The Trouble With Basements

A basement in Shepherd's Bush

One thing most people can agree on in Shepherd's Bush is our shared dislike of our neighbours digging basements.

If your neighbours are digging a basement, it means noise, dust, and disruption. There will be jackhammers, skips and wall-shaking disturbance. And, worst of all, it all takes a long time.

Listening to voter's concerns, our Council has been consulting on the digging of basements, with proposals to limit the size and scope of basement extensions and generally to try and make it more difficult and restrictive.

Shepherd's Bush House Prices Keep Getting Sillier

Never mind Brexit, the fall in the value of Sterling, punishing increases in Stamp Duty, slowing economic growth and a Trump presidency.  Despite all the headwinds, Shepherd's Bush House Prices just keep on getting sillier. Recently a house was listed for a breathtaking £3million in Macfarlane Rd, a fairly average street of Edwardian terraced housing which sits just west of Westfield and south of the new TV Centre development. It's hard to imagine prices like these in our neighbourhood. Will Barnard Marcus get £3million - or even close - for a relatively modest Edwardian three story house?

House Prices Up Again In Shepherd's Bush

Terrace in Shepherd's Bush

According to our local news site, Shepherd's Bush W12, house prices are continuing to rise dramatically in our neighbourhood.  

Data just in for 2015 shows that over the year, the average house price soared by a huge 28.7% to above £750,000. 

Good news perhaps for those who own property, - but very bad news for anyone trying to buy their own home, especially anyone trying to get by on a normal or average wage. 

Tories Kill Off Buy-To-Let

Treasury offices, Great George St.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The changes in tax credits may have made the headlines, but in fact private landlords were the biggest losers in last week's budget, when chancellor George Osborne changed the rules for the deductibility of mortgage interest for rental properties, effectively killing off the economics of buy-to-let.

From 2017, the amount of interest that landlords can claim in tax relief will be limited to the basic rate of tax – greatly increasing their tax bill.  The treasury described this as a way to "level the playing field for homebuyers and investors" - but in fact it does nothing of the kind.  It is simply a tax grab directed at landlords, greatly worsening the economics of renting property, and meaning that landlords will pay tax on money they have not even earned.

Your Terraced House in Shepherd's Bush May Soon Be a Mansion

Not just a mansion, but a mega-mansion

You might think you live in a modest terraced house with too many stairs and a tiny garden. But the way house prices are going in Shepherd's Bush, it won't be long before plenty of Bush residents live in a mansion - if the new mansion tax goes through. Just recently a house on Hartswood Road become the first residential property in W12  to sell for over £3m - £3,202,000 in fact.