Planning and construction Westminster
Starts in the borough were up a mere 12%, but what was lacking in quantity was more than made up for in quality – so much so that we need consider only one scheme: n Fitzroy Place, Mortimer Street, W1 Kaupthing, Aviva and Exemplar: we have written at length about this scheme in past reports, let’s just say that the path to construction start has been somewhat tortuous. In MIPIM this year EG News quoted CBRE’s Mark Collins on sales at the development which neatly sums up the current state of play: CBRE and Savills are targeting investors in
Turkey and Nigeria to buy the remaining flats at this scheme. At MIPIM, Mark Collins, chairman of residential at CBRE, said a double-digit batch of the luxury apartments at the £750m development by Aviva, Exemplar and Kaupthing have just sold, leaving only 50 remaining. Collins will now visit Nigeria to market the remaining assets after companies such as Berkeley proved successful in selling in the African country. Only around 30% of the homes have been sold to UK buyers. "This is the largest-scale project in this part
of London in more than 50 years and will be a new landmark. Traditionally some overseas buyers, such as Middle Eastern investors, would focus on golden residential postcodes, such as in Knightsbridge, but we are now finding the second generation are looking further afield, in areas such as the South Bank," said Collins. He added that Brazil would also be a target for marketing other residential developments in the capital. One of the themes which unifies all of the above schemes is that all could have started construction in one form or another at least four or five years ago. This, as we shall see later, will be a recurring theme among the 2012 starts. So the question is: why now? Yes, many schemes were stalled due to the collapse of the initial developer, and yes, many of the developers now active
have gone through a period of fiscal restructuring further delaying construction start on these sites. But the fact remains that if there was no demand, then none of these developments would have started. In the super-prime areas we can almost take it for
granted that the units will be/have been acquired by the cash-rich. The market rumour that some of the sales at 10 Trinity Square have been to investors who already own apartments in One Hyde Park speaks volumes. But if we look at the fringes of these prime areas we see a similar kind of buyer profile. On the northern periphery of Kensington & Chelsea, for example, lies Portobello Square in W10, to the east of Wormwood Scrubs, being developed by the private arm of Catalyst Housing, Catalyst by Design. Investors have acquired around 70% of the units and
the second phase was taken overseas to Asia at the end of March 2013. On the City fringes, Telford Homes is redeveloping the Holland Estate on Commercial Street, re-christened Cityscape. The initial launch was in Hong Kong. Although we are only looking in detail at three
boroughs here, the number of starts in inner London has increased almost across the board, with the greatest increases in the inner, more prime postcodes. Consider Southwark (Map 1): in 2011 there were
precisely two starts in SE1, totalling 34 units; at the end of 2012 there were 14 starts, totalling 522 units. In Tower Hamlets, the biggest provider of
construction starts (over 32% of the total), the largest increases were in the E1 and E14 postcodes, and the biggest single start was also the most important. Ballymore’s New Providence Tower contains all the hallmarks of 2012 starts, a long-fallow oven-ready site starting as a result of financial restructuring (the sale of the Baltimore Wharf tower site to Galliard and Frogmore may well have played a part). However, it is not the tower itself which is important; rather, it is what it heralds – a glimpse of the future.
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