Flats to Rent in London

London has a notorious reputation for being difficult to find quality properties to rent. This has recently been exasperated by the uncertainty that has surrounded the credit crunch.

When he credit crunch started rental prices surged leading many to believe that rental prices would hold strong throughout. Recent data however has suggested that prices of flats to rent in London is beginning to fall. The most expensive areas of the capital are being the worst hit. The prices of flats to rent in Kensington have seen drops of up to 20%.

This makes life difficult for those tenants who need to find somewhere to rent due to external circumstances as they could find themselves locked in at a higher rental price.

For those tenants who have the choice the best advice is to stick tight and wait to see what happens.

Landlords however are getting worried as their mortgages rise and their rental income looks likely to fall. This could see more properties up for sales as landlords struggle to make ends meet. This could cause their to be less rental property in the future meaning higher prices. However this would be offset by a rise in homeowners you would expect from a drop in house prices caused by a surge in supply.

All in all things look pretty turbulent, which is exciting for some and daunting for others. Then again finding a flat to rent in london has always been daunting!

Cost of London Property the Highest in Europe

This is nothing knew, everyone knew this. However maybe you weren't aware by just how much!


The average cost of an apartment in London is now at a staggering £1,188,240. That is only for a 120 square foot apartment too. This provides and average price per square foot of £9,902.

The second highest prices in Europe, Paris, has a price per square foot of £6,947. The remaining capitals of Europe have prices at less than half of Europe at less than £4000 per square foot.


However this super high cost of living is resulting in low standards of living in the UK despite higher earnings. This has left the UK at the bottom of the standard of living list placing only above Ireland!

Live Simply Traffic up again!

Live Simply traffic is steadily growing. The summer tends to be a much busier time for rentals than the winter months, however due to the credit crunch we were expecting much lower traffic levels. Of course traffic levels do not indicate whether or not these "browsers" are taking properties or just watching the market.

Up until this point rental prices have been holding out strong with people preferring to stay put than gamble on buying. However as the credit crunch carries on inevitably in the long term rental prices will follow the sales prices. The question is when and by how much.

Potentially this recent traffic surge could be the first glimpse of the bargain hunters coming out to see what's on offer with the falling rental prices. Alternatively this traffic surge could be due to the necessity of rental property regardless of market conditions. After all there is still a huge shortage of homes in London.

So this means that any short term falls in property and rental prices unless held down by a massive expansion in availability of homes will inevitably rise back to pre crunch levels sooner or later.

Falling Property Prices

Britain has experienced its biggest and longest period of growth in the housing market however this is almost certainly about to change. Comparisons are being drawn with the early 1990's when the property prices flopped and this brought about a significant recession.

Activity in the services sector is now said to be at its lowest since October 2001. The UK economy now looks extremely vulnerable to falling housing wealth due to the collapse in mortgage finance, which in turn affects residential investment and property transactions.

This means that the outlook for house prices in the UK is not at all positive. The Bank of England on July 3rd reported on a survey of credit conditions stating that lenders intend to restrict new home loans even more over the next 3 months.

Everyone involved in property is going to be affected by a downturn. This includes everything from homeowners, estate agents, landlords and lawyers to builders and their workmen. This ensure that a property downturn will have wider effects.

Inflation is beginning to rise and the Bank of England is limited to what it can do. In fact despite the problems in the economy dues to rising inflation the Bank may have to increase interest rates. This combined with the decrease of consumers’ purchasing-power due to soaring oil, commodity and food prices, the housing crisis looks set to cause significant damage to the economy.

for the full unedited article visit http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11671702&CFID=12013919&CFTOKEN=25917904

Increase in Traffic

Live Simply has seen a significant growth in traffic over the past few weeks. Alexa figures show a 35% growth over the last three month in page views which has resulted in an increase in reach of 28%. This means that Live Simply is receiving significantly increased web traffic.

Lets hope it continues!

New Domestic / Building / Cleaning Services section on the directory

We have just recently added a several new categories on the Live Simply Directory .

The categories are all related to construction, building and property maintenance.

Take a look at Domestic / Building / Cleaning Service

Add Videos and Virtual Tours

We now allow users to embed code for virtual tours, videos from online sites, audio commentaries, picture slideshows and any other relevant media to their rental property adverts.

Its simple and easy to use to find out more visit

How to Optimise Your Property Rental Adverts using Videos and Virtual Tours on Live Simply

Advertise your business online

The live simply directory offers an excellent way for you to advertise your business online. We offer specialist pages, banner adverts and plain text links. A plain text link is offered as a free advert as long as you offer a suitable reciprocal link back. The more beneficial and quality adverts can be obtained by contacting the live simply advertising team.

Upload Automatically

We have just installed a new automatic way of adding properties to the website. Once set up your properties will always appear on Live simply as long as they are added to your systems or website.

This is particularly useful if you wish to advertise multiple properties and want to keep your adverts relevant and up to date.

to find out more visit http://www.livesimply.co.uk/LiveSimplyFeedGuidelines.php

Bayswater, Flats to rent in Bayswater

Looking for flats to rent in Bayswater is a good plan. The location is just perfect. Bayswater is an affluent and wonderful area of west London in the City of Westminster. Perfectly situated being only located just 3 miles (4.8 km) from Charing Cross and bordering the north of Hyde Park over Kensington Gardens.

Bayswater is definitely one of London's most cosmopolitan areas. Architecturally, the biggest part of the area is made up of beautiful Georgian white stucco terraces and garden squares which nowadays ten to be divided up into plush flats. Rental prices range from very expensive apartments to small studio flats. In addition, There are also purpose built apartment blocks dating from around the inter-war period as well as more recent developments.

Queensway and Westbourne Grove are busy High Streets, with a very large number of restaurants offering a fantastic mix of tastes to suit every palate.




Find flats to rent in Bayswater