Say hello to Barratt Homes' 'Brixton Square' on Coldharbour Lane (old Cooltan site)
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Minnie_the_Minx
someinenhhanding menbag and me ah bollox
PippaPrintworks
New Member
The embassy block is social housing, Printworks is shared ownership so none if it is exactly posh.
crawl
Gimme gimme gimme, don't ask what for
Haha -- exactly. I don't understand some people's blind defending of this "new face of Brixton". The Brixton Blog had a bit on the Holiday Inn and it was full of people commenting on how all the new attention to the area is great. Employment opportunities and the like are nice but not all "attention" is good attention
Winot
I wholeheartedley agree with your viewpoint
Who is doing that?
kalibuzz
downtown
I know, it was irony u know, the name, embassy apt doh for some ugly ass flats
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
Particularly in London. A lot of new build is bought by the buy to let brigade.
"But Matt Griffith of first-time buyer campaign site PricedOut, disagrees. He says: "In a market where equity is king, investors are able to outbid first-time buyers for available lower-level properties. In the housing market, equity is nearly always a result of longevity – which gives older homeowners a head-and-shoulders advantage. Housing wealth and ownership is more generationally lopsided than it has been since the 1940s, and we appear to be seeing older groups pressing home their advantage through investment buying."
Both tenants and first-time buyers, then, face a bleak future: squeezed out of the market by house prices that remain high across swathes of the country, and soaring rents charged by landlords."
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
Interesting. Post war it was normal for architects to work in the public sector. Rebuilding this country after the war and making new affordable housing for the people. As the article says this was a different world to the one we live in now. If not every design was good or well built at least the ethos was building for the benefit of all people not for profit.
"These were exciting and challenging places to work in the 1950s and 1960s, attracting the very best young architects and with the focus very much on housing. Of course there were mistakes, yet the energy and concern that were channelled into the civic realm seem flabbergasting at the beginning of the 21st century, at the close of an era which has witnessed both the triumph of the private sector and the effective collapse of the great public sector architects' offices of the postwar era."
Goes to show there is another way to build our cities. Private profit is not the only way.
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
CH1
"Red Guard"(NLYL)
Actually this new-build for buy-to-let happened in the Victorian period too. My own house, built on land left over from the railway viaduct running along Coldharbour Lane in about 1869 (at the latest) was not owner-occupied until 1928.
Of course there could ultimately be a reversal of prices which would then result in older owner occupiers having a more normal level of equity, but would massively hit those who have struggled to purchase in the last 5 - 10 years.
No doubt avoiding this is the main reason for QE I QE II etc - whatever the government says about lending to small businesses.
Ol Nick
beer in Brixton
Because the 1950s and 1960s are looked back on as a golden age of British architecture? Really?
CH1
"Red Guard"(NLYL)
I suggest you join the Prince Charles tendency. Personally I have made my views known - Princess Anne is the only royal worthy to inherit the throne!
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
Not the point I was making if u read my post.
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
QE is about bailing out the banks. The QE has gone straight into banks to rebuild there balance sheets.
Renting was the norm for a long while. But people used to have more tenancy rights in and in many areas rents were controlled. Gradually this was all swept away.
When I say "Buy to let" I mean the more recent phenomenon of the get rich quick merchants. The type who have told several people I know in North East London that they will be upping there rent by 40% as the recent improvements in the area and Olypmpic "regeneration" means they can charge more.
Similar to Barrets going on about how Brixton had improved.
lefteri
Well-Known Member
yes
CH1
"Red Guard"(NLYL)
Do you think Coldharbour Lane rents will be going up like that when Barratts comes onstream? I understood the going rate for flats at Loughbough Mansions/Kenyon Mansions etc. is currently £200 per week and the for sale price about £200,000.
I don't think I would want to invest money in properties at those prices.
Not withstanding what you say about QE I can't see how this situation can last forever.
Admittedly we are in a localised bubble - house prices in most of the UK are going down, but Brixton is currently undergoing a major yuppification exercise - connived at by Lambeth Council.
If the top were to fall out of the market for some reason the bubble could start to deflate.
IMHO the only thing keeping property up in London is the low interest rates.
Buy-to-let currently appears to be a much safer investment than bank deposits - yields are 5-7% from lettings and the underlying capital value continues to rise.
If the capital values start to go down it could be a different story. Not least because those who finance their buy to lets on bank mortgages would be unable to roll over their loans.
But then again maybe I read the City AM too much!
BTW the Barratts website is currently quoting £250,000 for a one bed at Brixton Square - requiring a £60,000 salary and a £12,000 deposit for a 1st time buyer.
2 beds are currently on £302,000 requiring a £70,000 + salary with a £15,000 deposit.
Considering the original planning permission was issued to Places for People which I guess "people" assumed to be some sort of social or "affordable" housing outfit one wonders why the council recently refused to vary the section 106 agreement?
Should they not rather have torn it up and issued a new one with a much better deal for local residents?
I wonder how their "consultation" on the redevelopment of Southwyck House is coming on? Any info gratefully received.
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
City AM is always worth a read as it tells it from the point of view of the City.
Good point about Barrats development possibly contributing to putting up rental prices in Brixton. I did not think of that. Yes I think it will.
Buy to let. Interesting phenomenon as a lot of flats are bought by B to L brigade in new developments to rent out. Could happen in Brixton Square.
If B to L went down the pan as u say whichever party is in power is going to suffer. Its surprising the number of people who have B to L mortgages. These people regard it as there right that the underlying capital value increases and they get 5+ % yields. One said to me that "they had done the right thing" (unlike a loser like me) and expected to be rewarded for it. Which , like Bankers, they expect the Government to underwrite them. ( Though also like Bankers they do not say this explicity as they think they are "standing on there own feet" unlike others )So perhaps you are right about QE.
Many boomer-generation middle-class people used the easy credit pre-2008 to ''leverage" their savings into buy-to-let property. Smart move for them, because the system for getting savings into enterprise, where it might contribute something positive to the economy, is fucked. Those who put their pension savings into managed funds mostly had them stolen. The message is still that the property ladder is a much better way to prosperity than the enterprise ladder.
CH1
"Red Guard"(NLYL)
You are right about investing in enterprise. Unfortunately the same thing applies to government and local government funding - due to the rise of the PFI. Formerly the government, LCC etc issued Gilts or hypothecated loan stock such as War Loan, or Gas bonds (when the gas companies were nationalised in the 1940s), and such issues would be bought by pension funds and used as totally predictable investments to pay pensions etc. Now it is all a casino game. Banks and private equity form consortia competing to fund hospitals and schools where they have the right to charge £500 to change a light bulb! The situation would be laughable if it wasn't tragic.
Being a landlord is essentially an exploitative relationship with someone disadvantaged in the housing market - more so in current housing conditions.
But-to-let landlords have forced up the prices for prospective owner occupiers and have created an artificial property shortage - fuelled by cheap bank loans. This is one motor driving residential property prices ever upwards. The other driving force is inward investment of hot money at the top end of the market.
It would be surprising if there was NOT a period of negative equity in due course.
I have a 1989 Panorama on tape where everyone is either complaining they can no longer afford to buy, or congratulating themselves on how well they have done from property.
I also have a 1994 Panorama where they are all complaining about negative equity, repossessions etc.
London is unique in not having had a property decline in the current economic cycle - yet.
If prices do start to go down in London there is little the government can now do to stop it as they have already dropped official interest rates to near zero.
leanderman
Street Party: July 2
This is the truest thing I have read here.
I did the pensions savings thing, and feel a mug.
Not least, for example, coz' so many of my kids' friends' parents did the the buy-to-let thing and are whooping it up.
Nanker Phelge
Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
And here's the delightful piece of architecture that's coming our way.
Is it an office block? Council offices? No, it's Brixton Square, the kind of square where the public aren't allowed in!
http://www.urban75.org/blog/brixton...ith-flats-starting-at-a-quarter-of-a-million/
Bringing the look of a business park in Bracknell to Brixton.....nice......
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
Not just middle class. I was talking to a receptionist I know a while back who said she and husband were looking at new flat. She said it was to be part of there buy to let portfolio. A lot of people were doing this. I talked to friend who said it was easy to get a mortgage that was specifically for B to L property. Im not clear how it works but seemed that once u had one property u could get another. Would work as long as you had rental stream coming in to cover costs and the value of property always went up.
Its why on new developments in London often a lot of flats were bought as "investment" property for rental.
leanderman
Street Party: July 2
And it's riduculously easy to avoid income tax and capital gains tax.
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
That would be most interesting. In Latvia ,which is held up as poster boy by IMF for the rightness of "austerity", people have been losing there homes. They were encouraged to take out mortgages ( new in Eastern Europe where most housing was state owned) and now have had there wages cut. This has meant they cannot keep up on mortgage payments. Also the flats/ houses are not worth what they bought them for. Bizarrely whilst being encouraged to join jolly old Capitalism there is no way to go bankrupt. So in theory whilst being homeless if you ever earn money again you will still have to pay off the Bankers. Of course none of this effects the post Communists elites who run theses countries.
As my Lithuanian friend says these East European post Communist elites make sure the system works for them . There is a semblance of democracy. There is free speech but the elites run the show.
In Hungary its even more crazy. People were encouraged to take out mortgages in other currencies. Now the economy has gone tits up they are all screwed. Big problem , for the Bankers that is, is that they may never get there money back so its a toxic debt. They are trying to make the Government responsible for it I believe.
The joys of the free market.
CH1
"Red Guard"(NLYL)
Bringing the look of a business park in Bracknell to Brixton.....nice......
The "Planning and Regeneration Team" are working to their brief, surely?
They had an old Labour Exchange building - mock regency in the 1930s manner, plus an older industrial building with neo-art deco rounded corners.
It is a conservation area (I believe), and bang next door is a former petrol station, then incendiary used car tyre sales depot now disguised as a Bracknellesque "mixed use" development (they're fitting out the shops/offices at the back of "The Viaduct" by the way).
I don't like what is being thrown up, so to speak. But it fits in with the conservation area brief.
It is fake, like the Labour Exchange - but unlike the Labour Exchange it won't have wooden toilet seats (that would be extra!). It will also blend in excellently with the Lexadon Viaduct.
I would start screaming if Lexadon or Barratts decided they wanted to move east and demolish the 1850s shopping parade.
CH1
"Red Guard"(NLYL)
The same thing in Spain by the way - just giving back the flat keys to the bank does NOT extinguish the mortgage.
