Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Kate Moss Selling London House

SELLER: Kate Moss
LOCATION: Melina Place, London, UK
PRICE: $6,600,000 (3,250,000 pounds)
SIZE: 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Hidden behind a walled garden lies this enchanting but deceptively spacious freehold house. With real character and offered in beautiful decorative condition, the accommodation is configured as 2 bedrooms but could easily be rearranged. Further accommodation includes an L-shaped reception room leading to a study/tv room and a lovely, bright and airy kitchen/breakfast room.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Strangely, Your Mama has almost nothing to say about Kate Moss. We are perplexed and bewildered that we draw a blank when thinking about her. But we'll try to discuss her London home none the less. Lest the children think Your Mama scours the London real estate pages, we would like to thank our tipster Mister Smiley for directing Your Mama to Miss Moss' London residence.

Soon after super slim multi-millionaire model and single mommy Kate Moss has dumped drugged out and bisexual Babyshambles singer Pete Doherty, she quickly went and engaged herself to The Kills guitarist Jamie Hince and put her London house on the market for a fat $6,600,000. Perhaps there are too many memories of pasty faced Pete on Melina Place?

Your Mama doesn't have a clue how to search property records for London properties, so we can't tell the children when Miss Moss purchased this house, or how much she paid for the place. Although Your Mama as been to London many times, we typically become impossibly turned around and frequently lost navigating the jumbled criss-cross of roads and lanes and can only place Miss Moss' house after consulting a map. Melina place is a small dead end lane just off Abbey Road (the Abbey Road made famous by the Beatles, we presume) in the area just north of Marylebone and west of Regents Park. We're certain the neighborhood has a name and distinct character, but Your Mama regrets to inform that we don't know what they are. If any of our British compatriots would like to chime in, we're happy to sit for a geography lesson on London neighborhoods.

What we do know about Miss Moss' house comes from the listing information provided by the estate agents. According to the listing, the residence is currently arranged with two bedrooms, but can easily be reconfigured to a three bedroom. The estate agents have thoughtfully included a floor plan which shows a three floor layout with 2.5 bathrooms.

Most of the photos of the property are painfully small, and Your Mama's eyes aren't what they used to be, so it's rather difficult for us to comment on the interior decor other than to say it does not appear that the stylish mannequin consulted one of London's numerous and talented nice gay decorators who surely would not have approved those awful black curtains in the kitchen. Nor do we think the too-girlish pink paint in the lady's bedroom would have been green lighted by any sensible decorator, gay or straight.

In the absence of large and juicy photos, we can at least discuss the floor plan which reveals a home well suited for a single person about town or perhaps a couple on the go who likes to have a few friends round for cocktails. Given the garret style rooms on the third floor (or second floor if you're a Brit), it does not however, lend itself well to a hipster mommy of a small child with a live in nanny and a rotating cast of daddy figures. Honestly children, we don't have any idea if the wonderfully photogenic Miss Moss has a live in nanny, but we don't know how a gurl can dash off to Ibiza on a moments notice and stay up all night with her musician boyfriend without one.

Anyhoo, Your Mama rather likes the floor plan, at least on the ground floor. The upstairs configuration is an utter mess. The large window and French doors in the ground floor sitting room help to maintain a visual relationship with the pretty little green and walled garden at the front of the property, and it appears there is a fireplace for warming the footsies and tootsies on the cold and damp London nights, both excellent features in Your Mama's book.

Like we find at Miss Moss' house, Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter prefer a separate kitchen over one of those "great room" set ups so popular in Middle American tract homes where one is forced to look at the dirty dishes and kitchen appliances while trying to relax in front of the boob tube watching reruns of Style with Elsa Klensch.

We dig the back hall/utility area which allows one to whisk dinner directly from the kitchen to the dining room without risk of spilling soup on the funky couture Angela Adams rug we'd lay down in the sitting room. Tucking the powder room back there was genius, because there is nothing worse than having to listen to your guests tinkle while you're cutting the cheese appetizer in the sitting room.

Our floor plan love ends as we ascend the curving staircase to the second floor which has been given over entirely to the master suite. Your Mama digs the large bedroom which provides enough square footage for a sitting area, and the custom fitted dressing room is lovely. But note that the bedroom, bathroom, and sitting room are all separated by a public hall. Who wants to spend more than $6,000,000 clams for a house that requires you to trek across the hall stark nekkid in the middle of the night to use the terlit? As the children might imagine we're also troubled by the location of the shower. It does appear to be roomy, which is a plus, but what's it doing in the dressing room? Surely a clever architect could have resolved this program better than this.

Up into the third floor and we find two smallish rooms and a bathroom. Note that one of the rooms is oddly shaped, ridiculously tiny and must be passed through to access the bathroom. Not exactly a swell layout unless the rooms are configured as a guest suite with bedroom, sitting room and bath. It would seem almost cruel to stick the kids up there in that jigsaw puzzle like suite of rooms where the only closet or storage space appears to be tucked into eaves in the bathroom.

We know London real estate is freakishly and frightfully expensive, so perhaps this house, even with its upsetting bedroom configuration, is a bargain at $6,600,000. Miss Moss has not returned out calls so we haven't a clue where to pin thin and moe-dell is planning on moving, but wherever it is, we can only hope the new place has a more accommodating and free flowing layout.

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great little house -- looks like this could be St John's Wood.

Too bad about the exchange rate -- prices essentially double for those paying in dollars.

ms_wonderland said...

Yikes Mama, where do I start?

OK it's in St John's Wood, v v posh and leafy area close to the West End. Yes, it is THAT Abbey Road with the damn tourists holding up the traffic every two minutes getting their pichures taken crossing the road. St John's Wood is populated by very rich old ladies - not exactly cutting edge cool. This house is in a conservation area, as evidenced by the Victorian street lamp outside. Scope for changes to the property would be limited.

It's a good job it is close to the West End, because there is no garage or off-street parking, and residents will be paying for a parking permit. So owning a car is a problem - it's taxis and public transport here.

Did your Mama notice there are no windows at all at the back? You can tell from the pics this ia a semi-detached - another house joins on at the right side. Is there another house at the back, or what? Good thing there's windows in the attic, to get a through breeze on those stuffy summer nights. This is England, we dont do aircon.

This is a 2/3 bed semi, without much garden and no parking and she's asking £3.25 mill? Even for central London, the girl's taking the piss, as we say in our quaint Brit vernacular.

Anonymous said...

jamboree

Anonymous said...

Like others have mentioned this is St Johns Wood ... North West London but fairly central ... popular with families, especially American families due to the American School in the area ... It's not a cutting edge area but then again most of the cutting edge areas aren't family oriented & slightly rough around the edges ... The price for the area is fair, she definitely isn't "taking the piss" ... In St Johns Wood you don't get a house for less than £2M ... I would guess by looking at it that it is grade listed, parkings not a problem ... if you live in the area you'll get a residents parking permit so not a problem, the idea of living in London without a car is ridiculous - for the record Kate drives a big black Range Rover that likely takes up most of this little street but oh well ... According to the Sunday Times she's bought a new £7.5M [$15M] home in the area, she apparently looked at this property in Belsize Park & was about to put in an offer:

http://www.primelocation.com/uk-property-for-sale/details/id/chhs999000100/

but decided against it ... This place she's selling is pretty small but she doesn't need a large London house, she has a farm in Gloucestershire west of London.. A 6000sqft townhouse a street away from the one she's selling is on the market for $36M, another a few doors down for $24M ... & across on Avenue Rd for $50M ... The area is pricey but comparitively cheap compared to Mayfair, Belgravia, Kensington, Chelsea etc ...

ms_wonderland said...

Looking at satellite pics, this is almost certainly a portion of a large house, which would explain the strange layout. It's the end part of the house, which has then been sliced vertically to produce this place and the one attached to the right. So there are neighbours and noise on two sides.

Still think it's very little useable space for the money.

Anonymous said...

Aside from the apparent lack of rear-facing windows in the floor plan, this appears to me to be a fairly conventional 19th-cent. semi-detached house that has been reconfigured, with the additions of a study at the rear and a kitchen at the side. This straightforward layout is also reflected in the facade.

So I would assume it was purpose-built, as opposed to being carved from a larger house.

I'm not very familiar with this neighborhood, but I just looked at an aerial view of the street, and most of the houses seem to have large front gardens and are then built right up to walls at the rear of property lines. Sort of flipping the usual London plan around. That might explain the window issue -- maybe shielding the view from what had been a service yard?

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure if it is a portion of a large house ... I think it's just a semi-detatched cottage like the millions of others in London ... The layout is funny b/c it's likely 200 years old & back then their use of space was totally different to ours ... the layout is not any different to the millions of other period properties in the country. Also, it's semi-detatched like i mentioned so the only shared walls are with the property to the right, no adjoining property to the left ...

The price is totally fair, I mean ... a few months back a 300sq ft closet in Chelsea sold for £600,000 [$1.2M] ... London is the most expensive city per sqft ... even eclipsing Tokyo ... the 4 penthouses at 1 Hyde Park have sold for approx $200M EACH - The London market is just insane! For every London property over £3M [$6M] there is an average of 8 buyers bidding for it.

O.K enough useless London facts!

Anonymous said...

Love seeing the UK RE photos, and love hearing about the neighborhoods and market there. MORE INTERNATIONAL RE, PLEASE MAMA! We love it.

Anonymous said...

Poor ol' Kate Moss, having to hold up in such digs after dumping her hideous beau with that ciggie grafted onto his petulant lip. Yea, well... I must say this house is so full of charm and the garden area is AbFab! I fell in love with London when I was there last year for the first time. Too bad it is, as my manager says, "cost prohibitive" for moi.

Anonymous said...

"cost prohibitive" for most brits also & they don't need to deal with the shit exchange rate!

Anonymous said...

I love this house...sure the layout is whacked but that is what you get in London as so many old mansions have been carved up into several smaller jewel box homes. To me, it's a very good price for St. John's Wood and it's a very pretty house with a nice high wall (something which Liz Hurley and Joan Collins are both no doubt envious of as they live in wall-free Chelsea and Belgravia respectively in townhouses worth quadruple the price of Ms Moss' little hideaway).

Anonymous said...

I agree with 1:53 - I know nothing about London RE, and I love the little tidbits I pick up here.

Looks like a cute little townhouse, but good lord 3 million pounds for that is shocking!

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry, am I the ONLY one that notices that it doesn't matter that there are no rear windows? Re-read the floor plans...the garden is up front. This house has a fair amount of windows, and a huge skylight in the kitchen. It is an informal layout, and is garden-oriented. It just so happens this is out front. Gosh.

Anonymous said...

that's me...

:)

Anonymous said...

You can find prices for any UK property sold since 2,000 on NetHouse Prices. There's only one house sale indicated for Melina Place and that is for 4a, sold in September 2001 for £650,000. No way of knowing whether that is this house though since ,Primelocation's listing doesn't mention the address.

Anonymous said...

I like on block of flats at the end of the road, Kate also owns the house next door, to the right side baytree cottage. parking is no problem on melina place most have of street parking, only ever get Kates and paps waiting for her on the road.

Number 4 a is a one bedroom flat in my building!

Anonymous said...

She looked at this house too! http://www.primelocation.com/uk-property-for-sale/details/id/iang999000248/

Anonymous said...

Well, here we are:

UK house prices can be found on www.nethouseprices.com

In UK the sales are only recorded from April 2000.

I have checked and it seems that the property was bought before then, not much luck!

The area itself is rather nice, quiet, families mostly.

Check yourself: http://www.nethouseprices.com/index.php?con=sold_prices_street&cCode=EW&postcode=NW89SA

Anonymous said...

Is this it?

Mailing Address

Kate Moss
8a Melina Place
London
NW8 9SA
United Kingdom

Anonymous said...

Its sold

Anonymous said...

Yes, it is 8A.

You are spot on about the decoration - Kate is good with clothes and dressing up but no good with houses, it's just not her thing, her assistant used to do it all for her.

The house is landlocked so there is no escape from the paps, it has a house at the back which is accessed from the left side of her house and is attached on the right side to another house where the neighbours complain about all the noise. No wonder she's moving.

Just before the front door, you cross a manhole cover - surely not good feng shui?

The kitchen on the left hand side was added on as a small low extension, it is a rather boring germanic kitchen that doesn't have that much character or really is in keeping with the house. I guess the black Pearl nets were meant to soften it up, but it didn't work.

The little powder room in the back hall holds an intriguing secret. If the new owner rips out the panelling he or she will reveal a drunken artwork by Tracey Emin all over the walls. Don't think it will reach the price of a Banksy though.

The plan labels that back room as a 'study' & 'store room'. Hmmm, I don't think so. The 'study' is more of a 'bunker', a windowless room that seems to burrow under the house at the back. It holds a sound system and some seating and is an ideal room for being very private, powdering ones nose in the more literal sense, that sort of thing. So now we read 'store room' in a new sort of light. Except there isn't much light and funnily enough there isn't much light in the ground floor at all, I don't know how they've managed to make the sitting room look so light.

So, on up to the first floor. Big bedroom and a horrible pink, how did that happen?
Bathroom across the hall and what looks like a shower room on the plan. This is actually a long, low steam room and, again is like a bunker with an arched low ceiling. Might be a bit claustrophobic but gets rid of spots, I mean toxins.

And then there's the dressing room down the little corridor.
This room was built at the same time as the garret rooms upstairs and the kitchen extension.
Now, let's see. If you had to decide between a room for your clothes and shoes or a room for your baby - what would you choose? Correct! The clothes win every time! And the purpose built drawers weren't even the right size for the shoes.

The narrow little staircase leading up to the garret has a nasty little curve at the top. The nanny would have to have nerves of steel to go up and down those stair treads with the baby. And yes, that's what those two shoeboxes at the top are for. The shoebox with the bathroom was for baby Lila Grace and the other one for the nanny. Out of sight, out of mind. In more ways than one.

Libby said...

I've been wondering where abouts Kate Moss lives since I moved to Abbey Road a few months ago. I saw a picture of her new gaff in heat and on my cycle to work i've worked out it must be Melina Place, and this has just confirmed it for me.

Its about 2 mins walk from Abbey Road studios. I'm going to go down there on my way home tonight and wave at her through her window like a crazy. Try and get her to give me a cup of sugar. Or maybe some money.

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