Property Professionals: Find A Property

Continuing with our Property Professional series, we bring you an interview with Findaproperty.com's writer and blogger, Samantha Baden. Seeing as Samantha regularly updates the website with news, facts and trivia, we thought she would be the perfect person to chat with about London property.

Where are the current London property hotspots? Any postcodes or areas you would guess as a good place to invest in or the next hotspot? 
Hotspots are all about predicting growth, which is notoriously difficult, even in London where prices are more buoyant than the rest of the UK. One of the ways you can try to do this is to find out about future plans for certain areas in London. For example, proposals for a Northern line extension to Battersea in 2015 is likely to make the area far more desirable and pricey.

But my property hotspot picks are in the east and the south of the capital. Stratford in East London is an area that has benefited from quality infrastructure investment over the past couple of years—a lot of it linked to the Olympics. There's also good demand for rental properties here which means the neighbourhood works as an investment hotspot too. There's also hotspot potential along the Thames in places such as Pontoon Dock and West Silvertown, which are massive growth areas. The large number of new builds here mean properties tend to be affordable, but they are likely to hold their value as rental properties because of their proximity to Canary Wharf and the City.

Down south, Streatham is my tip for a neighbourhood to watch. Homes are still affordable compared to near neighbours Balham and Tooting, but the whole area is slowly smartening up, which means prices are likely to follow suit.

Do you have a favourite neighbourhood in London?
I'm very fond of multicultural and bustling Hackney in East London, which is home.  But I have a soft-spot for Hampstead, which manages to feel like a village, but in reality is just five miles away from the West End.

What do you think are the best ways for homeowners to increase the value of a London property?
The best way to add value to your home is to increase the square footage, so if you can add a room through a loft conversion or another type of extension then do it. Of course in London, many people live in properties that don't lend themselves to easy extensions. In this case, another option is to consider more creative renovations. For example, embracing open-plan living by moving the kitchen to the reception room and converting the kitchen into a bedroom.

You cover a lot of interesting property stories on your blog — can you share a favourite London fact?
St John's Wood is the only tube station in London that doesn't include any of the letter that spell the word mackerel. Weird, but true.

Thanks Samantha. For more Findaproperty.com news, visit the blog which is updated regularly.

Work in Progress — West London

Here's a peek into another flat we are refurbishing. A family of three recently acquired this 2-bedroom, 2.5 bathroom mansion block apartment in West London. Our builders are in the midst of a full refurbishment. In addition to the usual plastering and decorating throughout the property, we're also removing a structural wall in the reception room, adding built-in wardrobes in the reception and bedrooms, building sliding doors and cupboards, installing a brand new kitchen, reconfiguring the bathrooms (including the addition of a wet room) and adding underfloor heating.

Work in progress:

1) Complete refurbishment of the bathrooms. If you look closely at the floor of this bathroom, you'll even notice evidence of the underfloor heating we recently fitted in this bathroom. 

2) Customised, built-in wardrobes. We'll be building and fitting a wardrobe just behind the door. Perfect use of otherwise dead space. 

3) Removal of the former kitchen, install of the new kitchen to occur shortly.  

4) Pre-decoration of the hallway, leading down to the kitchen

5) The reception room, where we've recently removed a structural wall, and nearly doubled the size of the open living space. Bespoke built-in bookshelves will be added to both sides of the fireplace. 

We love client feedback!

One of the greatest things about building homes for clients is hearing positive feedback when the work is completed. At Tiptoe Builders, we know that hard work and quality craftsmanship bring client praise. We're pleased (and quite proud) to share the latest comments from our clients:

More testimonials are listed on our website.

Work in Progress — Maida Vale

Our builders are working on a number of exciting projects throughout West London. Over the next few weeks, we will update the blog with work-in-progress photos. This week, we feature a three-bedroom mansion block flat in Maida Vale.

Our builders constructed four built-in cupboards, including two full height cupboards with drawers and sliding doors. We painted and decorated through the flat, and laid a new subfloor to prevent creaking floorboards and to reduce the noise factor for neighbours below. We also re-plastered the hallway of the flat, creating a smooth finish along the walls. 

Of course, there's still more work to be completed, but the property is shaping up to be a lovely family home...