I'd like to bring your attention to this article from the Times Online Feb 20th.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/leisure/article1409272.ece

'From The TimesFebruary 20, 2007

Super-flats for 26m will offer rooms with a view

The new owners of the former Thistle hotel at Lancaster Gate in West London have submitted plans to transform the site into 80 super-apartments overlooking Hyde Park with prices of up to 26 million, The Times has learnt.

City bankers are understood to have made informal approaches to buy several of the smaller flats off-plan for between 3 million and 4 million. That would be record pricing per square foot for Bayswater housing in an area close to Tony Blairs multimillion-pound buy-to-let house.

Minerva, the London-based property developer, bought the site last summer for 67.2 million with planning permission in place to convert the interior of the historic Victorian hotel into 124 apartments and add underground parking.

New plans submitted to Westminster Council include a request to reduce the number of apartments to 80, with the largest on the top floors covering about 8,000sq ft (745sq m), property sources said. The plans include a pool under the private front garden, which spans 120m of Bayswater Road, and grandiose reception rooms with 15ft ceilings.

Minerva teamed up with Northacre, the specialist upmarket flatbuilder, to buy the Lancaster Gate site. Sources said that Minerva had expected a price of 1,200 to 1,300 a square foot when it completed the purchase of the site last July after six months of negotiations. The prices for so-called prime homes in the area have shot up about one third since July, according to independent valuations from the agency Knight Frank, to about 1,500 a square foot.

Minerva and Northacre, which has a 5 per cent equity stake in the venture, expect to hold on to a substantial number of the top-priced flats until the site is finished late in 2009. By then property prices there should have doubled.

One Hyde Park, a Candy & Candy-designed scheme for 86 super-flats on the south side of Hyde Park, has achieved the highest price yet for residential property. Contracts have been exchanged off-plan on a batch priced at 4,200 a square foot, valuing the top four penthouses at 84 million each, The Times reported this month.

Stephan Miles-Brown, the head of residential development at Knight Frank, said of the Lancaster Gate scheme: If the market continues at this rate, then 25 per cent annual compound growth is a distinct possibility and 3,000 per square foot easily achievable. Northacre was doing Candy & Candy design before the Candy brothers entered the scene.

A Minerva spokesman said: We are excited about the scheme . . . but details have yet to be finalised. We are excited about a project which we believe will be a success for the development partners and the community.

Doubling up

Minervas development of the old Thistle Hotel on Lancaster Gate dubbed the Lancasters could land the company and its partner Northacre hundreds of millions of pounds in profits.


- The total cost of the site including debt finance is about 200 million

- New plans envisage up to 200,000 sq ft of residential property which if sold at an average of 2,000 per square foot could mean a site with a built value of about 400 million

- Minerva and partner Northgate are expected to start to presell about half of the flats from this autumn to start to cover their costs

- There is the tricky issue of obtaining revised planning permission. Minerva and Northacre are understood to have lodged a request with Westminster council to pay extra to have the option of building some of the affordable housing segment elsewhere

- Minerva will need to buy a site to build those houses. Westminster could demand a levy to build more affordable homes than the ten extra units set aside for a 125 unit scheme. Minerva would gain from having more high value homes on the old Lancaster Gate site'

UPS thread post 387 across the road.

Ramping at its very worst.

Check out Master RSI aka mamborico.