Spectator Life

Spectator Life

An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.

Which London suburbs are worth moving to?

Pre-pandemic, all you needed for a good London location was a roof terrace, proximity to a vibrant social scene and a tube station. Or a river view. Then everything changed. Whilst central areas have pretty much fallen into the doldrums, a combination of more room, better value and access to green spaces has become essential. If

The commuter villages that combine town and country

The rush to leave London has been a staple of property columns over the last twelve months. Built up, densely-populated urban areas were portrayed negatively in favour of remote locations, but as normal life begins to resume does that characterisation still hold? London is already back on the agenda for many professionals and will remain central to

Leaving London? The top commuter cities that will give you more space

Would you swap living in London for York? According to the latest survey on family-friendly city living, York tops the list. On a range of measures from childcare costs to average house prices and leisure activities, York is it. Unless your work or family ties take you there, I’m not convinced though. The three-hour train journey

Why there’s never been a worse time to move to the country

It began with a sourdough starter. Then we dabbled with home delivery cocktails. This time round, I watched The Dig and bought a Fair Isle tank top and a blouse with a big collar to wear for Zoom calls. Then, when my husband’s company announced they’d be hiring remotely, we embraced the biggest lockdown cliché

How to negotiate on a house

With Rishi Sunak announcing plans for a Stamp Duty holiday extension and floating the policy of 95 per cent mortgages, the boom in house sales looks set to continue apace. So, in an increasingly competitive market, what’s the secret to securing the best possible price on a house? Firstly, your relationship with the agent is

Is now the time to buy a coastal bolthole?

It’s hard to believe we’re heading towards the pandemic’s first anniversary. The economy has had a torrid time. But if there’s one area that has surprised us all with its buoyancy it is the property market. Ever since the first lockdown, there has been a flurry of activity at a time when a market crash was predicted. So,

Ross Clark

Will the new Help to Buy scheme help anyone?

As Mark Twain didn’t quite say, there are only three certain things in life: death, taxes and yet another government-backed bung for the housing market. The latest instalment is the 2021 to 2023 Help to Buy scheme, which carries on the theme of offering subsidised loans to first-time buyers – and only first-time buyers. Here’s

Ross Clark

Are house prices about to fall?

A pattern seems to have emerged in the latter stages of the Covid crisis: Keir Starmer gets wind of discussions within government of possible new lockdown restrictions and calls for them to be implemented immediately – just to make it look as if he is ahead of the curve and the government behind it. We

Where to search for property in 2021

Did anyone get their predictions for the 2020 property market right? I suspect not. We’d barely heard of Covid back in January last year and, if we had, we would have probably written off the housing market for half a decade. But look at property now. Prices are up 5 per cent on average and

Ross Clark

The perils of shared ownership

Fancy buying half a flat, paying 100 per cent of the maintenance and the cost of putting right a developer’s shoddy work? Therein lies the great scandal at the heart of shared ownership, the government scheme which BBC Panorama exposed last week but which I others were writing about over a decade ago. Shared ownership

Ross Clark

What virtual property viewings don’t show you

I’ve never worked out why anyone would want to buy an outfit over the internet without first seeing it in the flesh and trying it on. I know my wife does it all the time — although the constant piles of parcels by the door, full of stuff waiting to be sent back whence it

10 myths about moving to the country

Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.— Samuel Johnson Samuel Johnson made this remark in 1777 to one of his friends who lived

Is now the time to invest in buy to let?

Buy to let remains a popular investment option for Brits, despite being the subject of major reform over the last three years. Government legislation since 2017 has been increasingly hostile towards buy-to-let owners but could the aftermath of the pandemic prompt a change? Figures from 2018 show that the Private Rented Sector [PRS] provides homes

The great escape: where to buy property after lockdown

The latest research from Deutsche Bank suggests that a dramatic shift in working patterns is on the way. 57 per cent of the 450 financial workers surveyed expect to be working from home between 1 and 3 days a week once the pandemic has passed. Covid-19 has not only disrupted our lives in the short

When will the property market start moving again?

For those looking to buy or sell houses, lockdown has put many of the best laid plans on hold. Since lockdown was imposed on the 23rd March, the property market has entered into a period of suspended animation. We don’t know when lockdown will end, nor what the financial and economic collateral damage will be

House buyers should be poised for the aftermath of Covid-19

It’s easy to look with doom and gloom at the Coronavirus situation and imagine that this could be the death knell for the property market. Why would you make the biggest investment in your life at a time of great economic uncertainty? Furthermore, the government has requested that the market effectively shut down while we

Ross Clark

Why stamp duty could and should be cut

Given that the government is running a £40 billion deficit, is determined to increase spending on infrastructure and will not be facing an election for another five years, no-one should get their hopes up too much for tax cuts in the Budget. Indeed, most of the talk has been of possible rises. But if any

Where to buy property in London

With prices in many parts of the city already beginning to fall, buying in London is a minefield. Striking a balance between liveability and getting a good return on investment is the trick we should all be aiming to pull off. Afterall, buy somewhere that’s already got too many tattooed men selling flat whites and

The six best commuter villages close to London

Staring into a stranger’s armpit on a rush-hour tube train can often lead to thoughts of moving to a tiny village. We imagine that, there, we might find the space to be ourselves. As a description of Louis de Bernieres’ fictional Surrey village, Notwithstanding, reads: it is a place where, “a lady dresses in plus

How would Labour’s proposed tax grab affect your home?

At first glance you could be forgiven for thinking that Labour’s publication ‘Land for the Many’ is a set of policy ideas that solves the housing crisis. Increasing the supply of affordable housing and freeing up land to build, improving access to existing stock and transparency sounds fair, right? Yet tucked away inside the report,