Luxury renovation company in London. Whole houses and apartments, priced open book, under one contract.
Fulham spent a decade as one of London’s fastest moving property markets. In 2018 that changed. Savills said prime residential prices there fell 4.6 per cent in a year. They were down more than 14 per cent from their September 2014 peak.
Across the wider borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, prices had dropped 4.3 per cent. This was since 2014. Over the same period London as a whole was up 19 per cent. Houses that would once have sold in days sat on the market for months. Some sat for years, through repeated price cuts.
Why the Fulham market slowed
Three things landed at once. Stamp duty rose on the most expensive houses in 2014. A surcharge was added on second homes. Lending rules tightened. Then the referendum unsettled a district. It had a large French community and a great many financial services workers.
None of that removed demand for the houses themselves. It removed the appetite to move. Buyers who would have traded up decided to rent, or simply to wait.
What owners did instead
Owners who could not sell well stayed and remodelled. They did not want to buy into a falling market. A side return, a loft conversion or a full refurbishment can replace a move. Each buys the same extra bedroom or the same larger kitchen. There is no stamp duty on the way in.
That arithmetic is the whole argument. On a house at Fulham prices, a move carries tax and fees. They can cover a serious share of the build cost of an extension.
What that means for a Fulham house
- A side return widens the narrow ground floor of a Victorian terrace. It usually leaves the stair where it is.
- A loft conversion adds a bedroom and a bathroom. Where the staircase goes decides the whole plan.
- A basement adds the most space, and carries the most cost, risk and approvals.
- A full refurbishment renews the services and the finishes. It is the moment to do the rest.
Doing it as one project
More than one of those may be wanted. If so, doing them together costs less than doing them one after another. One scaffold, one team, one period of disruption. NU Projects has been based in Fulham since 2010. The design, the cost plan and the build sit under one contract.
See the Fulham page for what we do in SW6. See the projects pages for completed work.
To talk to the team, send two lines through the contact form. You can also call 020 7731 6841. We usually reply within a few hours, weekends included.
This is the work we do. Luxury renovation company in London, or ask for a cost estimate.
Published 29 July 2018. Written by the NU Projects studio, edited since for house style and accuracy.