Across the pond

Despite the meltdown and the continuing credit crunch the London property market has not ground to halt. I can tell you on first hand evidence. Because on Friday, around 5 PM we completed on the purchase of a London flat to replace the flat we have been renting since April of last year. So all readers of The Daily Novel should know that I have put my money where my mouth is.

What we are facing at present is a crisis of confidence. This has been evident to me over the past few weeks, when I have had to deal with all sorts of advice that we should NOT buy this flat. So although what I have to say in this post is typical journalistic anecdotal evidence, it does reflect the crisis of confidence that is deterring thousands of people who are wanting to move home.

What has changed during the last few weeks is not the reality situation, it is the public perception of it. But I have not had time to blog about this, because my time has been consumed in meeting the objections to my own modest purchase.

So  this blog is just about one UK property purchaser, wanting to buy a flat in a 1930s block on the bottom side of Hampstead on Parliament Hill. Because we have lived around this area for many years, we, and our friends, know several people who live in this block, mostly very happily. And, I know, that it brings me nearest to the house in which John Keates wrote ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, which i read when i was a teenager in Wolverhampton in the heart of the Black Country.

It was a very nice place to live in Keates’ time when the the eighteenth century was coming to terms with the realities of the nineteenth century, when the beacons on Parliament Hill were ready to be lit when Napoleon invaded. It is still a very nice place to live in 2008. Not least because Hampstead Heath is now actually bigger than it was in Keates’ time. And is a mixture of lawns and woodland that beats Hyde Park into a cocked hat.

Nevertheless, i was besieged by advice from my advisers with reasons why I should NOT buy this flat now.

But first, i should report what the estate agent said.

This flat was an Art Deco development with panoramic views over London. True, because although we are on the ground floor, we can see, as Janet noticed when we first went there, that you can acually see the Obelisk.

What I noticed when we first visited is that looming much larger in the near view is the Royal Free Hospital, which is one of the ugliiest modern buildings in the whole of Lonodn. (Although it’s medical care is far above average in the NHS.).

But the avalanche of negative comment I got from the professionals when we put in our offer did not mention the ugliness of the Royal Free, looming large in the foreground of our ‘panoramic’ views over London.

It came from other objections.

First, my surveyor, who told me over the telephone, it is a brick box near an electricity sub-station. To interpret. Our new flat does not have the high ceilings of the Victorian house we lived in around here for 39 years. And, the electricity sub-station, while not a healthy risk, might deter some purchasers.

Next my lawyer, who informed me, along with many queries about the complicated long lease, that my intended property was adjacent to the North London Railway, which might well deter some purchasers. He was quite right, but there are also some people like myself, and, Michael Palin, who actually like living near to railway lines.

The Palin’s and us bought our first small houses around here in 1967 in Oak Village. Michael is still there, having coped with the expansion of his family and his increasing riches, by buying two adjoining houses in Oak Villiage. We moved in 1976 a few hundred yards to a bigger Victorian house on the other side of the Mansfield Road.

But my point is, that my lawyer is quite right to point out that some people will absolutely not want to live by a railway. But, it is equally true, that some people like it!

Finally, my financial adviser told me that i should consider the advantages of going on renting. His advice, I think, was sound. If i wait a year or two, it is likely that I could buy a flat like this more cheaply.

So I don’t think that we have made the best possible property investment by buying our new flat.

But buying a flat or a house in much more than property investment. It is buying a home.

We took possession yesterday in the worst possible conditions. It was pouring with rain. You could barely see the Royal Free Hospital, let alone the Obelisk.

So we had lunch at the Magala pub just down the road. Since we had driven up from Dorset to collect the keys, I wanted to order the full Enlish breakfast. The disk they provided was the 2008 equivalent. I protested, because i could not find the bacon.

But I was wrong. Because, as was pointed out to me, it was there. Not rashers of bacon, but tiny bits smaller than the old English farthing.

But, one of the reasons that I was happy with our new flat, is that I first visited the Magdala, in 1959, when i had a bedsit nearby. It did not serve any food in those days, but it had a healthy custom because, alllegly it had in the wall, a bullet fired from the gun of Ruth Ellis who was the last woman hanged in Britain for murder.

This was a fake. Although, Ruth Ellis did indeed shoot her lover outside the Magdala, the then-pub management faked the bullet hole. And for many years the media substantiated the myth.

But it was in 1959, and still is today, decent pub.

Which is perhaps one of the reasons that I have ignored all the nay-sayers who advised me to think again before i bought this flat.

So to bring this blog back from the personal to the political.

The current crisis requies not only than governments stake their money.

It requires that everyone who can afford it should spend.

Not listen to all the advice that tells them that if they hold off they can buy more chealyl than today.