The house at 498 Finchley Road in North London may look like just another suburban mini mansion but its striking facade and neo-Georgian stonework (pictured below)  hide a simple but unusual fact.

It is the first time this property has come on to the market for nearly half century and, despite the intervening decades, it’s the same agent selling the house today as did in 1966.

Leaf through the yellowed pages of the original brochure (pictured, bottom) and it feels like a different world rather than a different decade. Nothing is swinging or fab in the formal sales brochure (unlike the current one’s more relaxed approach) although the 1966 property market was fairly ‘radical’ compared to today’s.

That year’s average house price was £3,465 and values were rising by 6% a year. Today it’s £219,533 rising by just 0.9%.

But what’s changed most dramatically is the way homes are sold. We all take it for granted that property is bought on the open market by ‘private treaty’ using estate agents, but back then most were sold at auctions instead, and most ‘estate agents’ were in fact auctioneers.

“In 1966 it might have been advertised in a magazine but more likely it was marketed by hand written letters being sent out to potential buyers prior to an auction at a local pub – Jack Straw’s Castle in Hampstead – which in fact is now a block of flats,” says Phillip Green of local estate agent Goldschmidt & Howland.

But what has changed most is the Finchley Road, which has been transformed from a quiet thoroughfare into a busy main road clogged up these days by traffic from central London travelling to the bottom of the M1.

“In those days you were lucky if a family had one car but now it’s normal for them to have two or three around here,” says Phillip Green.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the property’s interior, which has been preserved in aspic since Goldschmidt & Howland last photographed it – most noticeably the beehive yellow parquet flooring, original cornicing and light fittings.

For more information phone Goldschmidt & Howland on 020 8209 9300.

It’s been clear for some now that house prices at the top of Britain’s property market have survived the economic down better than the general market.

And in particularly this is true for the nation’s grand country estates. The latest example is to be found in the wilds of Lincolnshire, a hall that’s risen in price handsomely even though it’s a long way from the sought-after streets of central London or the white hot countryside of Surrey.

Holywell Hall - for sale with its estate in Lincolnshire

The Holywell estate includes a large Grade II* Georgian manor house, lavish and large gardens revived and redesigned by Bunny Guiness plus cottages, a fishing temple and lake, orangery, outbuildings, arable farm (with farmhouse) and shoot. Also, the main hall’s West Wing can be used as a stand-alone home.

But as well as a long list of features, Holywell also has a long and extraordinary history. This includes 11^th century origins and mentions in the Domesday Book before it was bought by Lady Mary Barnardiston for her nephew Samuel Reynardson in 1728. It then stayed in the family until the 1950s and has only had three owners since.

The orangery, for sale as part of the Holywell Estate.

The first of those is undocumented, but in 1994 the estate – which had fallen into disrepair  – was bought for £4 million by Jean Shanks,  who made a substantial fortune setting up a large clinical pathology business based in the London that was later floated on the stock market.

While studying chemistry at Oxford she worked alongside Margaret Thatcher and, after setting up her business, married a Russian prince and was also known as Princess Yuri Galitzin. Using both names she gave away millions to philanthropic causes including medical research and music.

And the Hollywell Estate’s superb condition today is largely down to Shanks, who lavished a fair slice of her £17m personal fortune on the property and gardens.

This included rebuilding the entrance, adding lavish chandeliers to the hallway, decorating the five reception rooms, ten bedrooms and eight bathrooms and upgrading the 810-acre estate.

One of the five reception rooms within Holywell Hall.

It was then bought in 2003 by Robert and Sally Gillespie for £7 million, an appreciation in price of over £300,000 year. But the Gillespie’s have done even better and, if they can sell it for their asking price, will have made nearly a million a year on the property which is probably a relief for the couple, who have carried on the improvement work of Jean Shanks, including adding land to the estate.

Holywell Estate is now on for sale with Bidwells for £14.5 million.

The bricks-and-mortar world of home ownership is many things, but seldom is it portrayed as a moral maze. But Primelocation’s brief talk with a friend over coffee yesterday revealed how dramatically people’s ethics are left at the front door when the home buying process is in full swing. Apologies for the unromantic tone of this blog on or around St Valentine’s Day.

Going behind people's backs: Can property buying lead to immoral behaviour?

My friend, let’s call him Mark, is selling his three bedroom 1960s semi in a quiet but not overly desirable suburb of south west London. It’s a buy to let investment forced on him last year by the soft local market – by which he means he couldn’t sell it so remortgaged, rented it out and bought his next home regardless. But now he’s keen to sell up as finances are tight and is keen to find a buyer – fast.

Viewings are not a problem for Mark’s currently empty ex-abode (the tenants were ejected to aid the sale) and last week eight were lined up for the weekend which, given the current market, was a promising start. But early on in the week one man said he was so keen to buy the house (which was on the market for £249,950) that he offered just under the asking price but requested, crucially, that he house be taken off the viewings treadmill.

Mark and his wife agonized over this for in the middle of a recession, who wants to turn down viewings?  But the buyer insisted. So off the market the property came and promises of financial fidelity ensued from both sides.

The weekend came and went but on Monday morning (today) the buyer phoned and confessed to a lapse – he had been seeing other properties and had decided to move in with someone else, he confessed and grovelled. Mark had lost a buyer and some seven or eight viewings and is now entirely averse to being led up the garden path, so to speak, by unfaithful potential partners in property.

But should you take your property off the market once a verbal offer is made, as Mark did?  The answer is definitely not and puts the balance of power even more heavily in the buyer’s favour.  But one question  my friend’s angst begs is why successive government’s over the decades – despite several failed attempts including Labour’s HIPs – have so happily encouraged or condoned betrayal on such a vast and expensive scale.

Why can’t we simply use the French system? Once you make an offer it’s binding and only subsequent planning or structural faults can break the promise, and the process moves forward to a sale. It would, at the very least,  cut out the naughtiness that my friend Mark has had to endure.

The infographic (as graphs have come to be called) included below in this blog doesn’t look at first glance as if it’s particularly interesting. Just a load of dry old blue lines wobbling across the seasons and years.

But I would urge you to look at it because, as you may realise, it reveals the unusual but rhythmic nature of Britain’s property market over the past six years. I came across this while looking at house hunting trends in Winchester, but it could be anywhere in the UK. It’s clearly shows how powerful the surge of home hunting is during the Autumn market.

Agents tend to pray for a strong ‘Autumn market’ but for home sellers and buyers it reveals how important it is to get ready for this late August to early November window, which I guess is the equivalent to the old ‘number plate registration’ for new car sales.

What what no one seems to really know why it happens. Is it Brits coming back from holiday and deciding to get stuck into their home move; the school term calendar; people’s desire to move before the Christmas festivities begin or simply the last chance to sell before Britain returns to the long Winter months of gloom?

Any agents, buyers or sellers with any ideas do post them in the comments box below – if you’ve got time, that is.

Too many for sale? How can there be so many homes for sale but no buyers?

After this blog last month started a healthy debate both here and on Twitter, let’s take it to the next level. House price analysts say a glut of homes on sale and falling numbers of buyers are causing small price drops now, with perhaps more to come.

But if people buy and sell at the same time, as most surely do, why are demand and supply out of line?

The mismatch
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors says in mid-2007, before the credit crunch, estate agents typically sold 45% of their stock every three months. That fell to 15% in mid-2008 before rising to 30% early this year.

But now, with more homes on sale, the sale-to-stock ratio is back down to 24%.

Exploding a myth
This increased supply suggests that in reality selling and buying do not necessarily happen simultaneously. There is a small but important time gap.

Research by Santander says 1.1m homes in Brtain were put on the market in the year to  August but did not sell, often because would-be buyers could not get a mortgage.

Some estate agents say that as a result, more sellers now wait to find a purchaser before registering as buyers themselves to avoid spending time and energy finding a dream home only to lose it because they cannot sell their old property.

“Supply and demand balance over time but there’s always a lag, never an exact balance. A year ago there were more buyers but fewer homes, so prices rose. Now it’s the reverse” says Lucian Cook, research guru at estate agent Savills.

In addition the new-build sector, which slumped in 2008 and 2009, is recovering and adds 120,000 new properties on sale per year without creating new buyers.

Dying, divorcing but not buying
A further factor is probate sales; elderly owners die and their properties are sold by relatives who already own homes – so they inherit the proceeds and do not buy. Land Registry figures show that in 2007 some 7% of deals were probate sales. But now, with home sales halved but death rates static, they account for 15% of the market.

There are also 120,000 divorces a year. Analysis by Savills shows that in a third of cases the couple sell their home and, at first, each person rents before buying later.

In the past these ‘sell-but-not-buy’ figures have been balanced or outweighed by first time buyers, who purchase with nothing to sell. But tougher mortgage conditions and average deposits rising to £35,000 mean FTB numbers are 50% of the level in 2007.

Let’s see if that starts a debate.

Q. We recently sold our house via a local, privately owned estate agent. However, the commercial relationship did not get off to a good start and after the sale was eventually agreed, the agent failed to return numerous calls, reply to letters and seemed evasive when we asked him for progress reports. On completion, the agent promptly tendered his bill, £4,000 which we are loathed to pay simply because we do not feel that the agent ‘earned’ his money. Can we object?

A. You can of course object directly to the agent but I do not feel you have any legal grounds to withhold a sum for the perceived poor service. The facts are, albeit that the agent was a poor communicator, that they introduced a buyer who successfully completed a purchase. That is key remit of any estate agent – and whilst I do not condone for one moment the shoddy service and agree with you that the agent could have acted more professionally throughout the transaction, I also believe that the fee is due for securing a successful sale alone. As the agent is privately owned, your options for pursuing a complaint are more limited than a chain-owned agency. If you really must complain, I suggest writing a firm letter outlining the key failures of service as you see them and asking the agent to deduct what he considers a fair sum for this aspect – but I suspect it will be a futile request.

If you’re looking for an estate agent to market your home, take a look at our agent listings on Primelocation.com.