Bad news for Mr Claus. A record number of home owners with idle chimneys are bringing their ageing smoke stacks back into use. But why, the man behind the big white beard is asking, should this be so given the health and safety nightmare this presents to a flue-based package delivery operative?

According to renovations and building project marketplace MyBuilder.com its site has seen a 253% rise in chimney, stove and fireplace installations or renovations in recent months.

The site’s spokesperson Courtney Gibbs says this trend is being created by two things: Victorian and Georgian chimneys coming to the end of their lives and the rise of the log fire.

This is creating a lively market for fireplace manufacturers and chimney renovation experts despite the ongoing recession and many are claiming the highest number of sales for over 20 years and an increase in demand of 100%.

Another expert, David Knapp of Victorianfireplaces.com says that while there has been a fall in the number of large household items such as sofas and white goods being bought, his business has continued to grow year on year.

While budget stoves start at £300 they rapidly increase in price as the quality and size rises to £2,500 or more, and are popular as a cheap way to heat a room as gas and electricity prices continue to waft ever higher. But it’s more than just cost. Psychologist Alex Drummond says that ‘being close to an open fire warms the soul, radiators just warm the room’. Quote of the year, we think.

The heady days of buyers queuing outside new developments armed with deposits and desperate to part with their cash are over, or so we’re lead to believe. But the launch of a recent central London development suggests it still carries on, albeit rarely.

Over 1,900 buyers registered interest for Central Square’s 170 new apartments in the capital’s edgy Clerkenwell, walking distance from the Square Mile, so we thought the launch party last week might be busy. When the doors opened at 5pm in rushed a flurry of buyers who, despite previously registering interest, had not been allowed to buy until then.

Between wine, canapés and viewings the prospective buyers – of all ages and nationalities – quizzed the selling agents. Then like the bear pit of a Wall Street trading floor, they started to buy. With two-bedroom apartments starting at £575,000 this is not a purchase to be bought in a hurry, but a buzz of chatter on the phones to banks or loved ones ensued and deposits of £2,000 per reservation were paid on credit cards.

By 9pm, 37 apartments were already reserved and over a chilled glass of Sauvignon Blanc we quizzed the Chief Executive of Mount Anvil, Killian Hurley, about the success of their latest launch.

Hurley said one of his tricks is to spend more on the finish, which means investing more in the product, but they sell faster. “You’ll notice when you go to look around the show apartments,” he told us. And we did. Every apartment has at least one balcony, the kitchens and bathrooms exuded high quality and we loved the heated wall and towel rail in the bathroom as well as the floor-to-ceiling windows which add to the sense of space.

And, unlike many new apartments, there’s plenty of storage space and built-in wardrobes. In the two bedroom flat there is a huge open plan living and entertaining space adjoining a large decked terrace and we were surprised at the decent size of the second bedroom.

So it is easy to see why these homes are flying off the shelves. And at £400,000 for one bedroom and £575,000 for two, these are not marketed at the wealthy City bankers looking to spend their bonuses. These pads are being snapped up by young professionals, often working in finance in the City (but not at the bonus level), looking for a trendy place near work.

Central is the operative word in Central Square; it’s within 14 minutes walk to St Pauls, Shoreditch and Liverpool Street. Brian De’ath, the sales director told us that the international buyers often aren’t used to commuting so it’s important for them to walk to work. It’s no wonder then that the development’s marketing slogan is “Unexpectedly close by. Hit snooze then stroll into the office”.

To give you more of a sense of its location, here’s a fun clip of the Kit Kat advert which was filmed in the building site of Central Square – look at the skyline, the building taking shape and its location.

And if you want to reserve an apartment at Central Square you’d better be quick.

It’s a familiar story in today’s Prime property market – a Cheshire mansion bought for £1.85 million in 2007, bull-dozed, re-built and put on the market for £5 million. Two years and a price drop later Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff has finally sold his Prestbury pile – to another sports star, footballer Peter Crouch.

Apart from the set of cricket wickets carved above the front door and a mosaic of the Ashes urn in the swimming pool, this is the type of uber-luxurious house that was built for a footballer – even though it was actually built by a cricketer.

Flintoff bought the plot in October 2007 from ex-Fulham football manager Mark Hughes and after fights with locals and an initially refused planning application, he was able to knock down the existing property and build a six bedroom mansion akin to others on one of the UK’s most expensive streets, Withinlee Road, AKA Footballer’s Alley.

The house was designed for Flintoff family life and includes a large pool plus a smaller one for their three children. It also has a luxury gym and home cinema but the Flintoffs never lived in their made-to-measure home. Instead, they turned their attention to the dizzying heights of Dubai and their Cheshire mansion has waited patiently for two years for a buyer.

Despite being in Prestbury – the centre of footballer land (the Rooneys, Ferdinand and Tevez all live nearby) – Freddie wasn’t bowled over with offers for his £5 million pad. And only after changing estate agents, dropping the asking price by £500,000 – the price of a decent size house to most – plus the luck of footballer Peter Crouch moving Clubs, has the house finally sold.

Crouch is transferring from Tottenham Hotspur to Stoke City and moving up North with his new wife, Abbey Clancy and their six month old daughter and we have no doubt the house will suit the star couple’s needs perfectly, model Abbey will surely love the huge walk-in wardrobe (pictured above) and the WAG neighbours.

If someone were to ask you what sort of home floats your boat, then these properties in Shoreham-on-Sea in Sussex might be the ideal answer.

Although some of the boats bobbing up and down border on the farcical (one has a Reliant Robin poking out of the roof) the market here has been appreciating fast. Boats that once went for thousand of pounds now sell for £150,000 or more – for a good reason.

While most floating homes come with either leasehold or permit-based moorings, the slippery slices of river bank in Shoreham are bought and sold freehold – which explains the prices.

For example at the moment there’s Gitana, which has been renovated to live on and is for sale at £160,000 but although she’s nothing more than a gilded tub, it’s the mud she sits on you are paying for.

But despite the occasional sale, many people have lived here for years. Fred Cole, 65, and his wife Polly arrived in 1980 and bought their plot for their sturdy barge, Lunasea, in 1986 for £ 1,600. But their vessel, which was used in the D-Day landings, fell to pieces in the water a few years ago.

But Fred Cole, who is a retired car mechanic, was able to just replace her with a giant German battleship, Fische.

This huge vessel, which has a half finished concert hall inside her complete with stage and piano, is now worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

“I bought Fische for £800, but the freehold of the riverbed is worth a lot more. [The market’s] gone out of all proportion really,” he says. ”It’s a unique situation because you can tow any home you like on to your land, which seems better than having to move house.

Prices on the river bank rival those of nearby residential homes that look on to the river. But people are not just buying mud. There’s a unique community lifestyle here including floating yoga schools and party boats as well as community pub nights and even opera concerts.

Lucas Heathcote, who lives on Verda, says: “Like any free market the prices have risen in accordance with what people are willing to pay. The freeholds alone are worth around £120,000 now. ”Houseboats are constantly depreciating, one day they will all fall apart and be worthless, but the riverbed is yours permanently.

All pictures copyright: Eddie Mitchell/Rex Features

Want to buy a home overlooking the sea? Then any estate agent will tell you that whether it’s in the UK or overseas, expect to pay a premiumof up to 20% despite the risk (in some areas) of coastal erosion. But a seaside home that’s different in almost every way may soon be on offer, if billionaire dot com entrepreneur Peter Thiel (pictured, bottom) can get his latest big idea off the ground.

Thiel, who is the founder of online payment firm Paypal, has sunk (sorry, invested) £700,000 in a plan to create a floating island (pictured, above) not governed by the rules of any country.

The structures will reportedly have a displacement of 12,000 tons, be diesel-powered (so not that green) and initially be home to approximately 270 people. By linking the islands together they could grow to eventually support millions.

Thiel plans to anchor the islands in international waters making them therefore exempt from jurisdictions covering taxes, regulations, building codes, welfare requirements and weapons restrictions.

In 2009, a 3D design competition was held to help people visualise what these sea-bound communities may look like and the winning entry by Hungarian architectural cum graphic designer András Gyõrfi is described as a ‘recreational resort’, complete with grass, trees and a large communal swimming pool.

But what at first looks like a floating apartment block is in fact a experiment in creating a new society – which Thiel hopes can be achieved on the islands. Prices for properties have yet to be released, but despite it’s utopian aims, PrimeLocation.com thinks they won’t cheap.

Billions of people around the world waited in suspense in April to see what Kate Middleton would wear at the wedding of the decade but few realised that her Alexander McQueen dress had been prepared within one of London’s up-and-coming neighbourhoods.

For it was within Clerkenwell that ‘operation meringue’ took place – the plan, within a locked room at McQueen’s HQ on the corner of Clerkenwell Rd and St John St, to hide the dress from public gaze until the big day.

Many of those waving their Union Jacks may already know Clerkenwell, even if they hadn’t ever been there.  Because its narrow Victorian side streets have been the setting for several Hollywood films including The Dark Knight and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Often eclipsed by its neighbours Hoxton and Dalston, this patch of East London has quietly established itself as edgy while still being ‘old England’ and has been called ‘The Mayfair of East London’ by leading local agent David Salvi.

But another measure of an area’s rise from poverty to gentrification is how many artisans reside locally and Clerkwenwell (pictured above) scores well – the strange haircuts, ill fitting clothes and battered cycles everywhere point to its 60-plus design studios and other arty employers.

Historically Clerkenwell’s buildings had been commercial but 20 years ago this began to change as more factories and warehouses were developed into private accommodation. Janet Street-Porter, the outspoken journalist, pioneered this and had the architect Piers Gough design her post-modernist house at Britton Street.

In the ten years that followed some 2,400 trendy apartments and ‘loft conversions’ have been built in the area, so it now bustles. Planning applications to convert buildings also rose from a couple each year to over fifty.

But the numbers hide a sea change in local culture. Out go the old pubs and derelict shops and in the stylish bars and restaurants which now give the area a ‘new Soho’ feel food-wise including Mark Hix’s Hix Oyster and Chop House, Fergus Henderson’s St John and John Torode’s Smiths which all manage to be fashionable as well as retaining the unassuming, earthy feel of the area.

Hotels chains have yet to bite the Clerkenwell apple with only a few notable names, partly because it’s off the tourist track, albeit that’s starting to change.

The area’s most famous champion is connected to food. Mark Sainsbury, instead of joining the family supermarket business, has moved to a converted Georgian stable in North Clerkenwell after spotting the area’s potential. He opened his fashionable Zetter Hotel (pictured above) six years ago following the success of his restaurant venture in Exmouth Market, Moro – which now has three cookbooks and a cult following.

• To read more about the area, get Alan Ainsworth’s fascinating book Clerkenwell: Change and Renewal which gives an in depth history of the area and describes how it has changed. It is well worth reading, not only for the pictures which capture Clerkenwell’s essence and its USP: the people, streets and architecture.

This year’s competition to find Britain’s Beach Hut of the Year is in full swing and there’s no event that smells more of British fair play, marmalade, soft wet sand and warm sand, we think.

In a world dominated by smart phone mania, text-mad teenagers, ultra-modern penthouses and angular contemporary art the cosy and quirky world of seaside beach huts is a rare reminder of a Britain that’s largely disappeared. So anything that celebrates that is up our street, or should be we say down our promenade.

Picture of last year's Beach Hut of the Year competition, Margot Charlton, outside her hut in Sandilands, Lincolnshire.

Beach huts are, as the competition notes, as much part of our coastal heritage as candy rock, piers and groynes and appeal to many people’s desire to eschew over-the-top extravagance. The vast majority are no more than glorified cupboards, with room only for two people to dodge a strong onshore wind while sipping their tea.

But a small proportion are nearly houses and occasionally come with plumbing, water, electricity – although most can’t be lived in year round. According to the Beach Hut of the Year competition, there are 23,000 to be found in the UK with the most expensive on Mudeford sandbank in Dorset, where occasionally some of the 350 huts there go for £120,000.

But even less glamorous ones go for sizeable sums. There’s a very colourful one for sale at the moment on Bexhill-on-Sea’s promenade for £27,500, on of some 100 for sale on PrimeLocation.com at the moment.

The competition is looking for entries and categories include the ‘best beach hut story’ so if you have a beach hut get weaving – you’re sand-blown abode could win the right to a commemorative blue plaque and a £250 prize.

The lavish interior and unusual layout of 120 Kensington Park Road would make it an iconic Notting Hill home even if Robbie hadn’t lived there between 1998 and 2002 after he’d left Take That and moved down to London from Manchester.

It must have seen some life whilst he was there, especially as this was during his ‘wild’ times. He was dating Nicole Appleton, singer with All Saints, whom he got engaged to but was unceremoniously dumped outside the address when they broke up.

Robbie also let Geri Halliwell move into to his home after the Spice Girls split up so she could get away from the paparazzi. But it probably wasn’t the best place for privacy, as it’s over the Paul Smith shop on the corner of Westbourne Grove and right in the heart of Notting Hill with all the shops, restaurants and antique shops just around the corner.

The house is on four floors with a great little sun trap of a roof terrace designed by the vendor’s brother – landscape gardener, Caspar Gabb, a gold award winner of the Chelsea Flower Show in 2006. The current owner completely revamped the property when he bought it four years ago, putting the living room on the top floor and opening it up to the rafters and turning one of the bedrooms into the kitchen.

Now the V-shaped 30 foot long living room has a vaulted ceiling with sky lights and a pale wooden floor. At one end is a section of solid wood with a very real looking contemporary fireplace at the bottom, breaking up the otherwise large expanse of white walls. There are stunning views from this floor and the terrace, with its teak decking and bench, over the roofscape of London and also the very pretty Kensington Park Gardens.

On the second floor is a large kitchen with central work station and dining area. Stretching above this into the reception room above is a curved double height gallery. This feature really makes a difference to both rooms with a glass balustrade set around the top and a stunning light installation hanging down, created by Irish designer, Niamh Barry. There’s also a small bedroom and smart little bathroom with dark grey granite tiling on the second floor.

On the floor below are two en-suite bedrooms, one of which is the master bedroom with large bathroom tiled in marble and a large walk-in shower. The bedroom is very light with four sash windows including the curved corner one and has plenty of fitted wooden wardrobes.

Throughout, the property is very high tech – with Lutron lighting, a Bose integrated music system so you can listen to different music on each floor and pop-up TVs in the living room and at the end of the bed in the master bedroom. The 2,040 square feet property has its own entrance and is for sale through Domus Nova for £3.45 million.

George Clarke is a busy man; TV’s pin up architect has just finished starring at this year’s Grand Designs Live at the NEC but our reporter Cheryl Markosky tracked him down before he went to get the low down on ‘Gorgeous George’ – who turns out to be much more than just a pretty face.

George has some interesting political views about the recession, the banking industry and the housing industry. Read our exclusive interview.

I’ll admit to having Wimbledon fever. It happens every year. I get giddy for two weeks.

So if you ask me to leave my prime viewing position on the sofa, you had better make sure the match has finished. Otherwise I’m going to be very late indeed (those five set matches are always an issue).

This time of year, everyone will be swarming the area to watch Andy Murray as he battles to win the title. But Wimbledon is actually a very lovely place to live all year round.

It’s in the quieter part of London and, frankly, is all the better for it.  Plus, you’re close to Richmond, and that, in my eyes, can only be a good thing.

Let’s have a look at some homes in the area.

Ace – £7,750,000

I love this property. There’s something so old-fashioned about it. It’s an Edwardian building and I can imagine there being wonderful Brideshead Revisited style parties here.

There would be nothing but fun in this home. Garden parties, champagne cocktails before dinner and all sorts of entertainment (yes, I think it would be fun to live in aristocratic England. Is that weird?)

But what do you get for your millions? Well aside from the stunning gardens, you’ll get nine bedrooms and seven bathrooms (and those bathrooms are amazing).

You’ll also get five reception rooms for all of your swanky soirees. I’ll expect my invite in the post.

Advantage – £1,150,000

If you’re looking for somewhere right by the All England Tennis Club, this home will be perfect.

Very handy after playing a couple of sets before dinner. You get the benefit of an indoor pool and some lovely looking gardens as well.

There’s a games room and five bedrooms too. Not bad for just over a million. If you happen to have that lying around, of course.

Maybe Andy Murray could buy this with his potential winnings?

Deuce – £309,950

This flat has many things going for it, not least off-street parking, which is pretty important in London.

The flat has one bedroom with en-suite and really spacious rooms. You get a balcony as well.

It’s a great option for a professional couple looking for a home to settle in, but still within easy reach of central London.

Love-Fifteen – £145,000

If you’re looking for a small flat in the area, you could do a lot worse than this property. It’s near both mainline stations and the underground, and it has everything you need.

Best of all, there’s no stamp duty. This is an expensive area of London so it’s nice to know that you can still find somewhere that’s good value, but has all the perks of living in this much sought after area.