Weekly property news from the central London Boroughs

A weekly round up of the latest property news from the central London Boroughs.

City of Westminster

The Evening Standard reports that ‘Build-to-rent’ homes are fetching £5,500 a week. The first development of its kind in the capital is aimed at tech and finance bosses looking to rent in St Johns Wood. The high end build-to-rent market is expanding as foreign high value individuals are currently not prepared to invest in buying London property as there is too currently much economic uncertainty surrounding Brexit.

EG reports that The Crown Estate has released their plans to carry out a major revamp of New Zealand House. Stanhope has been brought on board help refurbish 130,000 sq. ft of the Grade II listed property.

Property Week reports German fund Art-Invest (AIRE) has bought their first site in the UK. The company has purchased a 0.4 acre site on Cleveland Street to develop a £190m missed-use-scheme. The site was bought from Starwood Capital for £30m. When complete there will 88 new homes and 35,000 sq. ft of commercial and retail space.

Kensington and Chelsea

EG reports that Housing minister Kit Malthouse has refused an application from local residents in Earls Court to take over housing stock. The two estates in West Kensington, w14 consist of 760 homes and close to 2,000 resident, 600 of whom are members of housing association proposing to take over the buildings from the council. Malthouse said the transfer bid will “have a significant detrimental on the regeneration of the area”.

Wandsworth

EG reports that Mitsubishi are making a ‘build-to-rent’ move after buying a 1-acre plot in London’s new Nine Elms district on the Royal Mail sorting office site, for £22.2m. Mitsubishi hope to develop the project into a 12-story building with 200 flats with a gross value of £150m. This is a new direction for Mitsubishi’s portfolio in the UK but according to Managing Director and Chief Executive Yuichiro Shioda we should expect more of this as the BTR sector is an “important part of Mitsubishi global estate”.