only FindaProperty.com.

With that poll we were hoping to clarify which ones are the best to use today, in order to avoid wasting time on sites that are, for example, still in very early stages of development or maybe don’t have as much choice of rentals.

So here are the top 3 property websites that our readers suggested:

1. Primelocation.com 43 votes
2. FindaProperty.com 39 votes
3. Globrix 8 votes

These are the 3 websites renters should use or start with when looking to rent an apartment or house in London (from an agent). The rest of the results can be found here.

While I understand that most of the voters must have been representing one or the other website nominated - the result matches our current preferences. Obviously they are working hard on informing the end users!

Here are some comments from the people behind the websites:

Poppy Dinsey said:

Yes, I am completely biased because I work at Globrix…but I spend a lot of time on all of these property sites and as a renter in London I genuinely think Globrix is the best for would-be London tenants.

The main reason I think Globrix is better is that you get the best picture of what’s available, we’ve got fantastic market coverage of London rentals. Then of course there’s the fact you can search by specific road names and specific key features…balcony, designer kitchen, roof terrace etc. You get direct access to the letting agent, no annoying forms that keep you stuck on Globrix forever. And of course, you can search by ‘freshness’, in the fast moving London rentals market, knowing that an ad is less than a week old is important to many searchers. On so many of the incumbent portals, you can be looking at rental ads that were filled with tenants months ago.

Michael O’Flynn said:

In reply to Poppy above, think I should point out that:

1. Here on FindaProperty.com we have had a recency filter on our search for some years now - people searching for London rentals (and we have massively comprehensive coverage - over 55,000 properties advertised at present) can filter by last 24 hours, last 3 days, last week, last month.

2. We have full contact details of agents on the site … email addresses and telephone numbers. Globrix don’t. They send you out to the agents’ sites so you then have to waste time navigating lots of differently designed sites to find these details/register with agent etc …

3. We don’t have ‘annoying forms’ - to register (which you don’t need to do to use the site) you only need to add an email address, name and password.

4. You can register with us to have email alerts matching your requirements delivered direct to your inbox - which really is useful in the fast moving London rentals market

It’ll be interesting to see how the poll results pan out!

Thanks
Michael O’Flynn

Ben said:

In order to justify which website to use for your rentals, if you are in the market to find a rental I would use as many as i can - spending 10 minutes on each and saving your contacts and contacting them by email or phone - all these websites survive by you looking at them and more importanly contcating them via the websites.. try and remember this when looking at portals. DOnt just call them direct without respecting the portals business.

In terms of choise - Findaproperty & Primelocation is a great start to look for rentals - one for the whole general market - and Primelocation maybe listing properties of a special nature mid to high end renters…

Good luck in your search - Long live the portals..

for now the numbers speak for themselves

Ben.

Raj Doofitz said:

The choice between Primelocation and Findaproperty is the only one the searcher need to make, and that is relative to their needs. Primelocation has 400,000 properties and more than 100,000 international properties which is great for the luxury property searches or investment property potentials or quality agents to secure rental accommodations, whereas the FAP site tend to be more affordable properties. So I suppose it depends on the user’s needs.

Both sites are easy to use and offer Email Alert services to make your search a lot easier, make the sites work for you whilst you are of doing something more pleasurable like shopping for furniture for your new pad…

Singer/goddess Leona Lewis has decided to buy the apartment she was renting in Hackney (East London), as her landlord had to sell, according to Virgin Media.

Excellent news for Hackney Borough!

While we have no idea which part of the council she resides, one of my favourite areas in Hackney is London Fields E8 (see photo above). There’s the park, Lido pools, Broadway Market, rows of Victorian terraced homes… and very reasonable prices!

Via: theRatandMouse
Image: Leona Lewis official website

Here’s a piece of BBC Watchdog’s story:

Before he arrived in the UK, Emily had asked Lazaros to prove he had the funds to pay for the flat. To do this, she asked him to use Western Union to transfer the 1st month’s rent and the deposit to someone he knew - even to himself if he wanted. All Emily wanted to see was the receipt for the transfer which would show Lazaros did actually have enough money. So Lazoros transferred £660 to himself and sent Emily the receipt as she requested. When Lazaros discovered that his flat wasn’t for rent, and that Emily Brown didn’t exist, he went back to Western Union to retrieve his £660. But it had gone. Someone had already withdrawn the money.

Read more…