It’s just a jump to the left, and then a step to the ri-i-i-i-i-ight. Sweep aside the cobwebs, and you’ll be right inside a former corner shop in south Wales that has come onto the market years after anyone last set foot inside.
Forget Open All Hours, it’s been closed for decades, and Paul Fosh Auctions is marketing it as a “time warp” property, claiming that the “eerie remains of the former shop and upper floor residential have been revealed for the first time since the last century when a valuer called by to have a look”. And, it seems, sadness takes its toll. Said valuer, Sean Roper, found rusting cans and jars from years ago – as well as a full-scale garden invasion in the bathroom, like something from another dimension. But it’s the well-thick dust that really drives you insa-a-a-a-a-ane.
“It was really quite spooky that it had lain undisturbed all this time,” said Roper. “It really is a place which is lost in time. There are the tattered remains of the last-century material curtains and even a really old-fashioned-style ladies’ brolly and mac hanging on a peg as if left there by a previous owner after a shower. It’s a real time-warp gem which seems to have quietly faded away over time as the rest of the world rushed ahead on its merry way.”
Naturally, the property at 17 Wern Road, Ystalyfera, Swansea, will require a complete renovation and modernisation, but it is said to be “versatile”, with potential for retail or residential use and a guide price of £26,000. Time is fleeting, though – if you’re interested, log in for the online sale beginning on 2 February.
Just a TikTok
Diary is slowly coming to the realisation that we may not form part of the target market for Avanton’s Coda scheme in Battersea. Back in November, we reported on the developer welcoming “celebrities” we had never heard of into its luxury apartments to test-drive the amenities (and post their findings on social media to their combined 5m followers). Now, it is using something called TikTok to help market the swanky flats.
Diary has heard its niece (among others) using the word TikTok during the pandemic, but has scrupulously ignored it. One assumes it is some sort of video-sharing system for those who lack the attention span for YouTube.
Avanton says it is “bringing US-style marketing techniques” to its flagship scheme, delivering a series of apartment tour videos with the Corban Group to showcase the £120m development to a “new audience”. High-net-worth 12-year olds? No, no – it is after “young professionals searching for their first home”. Young and professional? That rules Diary out on two counts.
Anarchy in the leasing market!
The news that Danny Boyle has taken what was a pretty vacant space at the ITV studios on the South Bank to film a new documentary about punk legends the Sex Pistols is without question the most striking leasing deal at the site since Co‑Re and Mitsubishi Estate London bought it for redevelopment. And the location is particularly fitting – back in 1976, the band made a notorious appearance on Bill Grundy’s Today show, filmed at the very same studios. The host infamously urged the Pistols to “say something outrageous”, to which Steve Jones obliged with: “What a f***ing rotter.” A phrase never uttered about a real estate professional, of course.
The $819bn question
Real estate loves data. We at EG really love data. And Diary loves data too – the more spurious, the better. Step forward researchers at high-net-worth mortgage broker Enness Global, who have asked themselves a brilliantly pointless (and pointlessly brilliant) question: what would the world’s 10 richest billionaires have to spend as a first-time buyer in proportion to their current net wealth?
Using US figures – average wealth of a non-homeowner = $47,800, average starter home price = $215,000, therefore the average American first-time buyer spends four and a half times their wealth on their first home – they crunched the truly mind-boggling numbers involved.
“Despite his eye-watering divorce settlement,” Enness Global says, “Jeff Bezos is still worth approximately $182.1bn. If he were to have purchased his first home at 4.5 times his wealth, the property would be valued at a huge £819,450,000,000.” That is a lot of zeroes.
Only Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault (and family) and Bill Gates join Bezos in “the 12-digit club”, with Musk needing to scrape together a sizeable deposit to get on the ladder with a property worth $792.9bn.
The billionaires would find a much better deal here in the UK, where first-time buyers pay just 2.9 times their average wealth for a home. Well, if that doesn’t get them to focus investment on these shores, we don’t know what will.
