Now for the good mews

Enterprising owners, architects and developers are bringing mews houses into the 21st century, with stunning results, says Christopher Middleton

We ought to look down on mews houses. After all, they were designed for horses and servants: inferior accommodation, hidden from view behind the main house. But we don’t. In fact, quite the opposite has happened. London mews are some of the capital’s most desirable addresses: pretty, peaceful and almost uniquely British. Neither are they static pieces of architectural history. Enterprising developers are turning these most traditional of buildings into stunning 21st-century homes, and buyers cannot get enough of them.

Simon Fenwick’s home on Princes Mews, Bayswater, is just such an example. It looks textbook from the outside. Go inside, however, and you walk off the cobbled street into an airy, open-plan room, more modern art gallery than parlour.

Look down, and you can see through a glass floor into the basement; look up, and you can see through a series of transparent stairs and skylights, to the sky. It’s as un-Victorian as you can get, as indeed is the price tag: a shade under £2.7 million. Not that this is London’s most expensive mews house by any means. One is going in Belgravia for £7.5 million, while if you want a big house for yourself and somewhere handy for the servants, then £25 million will secure you a mansion-with-mews combination in Cadogan Square, Knightsbridge.

In fact, such is our love of these peculiar little streets that it’s increasingly hard to find a mews property for less than £1 million, and that’s not just in the more famous postcodes. There is a mews house in North Kensington, next to a petrol station and beneath the Westway flyover. Its price? £1.45 million. Proof, if more were needed, that mews houses are having a Cinderella moment. Estate agents can’t get enough of them on their books.

“Across prime central London, there is a real shortage of mews houses. Competition is fierce,” says Camilla Dell, managing partner at Black Brick, a property-search agency. “We had an Italian client recently who was looking for a secure second home in London, but we found that many apartment buildings wouldn’t accept her dog. In the end, the solution was to buy her a lovely mews house near Hyde Park, for £2.78 million. But we had to pay the asking price and move quickly.”

Many buyers are reaching the same conclusion, also reasoning that the freehold you often get on a mews house is a better bet than the leasehold common with other high-end London residences.

“With a freehold , buyers can lock up and leave the house as they want, because they don’t have a huge annual service charge,” says Alan Waxman. His firm, Landmass, has just spent two years converting a house in Belgrave Mews North. Freeholders also have greater scope for building works. Another factor that sets mews properties apart is just how British they are. New York and Paris boast town houses and apartment blocks the equal of any in London, but they have far fewer mews. For many, this is part of the streets’ appeal, but they are not for everyone. “By and large, most Russian and Middle Eastern buyers don’t wish to be seen buying properties where the horses and servants were once kept,” says Richard Barber, head of W A Ellis.

Oliver Lurot, of Savills, agrees: “These properties appeal most to the English or, at least to anglophiles. We like our own little castle, with our own front door, and not having neighbours stomping around above and beside us. “Foreign buyers only live in a mews house for a short space of time, as a rental. They want the quaint, English life, but for a limited time only.”

Mews living has some drawbacks, of course: chiefly, the lack of a garden and light. Mews used to be famously dingy. Agents in Belgravia or Bayswater speak of the sinking feeling they can get in a mews basement, when the client asks to see what the place looks like when the lights are switched off. Not a problem at Princes Mews, says Simon Fenwick, whose transparent design lets him work in the basement. That said, it took complete gutting and redesign of the house to make that possible. “When I bought this place, it had been let out to students for some years and it was uninhabitable,” he recalls. “There were holes in the roof, and brick floors on which the horses used to stand. “Now there are four floors instead of two, the ceilings in the non-bedroom floors are 2.7 metres high. I have fitted soundproofing all round and spent £25,000 on Danish wood flooring.” As well as all manner of architectural and engineering cunning, and building the street’s only roof terrace on the top of No 48 Belgrave Mews North, the developer Alan Waxman has deployed a series of interior design exclusives: a set of 10 photographs from the collection of the late director Michael Winner, as well as a £40,000 steel-and-crystal glass grandfather clock (only other owner, the Queen).

“When you have a more compact property like a mews house,” he explains, “you provide added value by applying your imagination and by creating extra space.” To this end, he has boosted the square footage from 1,750 to 2,720. “In many ways, designing a mews house is more akin to designing a yacht than a property”, says Oliver Lurot. “You’re working with limited space, and in many cases, you don’t have windows either at the back of the house or the sides.” Often, too, the original structure of the house can be 100 years old or more, adding further complexity.

Not at St Barnabas Mews, in Pimlico, though. This group of eight mews houses was constructed not in 1908, but 2008, on the site of a former antiques warehouse. Walk down St Barnabas Street, SW1, and the only clue to the existence of this new mews is a small, electronically operated gate between numbers 23 and 27, where No 25 should stand. Activate this gate and you find yourself in an extraordinary 21st-century mews. Children play in the cobbled street. Cars are hidden away in a subterranean car park. Press a button first thing in the morning, and your vehicle will be brought to the surface by lift. “Traditionally, mews houses haven’t been attractive to families, because they’re rather small and cramped, and don’t have gardens,” says Sorrel Basher, who works for London’s biggest owner of mews homes, Grosvenor Properties (founded 1677). “Here, though, we have made full use of lateral space. There’s more room inside, and the gated street is safe for children to play in.” Of course, the weekly rent here (£1,800) is 21st, rather than 19th century.

For all their modern adornments, mews houses appeal because they still offer a more old-fashioned way of life. In the heart of prime London, they offer something like an old village street. People know their neighbours, and aren’t constantly disturbed by traffic. “Living here is an extremely sociable experience,” says Simon Fenwick. “There are families dotted up and down the street, we have a proper street party every year. Because it’s a dead end, there are no cars driving through. What’s more, everyone keeps an eye out for each other. They’ll often pop their heads in if they’re passing your front door. It is what London life used to be like. Only without the discomforts.” All the benefits of the capital’s rich history, in short, together with privacy and gorgeous contemporary finishes. Small wonder that the servants’ quarters now belong to the masters.

By Denise Roland

Investors have rushed in to reserve luxury homes planned for the revamped Battersea Power Station, with 600 of the 800 properties already claimed after just five days on the market.

The buyers are the first to advance on the redevelopment of south-west London’s iconic behemoth where the price tag per square foot exceeds £1,000.

Investors paid reservation fees of around £2,500 for each of the properties, which ranged from one-bedroom flats to townhouses, with river-facing penthouses commanding the highest asking price of more than £6m.

Overseas buyers will be courted in coming weeks during various international sales exhibitions, following the market launch in London last Thursday.

The wave of enthusiasm from buyers puts Battersea Power Station Development Company chief executive Rob Tincknell comfortably on his way to meeting an ambitious target to sell all 800 properties by the time construction starts in September 2013.

Strong investor interest in the historic site is believed to signal a move outside the traditional prime London housing market as supplies in prestigious neighbourhoods like Kensington and Chelsea dwindle.
“Battersea isn’t prime central London and prices are already in excess of £1,000 per square foot,” Camilla Dell, founder of broker Black Brick Property Solutions LLP, told Bloomberg.

“So investors are betting on prices reaching similar levels to prime, which is a gamble.”

The redevelopment, by a trio of Malaysian giants – SP Setia, Sime Darby and the Employee’s Provident Fund – comes after nearly three decades of dereliction for Battersea Power Station, considered a prime example of 1930s Art Deco architecture.

Construction work on the site will involve the removal and individual rebuilding of the four iconic white chimneys of the Grade-II building, to avoid their possible collapse due to corrosion.

Preparatory work on the site began in 2012, with the first properties are expected to be completed by 2016.

By Graham Norwood

From the outside, Carrick Villa looks like a perfect neighbour for the rest of the architecture fringing Regent’s Park in central London.

The villa may be just two storeys, detached and with four bedrooms, but it is at one with the terraces laid out nearly 200 years ago by John Nash. Carrick’s exterior is painted in the same cream as the other 600 properties lining the park and regulated by the Crown Estate. It even has the same crenellations as the larger house next door.

Step inside the villa, however, and you see how mistaken you were. This is no period gem, but a modern one. There are no architraves, ceiling roses, cornices or panelled rooms, which you will find in the rest of the park’s houses. Instead there are modern hardwood floors, smooth lines and walls with keypad-controls and touch-screen panels.

Wander around and you find programmable lighting scenes, a media-room equipment hub and air handling (that’s air conditioning to you and me).

This is a modern wolf in traditional sheep’s clothing. But that, after all, is the point.

“It’s got all the toys inside, but from outside it looks like a period house that was put up with the rest of those around Regent’s Park,” explains Daniel Daggers of selling agent Knight Frank. “Contemporary features are now mandatory in a house at this level of the market in this location. This is why people pay a new-home premium.”

It is quite a premium. At £7 million (Knight Frank, 020 7586 2777; www.knightfrank.com) Carrick Villa is an example of a trend sweeping house building. Homes that look old on the outside yet are strikingly new behind the front door. Properties like these appeal to buyers with an eye for classical design, but who have a fast-moving professional lifestyle ill-suited to the restrictions on improvements that come with the real McCoy.

Some of the new houses following this ”old outside’’ trend use parts of genuine period buildings. These are often large schools, hospitals and offices. Then new flats and houses are built alongside or even within.

Other developers, as with Carrick Villa, build completely from scratch, skilfully making the architecture of the modern building blend in with its older surroundings.

For buyers, the advantages are numerous. Firstly changes can easily be made, from turning a cinema room into a gym or knocking through two rooms to make more space for the family. The genuine period building would probably be listed, making those substantial modifications difficult, at best.

They also come with guarantees for the equipment and usually for the structure, too. This is reassuring, even for affluent buyers.

“Many international clients love period features, but are fearful of buying properties that are very old. The perception is there’s a higher chance of something going wrong,” says Camilla Dell of Black Brick, a buying agency that finds homes for high-net-worth purchasers, often from overseas.

“New-build property that replicates period styles offers the perfect compromise,” says Simon Barnes, another buying agent.

There is no shortage of evidence that the trend is catching on. For example, house builder St George is constructing a scheme of 90 flats and houses in what, at first sight, appears to be a Georgian terrace at Camberwell, south London. In the main, however, these are new-builds.

“It was important for us that the scheme retained the distinctive character of the original buildings and respected the conservation area in which it stands,” says St George’s Mark Griffiths.

There are plenty of other examples, often in areas rich in ”real’’ period and vernacular architecture where local planners have forced developers to emulate traditional design.

Retirement developer Beechcroft, for example, has built houses for the over-55s at Stow-on-the-Wold using traditional Cotswold stone, giving the scheme a 19th-century look (£395,000 to £465,000, 01451 833809; www.beechcroft.co.uk).

At Cleveland Court, situated between the commuter towns of Dorking and Leatherhead, a development of 15 homes has been built as a grand Georgian house. The whole scheme sits in four acres of parkland with views to Box Hill (£575,000, Savills, 01483 796810; www.savills.com).

“This combination of old appearance and new construction is a good thing,” Daggers says. “It gives people established style and modern convenience. It’s the best of both worlds.”

Pros

Little maintenance for first few years
Well-equipped, well-planned
Good energy efficiency
Often with parking

Cons

Rooms can be small, particularly spare bedrooms
Gardens are sometimes small
Style can lack character, especially inside
Often ”thin’’ walls, so limited sound insulation

By Graham Norwood

The election could bring house sales to a halt at what is traditionally the busiest time of year. Graham Norwood offers tips for sellers and finds bargains for buyers.

Last week’s report that the housing market could be facing a double-dip recession, with March showing the slowest rise in prices for eight years, is hardly buoying to the spirits. To add to our woes is the impending election, which, experts predict, could bring the housing market’s traditional spring sales-fest to a complete halt.

Rightmove, the housing website, says that the rise in prices in England and Wales was the lowest it has ever recorded for the month, in part because of a surge in people putting their home up for sale. While that could be a nightmare for anxious vendors, lucky buyers could get a home at a bargain price. But will it make any difference to the housing market whether it’s Dave or Gord in No 10 after May? And what should buyers and sellers be doing in the meantime?

There is growing speculation that next week’s Budget will be followed quickly by the calling of the general election; from then until well after polling day, if the past is anything to go by, buyers will sit on their hands.

Analysis of sales since 2003 by housing market commentator Henry Pryor shows that 25.3 per cent of British annual house transactions occur during the March-May period, so in theory the election could slow or halt a quarter of 2010’s sales.

But the worry now is that the belt-tightening likely to be announced by the new government — of whatever colour — will prolong market torpor well into the summer and even beyond. Worse still, a hung parliament may result in a second election in late 2010, further delaying house sales and a wider market recovery.

Even before the election gets under way, there are some signs that the underlying position of the market is not as strong as some have believed.

Hometrack, which analyses data from 1,600 estate agents offices in England and Wales, shows recent price rises occurred in fewer than 30 per cent of postcode areas — more than in the bleak periods of 2008 and 2009 but far below the 45 per cent seen before the downturn, or the remarkable 80 per cent seen back in the heady days of 2004 and 2005.

Until recent weeks there was a shortage of homes on sale compared to buyers, right across Britain, but evidence suggests the reverse is now true. A photographer hired by many London estate agents reports a 40 per cent rise in business — meaning more homes are on sale now. Likewise buying agents, often tipped off about homes before they go on sale to the public, report their email inboxes filling with new instructions.

At the same time, the prospect of a too-close-to-call election this spring is deterring buyers.

“Forecast budget cuts and potential tax rises are causing many prospective purchasers to wait and see. The sooner an election, the better,” says Alex McNeil of Bramleys estate agency in Calderdale, Yorkshire.

“Too many uncertainties are causing an uneasy feeling among buyers. Get the election done as soon as possible,” pleads Mike Sarson of TW Gaze estate agency in Suffolk and Norfolk.

HOUSE SELLING ADVICE

“Sellers in an uncertain market should do three things,” says David Adams of Chesterton Humberts estate agency. “They can have more open days, have larger and better brochures, and finally they should get the agent to take out more national or regional advertising.”

These are tactics being pursued by Nigel and Gillian McCartney, who live near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. They say they must sell by the summer, whatever the state of the property market. They own a five-bedroom farmhouse, with six more bedrooms in a separate barn and cottage, which they run as a b & b (applemount.co.uk), and their property has more than six acres of land.

“We live on the edge of the catchment area for a school that’s just won an excellent rating from Ofsted,” says Nigel, a telecommunications consultant. The house is for sale at £1.45 million through Savills (01284 731100).

HOUSE BUYING ADVICE

However, the McCartneys may have to fend off predatory house purchasers if the market struggles during the next few months.

“Buyers must exploit the election. They must know what drives a vendor to sell when the market is slowing — is it a death in the family, debt, or some other issue that means they must move fast, come what may?” says Tracy Kellett of BDI Homefinders, a buying agency.

“Information is king and when you know how urgently a vendor needs to sell, you can negotiate accordingly. There are opportunities for buyers if they do their homework.”

But opportunistic buyers should act quickly. Many agents believe the long-term consequence of more straitened times after the election will be that sellers and buyers alike will sit on their hands until economic improvement; homes will be withdrawn from sale and moving plans will be deferred for one, two or three years.

“In the past people have voted for one party or another hoping it’ll get in and leave them alone. The difference now is we know whoever wins, they’ll be after us for tax rises and spending cuts,” David Adams says.

“What that may do to the property market is an unknown quantity — and rather worrying.”

WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY ABOUT THE MARKET AFTER THE ELECTION:

Lucian Cook, Savills “Without doubt, and probably regardless of which party wins, an outright majority would be the best outcome for the housing market. Sellers expecting to cash in on a perceived demand-supply imbalance could be disappointed. Buyers may have an opportunity to bid in a less fiercely competitive market, but should not expect a rush of stock to the market.”

Robert Bailey, buying agent “Foreign buyers are capitalising on sterling’s weakness and we predict this will continue, especially if a hung parliament contributes to the pound’s woes. Long term, the central London housing market will continue to do well. Recent months have shown that people will tolerate higher taxation rates in exchange for the quality of life available in London.”

Mark McAndrew, Strutt & Parker “We reckon the market is going to kick off with a vengeance after the election. Over the past few months it’s been an excuse to sit tight and not do anything.”

Drew Wotherspoon, John Charcol “With the result of the general election not quite the forgone conclusion it was a few months ago, we are likely to see a negative effect on mortgage pricing, particularly fixed rates. The markets simply cannot abide uncertainty. So, while all logic dictates that variable-rate mortgages are still the product of choice for most, with pricing around 2.5 per cent better than fixed-rates, there is an argument for battening down the hatches now and locking into a fixed rate for at least five years.”

Tom Hudson, country buying agent, Middleton Advisers “Historically, the general election has had very little effect on the country house market. It generates more hype rather than having any real impact. If anything it is the pre-budget period which tends to be more intrusive on the market, as any stamp duty increase will always have a major impact on decision-making.”

Camilla Dell, buying agent, Black Brick “If Labour wins, it’s possible that prices will go down. Some high net worth individuals may relocate and move out of the UK as a result of tax rises. But if it’s the Tories, prices may also fall. They are likely to cut public spending more aggressively than Labour. If there’s a hung parliament and the pound plummets, then international investors will pile into the London property market.”

Penny Court, Beauchamp Estates “The best thing that will happen if the Tories win is that HIPs will be abolished and, once a deal is agreed, the need to get an energy performance certificate will be held off until a later stage in the sale. This will certainly increase the flow of properties coming to the market from timorous vendors, which in turn will open up the market in terms of choice for purchasers. A Labour win would mean no chance of abolishing HIPs, though the election of a Labour government has brought about a more active market in the past. But this time around, with the continued reluctance or refusal of the banks to release funds at the low end of the market, any government is going to face a real challenge in terms of being able to influence the market and increase the volume of sales.”

By Anna Tyzack

SOME EXPERTS BELIEVE HOUSE PRICES HAVE HIT THE BOTTOM IN CENTRAL LONDON, BUT WHO KNOWS WHAT’S TO COME IN SEPTEMBER.

There have been mutterings this week that the house prices have already hit the bottom Nick Candy clearly things they have; estate agents in central London believe prices could have reached their lowest point as early as November last year. So does this mean we have all missed our chance to cash in on the downturn?

It all depends on where you live. Hamptons estate agency produced a heat map of house prices in London this week. Chelsea (SW3) glowed bright red – where prices have risen 9 per cent since 2008. Outer Chelsea (SW10), South Kensington (SW7), and Notting Hill (W1, W2 and W8) glowed orange, as did Borough (SE1) and Brixton, while Wimbledon shone yellow. “If you are looking for the bottom of the market in prime central London, I’m afraid you have missed the boat,” says Penelope Court, of estate agency Beauchamp Estates.

But every other London borough was coloured various shades of green, indicating drops of up to 18 per cent. If the map were expanded to the rest of the country, it would also be green, apart from hot spots such as the Home Counties, Sevenoaks and Bath, where prices are bolstered by London money and a lack of supply. Halifax’s index shows prices are still falling, by 0.5 per cent in June.

Experts believe the summer bounce in prime central London prices could drop back in the autumn. “I think prices will fall a further 5 to 10 per cent, either towards the end of this year or early 2010,” says Camilla Dell of buying agents Black Brick.

In January this year I asked estate agents and property experts across Britain to say when they thought prices would be at their lowest. September 16 2009 was the midpoint. Could it be that they were about right?

Yes, if the shortage of properties on the market continues. Price rises are caused by a lack of supply and an increase in demand. “If supply for country houses stays the same over the next six to 12 months prices will continue to harden,” says Tom Hudson of Middleton Advisors, who thinks November 2009 will mark the bottom of the market for country houses.

If supply were to increase, this could push prices down again – the W-shaped recovery, rather than the V.

But right now, why would anyone sell unless they truly had to? I asked myself this question on Monday when I received an offer on my flat for £100,000 less than the original asking price. For a small flat, this is some reduction.

Perhaps in the end, recovery will be L-shaped. The rate of price decline has slowed, according to Halifax’s latest figures but unless something happens (borrowing restrictions loosen, or another Lehman Brothers) the market will remain flat for some time.

I’m going to wait until September 16 before considering this week’s offer. By then we should have a clearer idea of the shape the recovery is taking.

By Anna Tyzack

COULD THE BOTTOM OF THE MARKET BE IN SIGHT? FOR THOSE READY TO TRADE UP, THAT DREAM HOME IS FAST BECOMING AFFORDABLE – AND CANNY HOUSE-HUNTERS ARE OUT LOOKING FOR BARGAINS.

Exactly when will house prices be at their lowest? It’s the question to which every potential buyer (and estate agent) wants an answer. When I asked property experts to call the bottom of the market, their predictions (or best guesses) ranged from last Thursday to May 2010 – with midnight on September 16 2009 as the midpoint. “They don’t ring a bell at the bottom of the market,” says Trevor Abrahamson from Glentree Estates, “but if they did, it would be ringing now. Over the next few months prices will hit the bottom.”

Prices have already come down so dramatically (40 per cent in some cases), that people are beginning to see value for money. “It’s not about timing, it’s about the opportunity,” says Chloé Macintosh from Fulham, who wants to spend about £1.5 million on a new property. “If I fall in love with a house I don’t want to miss out.”

Chloé, an architect for interior design website www.mydeco.com , lives with her husband and two sons in a spacious four-storey Victorian house. She’s put in a new kitchen and landscaped the large garden, “but we know it’s not our perfect house”, she says. For the past two years she has dreamt of creating a lateral family home in a commercial-style building, but was priced out of the market by property developers. “It was difficult to find opportunities at good value. They would get snapped up as soon as they appeared on the market,” she says. With less competition from developers, she believes now is her chance to move up the property ladder. She put her own house on the market before Christmas, but when it didn’t sell immediately, she reduced the price from £910,000 to £850,000. It sold earlier this week for just under the asking price. “It was bought by a family with daughters working in London,” she says. “It was exactly what they were looking for. Now I can start looking for what I want.”

Catherine and David Ainslee, from Newbury in Berkshire, are also determined to move. They built their six-bedroom house, Watermeadow Lodge, six years ago, but are now after somewhere with more land. “It suited us before, but now we want more space for our two sons to run around. We fully accept the dire financial situation but we don’t want to put our lives on hold,” says Catherine. “It’s all relative – although our property will sell for less than we originally hoped, we will also be buying one for less too.” They’ve put their house on the market for £950,000 with Knight Frank, and are prepared to extend their mortgage on the next property. “If you can get a mortgage and have a steady job, life goes on,” says Catherine.

It’s not only those with families who believe that now is a good time to shop. First-time buyers Celine Herweijer, 31, and her fiancé Mike Johnstone, 27, have started looking for a flat in Primrose Hill, north London. “We have a 25 per cent deposit and it’s a complete buyer’s market,” says Celine. “We were ready to buy in 2007 but when prices started falling we sat tight and waited. In those days, a lot of my friends who were buying were outbid and the whole experience was very stressful.”

Celine and David are looking to spend between £350,000 and £400,000, and will start putting in offers within the next fortnight. “We’re renting at the moment so we’re not desperate to move, but if we find the right flat at the right price we will.” Estate agents John D Wood have told them that two-bedroom flats in Primrose Hill have fallen in price by 10-15 per cent, and will drop a further 5 per cent by the end of the year. “We could wait another six months and prices will have come down further. But if you can get that much off now, you win anyway.”

According to Tom Hudson, of buying agents Middleton Advisors, lifestyle buyers will characterise the market in 2009. They are financially stable, and moving not out of desperation, but because they want to take advantage of a quieter market to buy their ideal house. “They may be moving for a new job, or want to be nearer a particular school. Or they see now as a good opportunity to buy,” says Hudson. “People might have been looking in an undersupplied market for 24 months and want to get on with life. There’s a strata of buyers who have September as a cut-off date.”

Prices are expected to fall another 5 to 10 per cent by the end of the year. But over the past few weeks buying agents have noticed a shift in buyer mentality. “People realise there’s still quite a lot of property on the market and it is highly unlikely they will have to bid against a competitive purchaser,” says Camilla Dell of buying agents Black Brick. “And sellers are realising that if they hang on, they will only sell their property for less.”

Ed Mead of London-based estate agent Douglas & Gordon has also noticed a change of mood: “We have now clearly moved on from the market which was characterised by a 75 per cent lack of confidence on buyers’ part and 25 per cent funding problems,” he says. “Buyers are really out in droves and are willing to buy, at the right prices, but getting a mortgage is best described as a nightmare.”

For those that can get the finance (or don’t need to borrow), there are some attractive offerings, although it’s worth taking the time to research where the biggest drops have occurred. Price falls have been geographical: well-heeled parts of London and the Home Counties have been hit hard due to the stockbrokers and bankers affected by the banking crisis.

But for many, the dream is becoming affordable: a town house in Belgravia, belonging to designer Jane Churchill, now costs £3.95 million (was £4.5 million), while for under £500,000 you could buy a three-bedroom flat in Chelsea, or a pretty mews house in Battersea. Medium-sized houses, such as Chloé Macintosh’s in Fulham, hover around the £800,000 mark, and enormous houses in Hampstead or the nicest parts of Clapham cost about £1.75 million.

Further out, a listed country house or rectory need no longer cost more than a million. Although it is still tricky to find a bargain in West Berkshire and Oxfordshire (largely due to lack of supply), in the West Country, the Midlands and the North, and second (or third) home hot spots, properties that would have once sold in two weeks are open to offers from buyers with cash in hand. “By the time the market has bottomed out it will be too late,” says Dell. “Our advice to buyers is to get stuck in now.”

Of course, some clever people will hold out, and buy when prices are lowest. But even so, they cannot expect to capitalise on their investment soon. After prices have bottomed, experts expect them to plateau for a year or more, while excess supply is soaked up. “No one wants to catch a knife when it’s falling, but people with cash don’t know what to do with it,” says Trevor Abrahamson, who has seen three recessions.

“I think the window of opportunity will be quite short, adds Camilla Dell. “We might just look back on this time and say it was a good time to buy.”

“There’s more stock across every sector but good properties are still incredibly hard to find. These are apartments on a first floor or above in the best buildings, or houses on the most desirable side of the square or street in sought-after areas,” says Mandy Bissell of Black Brick, a buying agency.

She says estate agents ensure sellers get good prices by asking for “under market value” to encourage buyers. “There may be only three or four interested parties compared to eight or 12 last year but it’s enough to ensure battle commences. The end result is a sealed bid with the property selling for over market value.

Tax changes are creating an exodus of foreign residents. Jessie Hewiston meets one American who has decided to get up and go.

All over London, the bags are packed and the tickets are booked. The ‘For Sale signs’ have gone up and the removal vans are parked out the front. The non-doms are on the move.

Take Mark Roche. The 54-year-old retired architect is leaving London and moving to Spain to escape the effects of the tax changes.

This is just what the Government didn’t want. The Chancellor, Alistair Darling, recently scrapped plans to tax the offshore assets of the country’s 120,000 registered non-domiciles – foreign residents who don’t pay tax in the UK on their overseas earnings.

He is still sticking to part of the taxation shake-up, however, levying a 30,000 annual charge on non-doms who have lived in Britain for seven years and longer. He is also charging Capital Gains Tax (CGT) on UK homes owned in overseas trusts, another change that will hit the non-doms where it hurts.

Whatever tinkering the Government does to the fine detail, it will be too little, too late for Mark. Because of the impeding levy, the CGT changes – and the increase in the congestion charge that means he will have to pay 25 a day to drive his 4×4 out of his garage – he has decided to sell up.

According to Treasury figures, at least 3,000 of the UK’s non-doms, who between them spent 16.6billion in this country last year, are expected to leave when the changes come into force next month. Ask an estate agent, though, and he or she will tell you the figure is far higher. A 30,000 charge may not be too much of a concern to a hedge fund multi-millionaire, but it is to Mark. Raised in California, he ran his own medium-sized architecture company, Mark Roche Associates, until he retired six years ago, selling it on to his former employees. His company specialised in designing shops; clients included Nike, Mango, Herms and Jean Paul Gaultier.

Before going solo, Mark worked with Richard Rogers for eight years. ‘I suppose, out of all the non-doms in this country, perhaps a third are City-boy high-flyers,’ he says. ‘I suspect the majority, though, are like me: small entrepreneurs. I feel I’ve made a good contribution to this country. I have put food on the table for 15 employees, paid tax for them, and I don’t think I would have been in a position to do that had I not been a non-dom. ‘For multi-millionaires, 30,000 is a drop in the ocean.

But to me it is a lot of money. I also have an investment property that I’m trying to sell by April. If I don’t, I’m going to be hit by the new CGT. I can see clearly that any money you save can disappear into the coffers of the Government simply by its changing the rules.’ Mark bought his home in Hewer Street, W10, a 10-minute walk from Ladbroke Grove Tube station, for 625,000 in 2002, just before he retired. The former Unigate dairy was a shell, derelict for more than 20 years. Mark spent 240,000 turning it into his home. It is now on the market for 2.6 million through Marsh & Parsons. The result is striking. The ground floor has a huge living room plus a guest bedroom and bathroom. On the upper floor, a living room with a huge vaulted ceiling, kitchen and master bedroom merge into one another in an extravagant display of the virtues of open-plan living.

There is also a 500sqft office by the front door, which Mark rents out, bringing in 1,050 per month. He also rents out the property for magazine shoots at 1,000 a day. ‘I’m now moving to Spain, which is not the most logical choice, as it’s not a tax-efficient regime,’ Mark says. ‘Many people do it by living there for less than six months a year, so you avoid being domiciled in Spain and subject to its tax. I intend to keep a holiday property in London to visit friends for one month of the year. The other few months I plan to travel. ‘For me, the most important point about being a non-dom is this: you’re not paying tax for elements you will probably never use. A non-dom is someone who does not intend to stay in the UK; they only intend to stay for their business life. ‘When they retire, they are most likely going to leave, and all that tax they pay is then lost because they are not taking advantage of medical facilities or pensions – all the services that older people require. I feel justified that my non-dom status is relevant and that it helps the economy.’ In response to the Government’s proposals, Aylesford estate agency has opened a branch in Geneva to handle property sales for non-doms relocating to Switzerland. ‘Alistair Darling’s U-turn has done little to reassure my clients,’ says Aylesford’s Andrew

Langton. ‘A worrying number of them are non-doms who are still seriously considering moving out of the country. They think London is too expensive to function, capped off by the congestion charge on 4x4s going up to 25. The feeling is that the Government doesn’t want them here. The bottom end of the market is already suffering because of the credit crunch; now the top end of the market is likely to be affected too.’ Camilla Dell, a partner of Black Brick buying agency, believes that her clients are more worried by the CGT changes than the 30,000 levy. ‘I have clients with multiple investment properties in London who, after April, will have to pay CGT, and are planning to sell before then,’ she says. ‘The result will be that we’ll suddenly have a lot of non-doms selling at the same time and there’ll be more choice and flexibility at the top end of the market, something we haven’t seen for the past 18 months.’

London still has the most expensive real estate in the world, with top-whack properties going for twice the price here as in New York, Hong Kong and thriving Moscow, according to research by Hamptons International.

Its study of leading global cities found that the capital can command £4,000 per square foot. Presumably it was put together before the secretive Candy brothers, who make all interested parties sign confidentiality agreements, released figures for 1 Hyde Park, now claimed to be achieving over £5700 per sq ft. New York, at number two, fetches a mere £2025 per sq ft.

“When people become wealthy, one of the first things they buy is property, and one of the first cities they go to is London,” said buying agent Camilla Dell of Black Brick Property Solutions. “There are many fewer Russians out there now, compared to 2006; I have heard they have moved on to Paris. We expect buyers from China to be the next big thing.”

London is even further ahead of UK rivals such as Bristol at £930 per sq ft, Edinburgh at £840 per sq ft and Brighton at £590 per sq ft.