Harringay online

Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

In case anyone's curious, here's what the inside of one Grand Parade Studio flat looks like:

The property is currently up for rent. More pics on Zoopla.

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When we bought a house here over 10 years ago, some of the less done up houses were still pretty reasonable in price. However, we struggled to buy one of these cheaper ones because we kept getting elbowed out of the way by cash in hand developers who were looking to carve up the family houses into units. In the end we bought a failed HMO which was under order to be changed back, which the owner couldn't be arsed to do so sold on. I still sigh when I look at a particular house in Duckett which still had all the original fittings that was bought for 10,000 more than we could afford and was then stripped and turned into bedsits. It was so out of control that local campaigners and planning had trouble keeping up. Buy to let mortgages were very easy to get then too and houses around here were an attractive option. 

Since then prices have skyrocketed and the buy to let market has bottomed out so the rate of development has slowed with few new properties coming on to the market to rent and pushing the price of existing rented properties up. The streets of Harringay are no longer littered with skips as they once were but those who 'got in' at the right time are probably doing quite nicely out of their investment although some of them are simply a new generation of slum landlord, cramming people in and not maintaining their stock.

Someone I know in the city that I spoke to this evening was telling me about their new mortgage, £900K on a house that cost them £1.8 million, £1600pcm...  It's all about the deposit. Traders in the city (well, the ones that still have jobs) are scrambling to borrow as much as they can to buy property. They think the government is "stealing" money from the wealthy (well, people whose wealth is in cash) to pay off its debts using inflation. They tell me the official figures for inflation are a flat out lie and indeed there is a conspiracy theory doing the rounds that the MIT Billion Price project which collected inflation data for individual countries by scraping prices from the Internet was shut down because of complaints from angry governments.

The price of a Zone 1 single on the Underground when I came to London in 1996 was £1.10. People were grumbling at the time that it had gone up 10% from the previous year. Now an Oyster trip in zone 1 is £2.10, and we throw our arms up and cry how outrageous it is that property in London has gone up by so much. The issue really is that wages have not kept pace, not that houses have grown in value so unreasonably (there is an argument that they were seriously under valued in 1997). Is someone doing the same job that you were in 1997 earning twice as much? No, thought not.

Graham, we're not poking fun at the people who rent this flat but at the total cheek of the person who dares charge that much for it without providing a proper cooker.

The sad thing is they will probably get that much for it. As pointed out, it's a tough time at the moment for renters. Try going in to an estate agents and telling them you have £1000 a month to spend on rent, bills and council tax combined and see what they offer you.

Shelter are currently running a campaign to help renters tell Boris what needs to be done to improve the renting situation in London. They are asking people to complete a short survey that also gives scope to give your own views

Complete the survey here

Thanks for posting this Liz. Have done it and tweeted and posted on fb. This campaign is long overdue. I really think we have to bring back rent controls. I'm allowed to say that. I'm a landlady. I really dont see how else we can get slum landlords removed and housing quality restored - to say nothing of people's lives.

This one in Hornsey/Crouch End looks like a better bet....just.

Tbf, I pay 2/3 of that for a place about 1/3 the size (single studio). I have my own bathroom (with shower) but share the washing machine. Though still better for the place on Wightman that wanted £700/month exclusive without a washing machine anywhere in the building...!

I remember reading about something called 'property porn' a while ago - homeowners spending hours on RightMove looking up local properties for sale to see how they compared to their own.

It seems a shame that now the bubble's burst we've resorted to trawling through the same sites looking at what's on offer to those who have to rent so we can laugh at it.

Plus this one really isn't that bad compared to others!

I don't think anyone's laughing Graham. My motivation for the initial posting was purely curiosity about what the GP flats are like. I posted the second flat because I got an alert for it and it seemed to make an interesting comparison. We're perhaps a nicer bunch on this thread than you give us credit for.

I'm not suggesting there's any nastiness, I'm more worried about smugness.

I think this is a great website for locals to come together and as Liz points out below, your original post has provided something of a reality check and there's a disussion that's come out of it. I just worry that everyone lucky enough to live in those nice houses on the ladder gets very excited about wonderful the area has become, with markets, good schools, great restaurants, a (gastro?) pub, £5 coffee, estate agents referring to it as Crouch End etc. High rents are unfortunately one of the knock on effects. Spare a thought for how hard it is for those having to rent.

I see there's a proper one bed for £1300 a month now on this very website - maybe this is why some people can get away with charging a grand for this.

I honestly don't think people are laughing at it. 

If anything it's providing a reality check to all those ideas that high rent = high spec or that people who might be claiming housing benefit to help them pay for these rooms are living in mansions. I think its right for renters to share their experiences of what is on offer and how high the rents are given how the topic of housing in the area has always been a very live one.  

I don't think any of us who own a home think that we are anything other than very fortunate to do so and  there was not a huge element of luck in being old or in the right place at the right time to get a foot on the property ladder. A few years back 'property porn' was everywhere and early evening tv was full of it. I recall a Spanish person retorting to my remark that Spanish tv had too much football that we could hardly talk with our endless programmes about buying houses, doing up houses, cleaning houses and gardening. Had to admit he was right.

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