As Noel Gallagher says he’s struggling to sell his Little Venice home, and Jamie Oliver and Ricky Gervais cut the prices of their north London pads, we find if there’s a price premium on properties with all star residents.
Gallagher’s property in Little Venice is on the market for £11.5million but the musician, who reportedly owns four properties, says he’s having trouble finding a buyer.
The former Oasis songwriter said to the Mirror in March: “If there are any wealthy Russians reading this story give me a call please, because I have a house I’m trying to sell.
“I’ve got one on the market and it’s proving very difficult to shift, so give Ignition Management a call if you’re a Russian oligarch. I’m upgrading.”
The five-bedroom house is in a sought after W9 location near the Regent’s Canal and even has a one-bedroom annexe with a gym at the bottom of the garden.
But in a market struggling with increased stamp duty on high end homes, levys on overseas buyers and Brexit, many agents are saying that properties are being priced too high.
One Little Venice agent said: “It’s on one of the best streets in Little Venice and from the photos the house looks stunning but the market at the moment is price sensitive.
“If you price your house correctly buyers will buy, it’s as clear cut as that.”
Houses of comparable quality in the same area tend to fetch approximately £2,000 per sq ft, and a buyer could expect to pay in the region of £2,500 per sq ft for direct canal views.
The price for Gallagher’s property is closer to £3,000 per sq ft. Is that over ambitious, or will people pay extra for the cache of living in a rockstar’s former home?
“At this end of the market buyers won’t really pay a premium for something like that. They are likely to be oligarchs or people who work in the City and they’ll be more inclined to look at the deal they can get than anything else, unless it’s incredibly rare.
“Perhaps you might pay over the odds if it was someone really iconic like Michael Jackson or Elvis Presley.”
Another local agent puts it more bluntly. “Everyone loves the buzz of being able to buy a house from a celebrity but there will come a point where you have to ask yourself how much that’s worth.”
The Britpop icon is not the only big name to be struggling to sell a north London property. Ricky Gervais, Tom Conti and Jamie Oliver have all reduced the prices on their multi-million pound homes following long periods on the market.
There are some famous names that can still attract higher prices though.
Recent research by Knight Frank found that properties with a blue plaque connected to literary figures command far higher prices than those linked to any other profession.
The estate agent found that the total sale value of homes with a literary blue plaque was £91million, far exceeding the total generated by properties linked to any other profession.
This is good news for homeowners in Camden, one of the boroughs with the highest number of official English Heritage blue plaques and a literary enclave.
Hampstead has the most blue plaques of any, with 65 in NW3, while Camden is second with 45. Frognal in Hampstead is the street with the eighth most plaques.
Recent sales of blue plaque homes in the area include the £28million sale of Daphne du Maurier’s childhood home, Cannon Hall; a property on East Heath Road once belonging to author Katherine Mansfield, which was listed for £3.6million; and former Labour prime minister Ramsay Macdonald’s £7.95 million Hampstead house.
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