Property

A London-based architect firm has revealed a game-changing plan to help solve the city's housing crisis. Baca Architects has developed a design for a floating house that could sit on London's waterways. The project, which has been long listed for the New London Architecture awards, aims to install the homes in disused space along London's 50 miles of rivers and canals as well as the 150 hectares of docklands, marinas and basins. It could provide 7,500 houses, priced at £150,000 for a two-bed. 'Buoyant Starts aims to address the housing crisis in Greater London by providing high-quality, prefabricated floating homes at an affordable price on the un-used water space of the capital,' say the firm. 24 of London's weirdest property adverts  

Remember the heady days of June 2014, when we laughed at the ad for this tiny bedsit in King's Cross and thought 'surely the London property market can't any worse this?!' Well guess what –  we were all wrong. Fast-forward 14 months of desks converted to bedrooms, sheds converted to bedrooms and a house with an actual huge tree growing through it, and here we are: someone has advertised a tent in their Gipsy Hill dining room for £550 a month (plus bills) on Spareroom and we can't work out if it's a joke or not. Advertised by two anonymous men aged between 36 and 42, the crinkled tent is a dark green and light grey number. The ad's first photo shows it positioned next to a small table and a spindly potted tree with a handy caption reading 'the room and the tent in the room'.          The ad says: 'We have decided to rent out our living room as we never use it. There is still a dining table in there so we will still eat in there, so we have put a tent in the room for privacy, and we would only eat breakfast and dinner in the room. The tent has been furnished with drawers, sleeping stuff and a chair.' That's right, while on the outside your potential £550pcm pad looks like the kinda tent you left behind at Leeds Festival 2007, inside it's the bachelor/bachelorette penthouse of dreams.          There's a wooden dining chair, sleeping bag, roll mat, reading lamp and chest of drawers. Plus, pay particular attention to the red 'North Face' sticker, which gives the w

You seek it here, you seek it there, but where is all the affordable housing Londoners are constantly promised as part of big developments? Invariably, by the time a developer has put up a sign outside an attractive-looking plot, all the cheaper units have sold. It does exist - but you have to do your homework. 1. Register with Notting Hill Housing association This citywide housing association works with private developers on the distribution and sale of their 'affordable' quotas, and it also regularly over-meets its own quotas. Its Camberwell Fields development was only required to include 24 shared-ownership flats, but delivered 120. Newlon is another one worth registering with. 2. Talk to developers directly 'Register with any developers and agencies in the area you're interested in,' advises Wendy Gordon of the Notting Hill Housing Association. This means legwork: literally. Walk around an area and make a note of developers at building sites, then contact them. If you're registered directly you'll get their marketing emails, and first dibs on invites to viewings before the scrum. 3. Get the government to boost your budget The Department for Communities and Local Government has extended its Equity Loan scheme to 2020. It offers up to 20 percent of the price of a new-build as a five-year, interest-free loan (more info at www.helptobuylondon.org.uk). You need at least a 5 percent deposit, then the government will loan you up to 20 percent, and the remaining 75 percent

While the rest of us make do with dowdy marble pools with just a single servant to hand us our towels, London’s mega-rich have just kicked their aquatic downtime up a notch. It’s just been revealed that the Nine Elms development near Battersea Power Station will feature a 90ft ‘sky pool’, linking the tenth stories of two luxury residential buildings that you will almost definitely never ever set foot in.       Doing his best to justify the gigantic architectural dick-swing, CEO of property investment firm Eco World Ballymore Sean Mulryan explained:  ‘My vision for the Sky Pool stemmed from a desire to push the boundaries…The experience of the pool will be truly unique, it will feel like floating through the air in central London.’  Coincidentally, this is a feeling that can also be experienced by being fired from a cannon on the roof of Centre Point into the Thames – something we’d wholeheartedly suggest Mr Mulryan adds to his to-do list.  The apartments at Embassy Gardens go on sale from September. Prices start at £602,000, so fuck you. Why not go swimming in one of London's lidos and outdoor pools instead?