London Docklands, Digest front page covering real estate, property and relocation

Dome's four letter word. Docks delight for relocating SMEs
Residential lettings stronger. Bankers the big renters.
First e-local online store. Women in Docklands reveal their age

"POOR NEWHAM" IN SHOCK AS £800K
PENTHOUSE SETS NEW HOMES RECORD
Shocked residents in Britain's poorest borough were just getting to grips with homes costing over £300K when the Docklands demand struck again and the latest offering, an 18 storey penthouse at Barrier Point, the Euro-style riverside condo in Silvertown, is launched on the market at a staggering £800,000.

It could have been £1M but housebuilders Barratt Homes pulled back at the last minute despite a sister Tower at Pierhead Lock, Isle of Dogs being snapped up for £350K and offered at £1M less than one year later. They later pitched another Tower penthouse there at £800,000 and it sold quickly, indicating the housebuilder might have crashed through the £1M barrier.

As yet, the only amenities in the whole of Silvertown are scruffy Docks era pubs and the best restaurants are to be found in the ExCeL exhibition centre on the other side of the Royal Victoria Dock. The Barrier Point development has its own leisure facilities and helpful porters to handle the laundry and other deliveries from Tesco and the e-local shopping service of London Docklands Online.

But with developers fighting to grab the prime Dockside and riverbank sites buyers with vision might soon be able to convince themselves they are buying into the Jewel of Docks crown as Royal Docklands regeneration speeds up. See our Hot Property List for details.

UNPRICED FLATS SELL-OUT AFTER
RAFFLE TICKET 'PREVIEW' QUEUE
The relocation rush into London Docklands reached new heights when 48 apartments in a block to be completed in 2003 were sold in a hour without couples knowing what price they would pay, touring a show flat or even visiting the site.

60 couples, issued with special preview invitations formed a queue and were given numbered raffle tickets to see an eight strong sales force working at another development half a mile from Tradewinds, a riverside condominium to be built in Royal Docklands.

They were then shown a digital image and floor by floor layouts of the development before being asked to hand over a £1,000 reservation fee. The first 48 buyers might get their chosen apartment, the last 12 went onto an airline-style waitlist in case some of the deals fall through.

Sales staff at the joint development by Barratt and Wilson Connelly, turned away scores of other buyers and refused to reveal possible selling prices and completion dates for apartments on the site that just weeks ago was an automotive scrapyard alongside the Thames Barrier.

London Docklands property expert, Terry Walker of www.london-docklands.co.uk , estimates that the apartments will be priced at "from £300,000 increasing with the floor level" and will become the highest prices achieved in Newham, one of Britain's poorest boroughs. He said: "It is also a new record for Docklands - £14.5M worth of sales in one hour beats every hyped-up homes launch over the last 15 years."

The block sold at Tradewinds (Saturday June 09 2001) is the first of three in a long terrace and a 17 storey round tower at right angles to the River Thames. The developers intend to offer blocks in succession with the Tower which also houses a gym, solarium, sauna, refreshment area and business centre last of all. The 23-acre Barrier Park is within yards, but Tradewinds residents are unlikely to enjoy the view - housebuilders are currently wrangling over another industrial site closer to the park.

A full-scale marketing suite for Tradewinds, together with a brandnew scale model, is due to be launched on August 4 at which point wouldbe buyers and sales staff are hoping the first phase prices will be fixed. There is confusion in the marketplace because two residential sites have launched in recent weeks with the same names, "Tradewinds". Until the developers sort out the-names-the-same wrangle London Docklands Online has suggested we called them Tradeswinds North Thames and Tradewinds South Thames.

The previous fastest sales site was Cascades Tower, the famous riverside condo in the Isle of Dogs where nearly £8M worth of sales were taken in portacabin mock-up of apartments which Gucci-shoed buyers reached through a sea of mud on opening day in 1988.

WHY THE HOMES RUSH?
Despite the 22,000 new waterside homes built during Docklands regeneration, demand currently exceeds supply with move-in dates on some developments stretching into next year.

Housebuilders are selling 40 percent of their offerings "off plan" with completions a year or more away. In that period, apartments can change hands two or three times as the pent-up demand fuels large increases in property values and profit for early buyers.

Half the residential sales serve the buoyant rentals market where returns, coupled with capital increases, produce good returns for buy for rent investors. The area is attracting wealthy British and overseas residents due to the unique 55 miles of waterside, relocation of banking and media giants, and the excellent transport links to the rest of London and Europe.

SHOWCASE FOR NEWHAM'S TOP CREATIVES
Well-Made, the first exhibition of Newham's artists and designer-makers, will be staged on Thursday 29 November 2001 12noon-8.30pm at Stratford Old Town Hall, 29 The Broadway, Stratford London E15 4BQ. The event seeks to raise the profile of the professional creative sector, and to encourage sales through corporate and commercial buyers and the public at large. Professional artists and makers living/working in Newham will showcase a selection of furniture designs; jewellery designs; paintings; prints; ceramics; photography; sculpture; fashion and textiles.
The event is being held in collaboration with SPACE Studios, Hidden Art and East London Small Business Centre, and artist Yolanda Christian is providing expert professional advice. There will be a series of satellite showcases in the East London Centre, Stratford, Stratford Picture House, and Stratford Library from Thursday 01 November 2001 to Monday 03 December 2001.

DOCKS DELIGHT FOR SMEs
It's the big corporations relocating to London Docklands that get all the media attention, but there has been a constant stream of Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) joining us on these shores. Many are in the service industries like recruitment, marketing and IT and they quietly settle in and begin to expand their operations and, for the first time in years, recruit the quality of staff they need.

London Docklands was not always high on the Dream Location List of many skilled people because the early years of regeneration offered no decent, pubs, bars or restaurants and the transport always seemed to lack behind relocation demand. That's all changed now. The waterfronts are teeming with R&R office workers with drinks in their hands and relaxed looks on their faces. The Docklands Light Railway is looking the country's most reliable and the Jubilee Line's five minute frequency makes getting to the West End a 15 minute prospect for Canary Wharf Business District workers.

Biggest worry now is Docklands is running out of small business space (up to 5,000 sq ft) and until the Millennium Quarter BD gets underway - planning permission has now been granted - the inward flow might be diverted elsewhere.

For the 1,000s of SME's and SoHo outfits facing increasing Government red tape try www. is4profit.com a new source for solutions covering the big niggles of the moment for small companies.
Stakeholder Pensions
Small Firms Loan Guarantee Scheme
Late Payments of Invoices
Checking that your Bank Charges are correct

LIGHTS OUT AT THE DOME
The night view from our offices has darkened as the motley crew running that Dreadful Dome across the river have turned out the lights marking the passing of what was supposed to be their big year.

That the Dome was a flop was probably due to the stupidity and arrogance of those attempting to run it: Can't buy tickets on the door; can't park within five miles; can't join the party 'til you wait two hours at Stratford Station; can't make head nor tail of the exhibits - historic marketing mistakes that will haunt bossy Jennie Page and all the little Page boys who came after her. The £1B wasted on the doomed project will be never be recovered and the land it stands on is worthless because of the toxic pollution floating on the water table just a few metres down.

Favourite architect, Chris Wilkinson, whose award winning bridge spanned the West India Dock to Canary Wharf, rightly defends the architecture and engineering quality of the Dome and its architect, Mike Davies always claims that "at £43M it costs little more than a big B&Q store."

If you bought or rented a property with a view of the place here's a little anecdote for your dinner parties as revealed by Chris Wilkinson: Over the year the surface of the Dome collected enough water to be recycled for visitor loos, saving Thames Water the equivalent of 30 million flushes.
So the Dome was a success after all…on average its six million visitors took a piss five times

BANKERS FOR RENTERS
It might have been thus for some years but now research confirms that half of the London property rentals are corporate with the City East and London Docklands finance sector accounting for around 40 percent of the total.

The corporate tenant continues to be a strong component of a successful lettings market, says Hamptons International. One in three tenancies is taken out in the company name, with the firm paying the rent via their employee who takes the tenancy in his or her name.

Fastest growing sector in the corporate lettings market is the New Economy comprising consulting, e-commerce, IT and telecommunications. These corporates are flooding into Docklands and already account for 11 percent of company lets. Current returns on well chosen, well located, high specification apartments is typically 7.5 percent in London Docklands and City East, so buying to rent currently is like tightrope walking… For daily lettings updates http://www.hamptons.co.uk

With 16,000 office and SoHo stationery and equipment products just a click away and his fleet of busy vans offering same day delivery, this latest pioneering move should prove a winner. Regular customers around the wharves, City and Essex can order on their accounts, others can use their plastic or open up an account online. Delivery is hours, not days.
In the picture, taken high in the Canary Wharf Tower at the launch of the website, Chris Tennyson is with Kathryn Trimble, manager of the Docklands Business Club (left) and Gay Harrington, manager of the Canary Wharf Group Plc managed Local Business Liaison Office, which has helped local companies to £190M worth of business.

WOMEN OF A CERTAIN AGE
Traditionally women don't let on about their age, especial when it hits one of those landmark dates. So to get 100 Women In Docklands members in a waterside restaurant boasting about how old they are, has got to be unique.

Their go-getting organisation is ten and it's been progress all the way as the high-powered membership has skirted around early bastions to wield influence where needed, and encouragement to glass ceiling victims as necessary. There were quite a few Docklands top males in support at the celebrations and they were each presented with the ultimate networking tool - a silver business card holder engraved with the legend "Women in Docklands"...a brilliant touch that!

EXCEL STEADY FOR GROWTH
It's been a quiet opening for the £250M ExCeL International Exhibition Centre with a series of small trade and specialist exhibitions to test the systems and infrastructure in the three months following the official opening in November 2000.

Many people in Docklands and the surrounding area would hardly notice the low profile impact of the massive 90,000 sq metres facility. There have been none of the traffic jams that marked the opening of the London Arena when Gucci clad Pavorotti fans clambered through mud to reach the venue after abandoning their cars in the jammed streets.

The 100 acre site is just six miles from Charing Cross and can be reached in less than 30 minutes by Jubilee Line and ExCeL shuttle or driving the M25/M11 well signed link. With an international airport just five minutes away and dual-lane roads accessing unlimited carparking in Royal Docklands, getting to the exhibition centre is always going to be easy and jam-free.

Some exhibition visitors have spent time looking round Docklands and London Docklands Online has taken calls from potential inward investors impressed with the unique watersides of Docklands. Few retailers or restaurants report increases in business as a result of ExCeL's first operational quarter. The firm claims 14,000 jobs will be created when the centre is fully operational.

Said Iain Shearer, Chief Executive of ExCeL: "The opening of ExCeL has seen the culmination of 18 months of building work and over 12 years of planning and it's not over yet! The first events at ExCeL ran extremely smoothly and we are gearing up to host many of the world's most prestigious events next year, such as the Emap Fashion shows and the Toy and Hobby Fair."

The big booster for the exhibition site will be next year when the meg World Travel Market switches over. For bookings or inquiries check out the ExCeL website.