The housing market might actually be cooling down, but parts of the country are still seeing moments of madness.
Figures from Halifax show that house price growth slowed in April- though you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise...
Garage sale
Take the former garage that sold for £466,000 at auction this week. The 18ft x 35ft property in Hammersmith and Fulham was at the centre of a furious bidding war that saw it finally go for almost double the guide price of £250,000.
The garage was bought in 2009 with four other buildings and land for £2.5 million. Since then, it has simply been used as a storage space, but it has planning permission for a small two-bedroom house. At only 18ft wide it will be a very snug home though.
Image credit: Savillis
Almost half a million pounds may seem a lot for a garage but once converted into a house it could be worth a lot more. The garage is situated just off Fulham Palace Road where two-bedroom flats are being marketed for £799,950.
It isn’t the first time a garage has fetched an astronomical price in the capital. Earlier this year a garage sold for £360,000 in Chelsea. That garage could not be converted into accommodation but due to a massive shortage of parking in the borough it was subject to a bidding war that drove the price far beyond the guide of £180,000.
Who on earth is buying them?
It’s suspected that the garage in Hammersmith has been bought by a keen developer looking to create a home for themselves:
“A clutch of aspiring Kevin McClouds will have been bidding up the price faster than the professional builders could suck their teeth at the levels it reached,” Henry Pryor, a buying agent and property market commentator told the Guardian.
“My money is on a vanity project. Let’s hope Kevin is free to film it – in this market it could be a car crash if they don’t get their budget right first time.”
However, the London property market isn’t guaranteed to make home owners fortunes and potential buyers with the largest of budgets can still be disappointed.
At the same auction a three-bedroom former council flat in Covent Garden failed to sell. It had a guide price of £975,000 and bidding rose to £990,000 but that wasn’t enough for it to sell. The reserve price is likely to have been above a million as a similar property sold for £1.2 million last August.
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