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LONDON PULSE

pulse

P London

rime

central

This month

Sheila Manchester explores

the most glorious properties in this golden city

P

rime Central London – this is ‘property speak’ for the most desirable addresses in the world’s favourite city. Several postcodes make up this area, SW1, 3, 5, 7 and 10, plus

W8 and W14, more attractively known as Westminster, St James, Pimlico, Belgravia, Chelsea, Knightsbridge, Kensington, Notting Hill and Holland Park. In these London ‘villages’ lie leafy

squares, sumptuous crescents, secret streets and hidden mews where horses once slept – now expensive but cosy little escapes from the frenetic but elegant London scene. Westminster – home to English politics

and politicians, with mansion blocks and river views. St James’ – all palaces and parks and Pimlico, which isn’t all gorgeous; you have to know where to look. Belgravia – simply beautiful, with a

breathtaking selection of properties from the traditional white stucco fronted listed mansions of Eaton Square (£27 million) to the glistening new Foster & Partners designed / Candy brothers decorated and furnished apartments in Chesham Place (£39 million). Belgravia’s Squares have huge flags flying on the world’s finest embassies, extravagant window boxes filled with geraniums and the bay trees on the porches are simply mandatory. Knightsbridge – so much more than

just Harrods, several lovely squares, big mansion blocks and a surprising variety of architecture, with more stucco nudging bright red brick Dutch gabled buildings. Sloane Square, Cadogan Square, Lowndes Square, so many desirable homes. Chelsea – its charm lies in its reputation

as the home to both dukes and dustmen. Maybe so, but buying a home here is still pricey, the least expensive properties are still over £200,000 and you might have to leave the cat somewhere else. It is also said that 50 per cent of homes in Chelsea is unlived in for most of the year; some of it is, of course, squatted instead but the locals don’t really chat about that. South Kensington, in SW5 with its neighbour, Earls Court, is another rather

PRIME CENTRAL LONDON

IT’S TERRIFYINGLY EXPENSIVE, FRENETIC BUT PEACEFUL AND UTTERLY BEAUTIFUL

SUMMARY OF PROPERTIES FOR SALE IN LONDON ON

www.primelocation.com 15 January 2010

Total for sale in Central London: 4618 Lowest priced home for sale: £150,000 Highest priced home: £39.25 million

SUMMARY OF PROPERTIES TO LET IN LONDON ON

www.primelocation.com 15 January 2010

Total properties to let in London: 12,267 Lowest rent listed: £443 pcm

Highest rent listed: £40,000 per week

‘pick and mix’ area. Sometimes described as ‘Saudi Ken’ – but only in the posh parts – or Kangaroo Valley; South Ken is also home to students, backpackers and other transient workers. However, South Ken has its share of beauties as well, with ‘The Phillimores’, a lovely enclave of Victorian villas, one of which is for sale, needing total refurbishment, for £20 million. Holland Park is more of the same, with superb houses and apartments. The good news is that it is possible to find a family home with a garden for less than £1 million, which is something to remember if the Liberal party is, perchance, elected. And then, Notting Hill, made

memorable by its annual Carnival and the rather more soppy movie of the same name starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts. Notting Hill is cosmopolitan, celebrity studded, trendy, noisy and irresistable. Extensive gentrification has taken this area from bijou, to, dare we say it, a little brassy but somehow it keeps its feet on the ground with the wonderful Portobello market and blend of ethnic cafes and smart bars. And that famous ‘blue door’ of the bookshop is long gone.

Oh, London is a fine town, A very famous city, Where all the streets are paved with gold,

And all the maidens pretty.’

— George Colman the Younger

22 FEBRUARY 2010 PROPERTYdrum PROPERTYdrum FEBRUARY 2010 23

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RESIDENTIALlettings

PROPERTYdrum

Holiday let – safe bet

A

s the property market was spiralling downwards before Christmas 2008, a remarkable thing happened. A rundown, end of terrace cottage with

no garden sold for a reputed £600,000. That would have been a miracle, had

the property not been in Cornwall, overlooking the River Fowey as it races into the sea. Anyone unfamiliar with the holiday lettings market might still have thought the buyer had more money than sense. However, the modernised cottage at the other end of that terrace commands £1,400 a week at the height of the holiday season, is almost always fully booked and even in the dark, chilly days of November pulls in a healthy £425 a week. No wonder the holiday home market

still looks like a good bet. Homeowners who let the properties have been able to claim a generous raft of allowances against tax, a fact which has not gone unnoticed by a Government desperate to claw in every penny it can to fill a bottomless black hole in the Treasury. The next budget is widely expected to hit holiday home owners hard,

although is too early to predict how many may decide it’s not worth the candle and sell up. Any departures may well be greeted with delight in areas which have seen property prices rise beyond the reach of the locals, or suffer from falling school numbers thanks to a seasonal, non resident population. However, at present, the returns easily outperform most conventional investments. Even in areas less showy than Cornwall,

holiday homeowners have done well. On Hayling Island, Hampshire, an owner can gross £10,000 a year on a £160,000 seafront flat, says Roy Pine, Managing Director of Millers. The firm began more than 60 years ago as a holiday letting agency, but gradually developed into sales, regular letting and holiday letting. “Back then we had 90 self catering

properties on the books and we weren’t the only people in the business,” says Pine. “Hayling was known as Reading by the Sea, as this was the nearest thing to a beach for the

Hayling Island – sea views equal good yields

With ‘stay-cation’ all the rage, UK holiday letting is a great place to go to get away from the gloom, says Rosalind Russell.

‘It will be interesting next summer when the Laser World

Sailing Championships are being held, as they have 600 entries and they will all have to stay somewhere.’

ROY PINE MANAGING DIRECTOR, MILLERS

Thames Valley. There used to be six holiday camps, now there are three and they are adults-only. We are down to a dozen properties, which will be

interesting next summer when the Laser World Sailing Championships are being held, as they have 600 entries and they will all have to stay somewhere.”

A holiday letting on Hayling in

summer can pull in £600 a week, as opposed to a regular long let

which gets that amount in a

month. However, says Pine, there is no demand for holiday lets on Hayling in the winter, unlike

other more high profile tourist areas which peak again at Christmas and New Year.

“The optimum letting unit is a two-

bedroom flat with a sea view,” says Pine.

“The trick is to spend the least money to get the best results. So you would be better off buying two flats at £150,000 each, than a £300,000 house, because you will get a higher return. However, they would have to be of a high standard. That is what people expect these days.”

Some residential estate agencies new

to holiday letting management have found diversifying has added value to the business. People who have come to rent for a holiday have enjoyed the area enough to actually buy there, through the same agent. Guy Leonard & Co. in West Sussex is a long established residential agency,

52 FEBRUARY 2010 PROPERTYdrum

but launched a sister company, Amberley House Cottage Holidays last June. Headed up by Andrew Gardner who moved over from the financial services sector, it is filling a gap in the market on the South Downs. Although national holiday cottage firms do have properties in the area, few have people on the ground with local knowledge. “I was born in the county,” says Gardner. “I can explain about the area to people who call and we give the personal touch. Also a lot of holiday home owners get tied into contracts with big holiday lettings companies and get charged a lot of money. We are smaller and can be competitive, the owners can use the properties on their terms.” The firm currently has 28 properties

on its books, ranging from a Georgian townhouse in Arundel to a studio cottage next to a farmhouse, surrounded by a moat. When they carried out a survey, they

‘We are smaller and can be competitive, the owners can

use the properties on their terms.’

andrew gardner

amberley house cottage holidays

The weakness of the pound has kept holidaymakers in the UK, boosting the lettings sector in 2009

with organisations including ARLA and RICS, and it is used by several hundred customers. Although our system is used by the residential lettings market as a whole, the accountancy side of it is one of its great strengths for individuals and smaller companies. “Overseas investors, who own a cottage

found their ideal holiday home renters were the kind of people who read the Telegraph and Sunday Times, and also magazines produced by the RSPB, the National Trust and Waitrose. The company will, says Gardner, be trying to reach different markets too. “We are looking for charming properties

and want to present a certain quality,” he says. “I feel very bullish about its success.” CFP, the Cornish-based market leaders

in software, produce a special holiday lettings programme, a boon for for firms as well as individual owners. Peter Everett, General Manager explains,

“It is a niche market but we have a large market share,” he says. “We have developed the product over 10 years, it is compliant

in the UK which they let out, find it especially useful, as the software calculates the rentals and the liability to the Inland Revenue. If you fall foul of the tax laws, you could be in serious trouble. Of course, the system is also used to track bookings and operate a diary system. It works for everybody whether they have only three or four properties, or one of the larger customers managing a sophisticated portfolio of hundreds.” Since CFP first started, the holiday

lettings market has become much more professional, so even owners running a one-man show have to meet the expectations of renters used to an efficient, quick online response. Rightmove, which also operates

holidaylettings.co.uk reports the holiday lettings market has proven buoyant through challenging economic times. “There are two beneficiaries – the

homeowners and the holidaymakers,” says their spokeswoman. “Increasingly, long standing second home owners are realising the intrinsic value lying in a home they

PROPERTYdrum FEBRUARY 2010 53

magazine is essential reading for anyone in the property business, so you can’t afford to miss an issue.

10FebPD 52-54Holiday.GL.indd 1 20/1/10 23:38:21 10FebPD 52-54Holiday.GL.indd 2 20/1/10 23:38:51

JOBS

VACANCIES CAREERS

RECRUITMENT APPOINTMENTS

JOBS

VACANCIES CAREERS

RECRUITMENT APPOINTMENTS

JOBS

VACANCIES CAREERS

RECRUITMENT APPOINTMENTS

Recruitment: experts advise

Recruitment: experts advise

Need a change of staff? Recruitment is no easy job, says Andrea Kirkby

R

ecruiting is never an easy job. It takes time and it takes effort – effort which a lot of estate agents wish

they were putting into getting instructions, or making sales, rather than trying to hire a negotiator. Fortunately estate agents don’t

have to do all the work themselves – unless they want to. The growth of specialist recruitment agencies supplying the property sector allows them to outsource at least part of the recruitment process. Using a recruitment agency

should, at the very least, save time spent looking at hopelessly unsuitable candidates’ CVs.

Annette Farrell of Estate Agency Recruitment

(left) says she regularly sees

employers who have spent weeks sorting through hundreds of online candidates and sometimes interviewing as many as 30 candidates – and still have not found anyone suitable. It’s only after wasting that time that the estate agents call her! However Simon Mortlock,

sales director at Curchods, is not convinced by this argument. He says “It doesn’t take me too long to work out from a CV whether this is someone we want to see, or not. There are some immediate things I look for – sifting mechanisms like the cover note – so it takes me 30 seconds to sift through.” He prefers to recruit direct, and says he has found Curchods gets a good quality of candidate by doing so.

CONTACTS, CONTACTS, CONTACTS

Recruitment agencies can save time in another way, though. While an estate agent typically starts the recruitment process with advertising and has to go through the stages of shortlisting, then interviewing and finally making a job offer, recruitment agencies already have a database of suitable candidates, so they can short-cut the process. Annette Farrell says, “We have been known to fill roles within 24 hours of being instructed,” though she admits that even with a full contacts book it can sometimes take months to fill senior, specialist roles. One of the main things a

recruitment agency’s clients are paying for is its contacts database.

60 FEBRUARY 2010 PROPERTYdrum

Joshua Rayner, MD of Dove & Hawk, (left)

says the company gets over 50 per cent

of its hires from recommendations, not from advertising – something few estate agents would be able to do. He regularly attends awards evenings and other property industry events, so he knows many of the people he’s dealing with personally. At the same time, he says,

a specialised agency should know the sector and understand exactly what’s needed. General agencies like Reed can be good for administrative jobs. “We use Reed to put those jobs online,” he says, but they don’t work well for key sales roles. “A McDonald’s branch manager is different from an estate agency branch manager. Just because you can run one doesn’t mean you can run the other!” He points out that he’s a former estate agent, so he understands the job, and knows the way the market works. He also believes general

agencies fail to understand their clients well enough. For instance, he says, someone who is going to fit in well at Savills or Hamptons just isn’t going to work for “the little one branch office that wants a bit of a Del Boy”. The general recruitment agency

is often driven by volume business – one PA or part qualified accountant is much the same as another and one client is much the same as another as far as they’re concerned. Specialised recruiters, on the other hand, are more likely to take time building relationships. Annette Farrell says, “We

genuinely understand the client’s business and have researched their company culture.” She believes this is crucial to getting the right person and sometimes, she says, the recruitment agency can be a better judge than the agent. “We are fortunate to have built up excellent relationships with our clients over the years, to the extent that we can often arrange interviews for exceptional candidates on the strength of our recommendation,” she says. “Good candidates and new clients can come from many different sources, but we do find that personal recommendation is the most consistent of all and produces the highest calibre of candidate.” Like Joshua Rayner, she believes

Pay by:

This has a cost – generally from 10 to 20 per cent of the first year’s salary, which is a hefty bill.’

general agencies miss many of the subtleties of the market. “A high street recruiter is unlikely to fully understand the difference between a block manager, an estate manager, an asset manager and a residential property manager,” she says, so they are likely to put forward candidates whose expertise and experience is not the best match for the job.

FINDING THE VERY BEST CANDIDATES

Another big difference between the best specialists and the more general recruitment agencies is the proactive work that the specialists carry out to find the best candidates, rather than waiting for them to contact the recruiter. For instance, Dove & Hawk’s local consultants ‘mystery shop’ in local High Street agents, trying to identify the best people in the market. “We headhunt,” Joshua Rayner

says. “A lot of people just use Total Jobs or Monster, but we go out and find people. Everyone wants people with local expertise, and that’s what we can find.” He also points out that regular

clients benefit from the fact that Dove & Hawk belongs to the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, and benefits from its legal and other resources. It can help clients with enquiries from employment law to typical pay levels within a sector. But of course, this assistance

has a cost – generally from 10 to 20 per cent of the first year’s salary, which is a fairly hefty bill working out at several thousand pounds per employee. There’s some evidence that recruitment

agencies are recognising how much a disincentive this can be – for instance Dove & Hawk will be starting an online business. “Online is a cheaper business you can use with a monthly subscription basis,” Joshua Rayner says; he points out, too, that for his regular business, all placements are given a four week trial, “so if it doesn’t work out in the first month you get a 100 per cent rebate.” Estate agents who really want

to cut costs might consider one of the online recruitment boards, such as Monster Jobs or Totaljobs. However, while flat fees of £99 to £200 look attractive – there are even bulk deals available for multiple job postings – that’s purely for advertising. Few of these sites offer more than very cursory checking of candidates’ suitability, and none of them handle first interviews or full shortlisting.

TIME… OR MONEY?

The cost is probably one of the major reasons why Simon Mortlock is happy to do his own recruiting; his methods use a bit of his time, but very little money. “We have an incredibly low attrition rate,” he says, “so we don’t need to do a lot of marketing.” He uses the Curchods website, as well as the old estate agent trick of putting a notice in the shop window, which seems to get a good response. It attracts good quality candidates, too. “We have some pretty clued up people coming along.” There’s a good case for using

a mix of resources – perhaps using specialised agencies for more senior jobs and more experienced candidates, while going direct for

PROPERTYdrum FEBRUARY 2010 61

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