The Cheesegrater, the Shard, the Walkie-Talkie... love them, loathe them, or merely shrug your shoulders in their general direction, our shiny new skyscrapers and bulky buildings are set to change the London skyline as they creep up over the Square Mile in the next few years. But will we be able to fill all this new space? The lean spell that every economist and his pet abacus is predicting means that offices are finding......

You’re right. Easter is early this year. And yes, like you, we can’t wait for the Bank Holiday weekend. Is there anything nicer than a four day weekend? You’ll probably want to rest up this week to prepare for the madness of the weekend, so here are a few things you can relax with. On TV, Londonist likes: Tuesday, 18 March One Life: Rock Star Parents (BBC1, 20:35-23:15) We find the title of this......

Lucky old Holland Park. Him of high waisted trouserage and brutal honesty in the 'will you make it in the pop game stakes', Mr Simon Cowell, has invested in another property in the area. The £40m des res in the making is apparently having an extensive underground extension built, which is what all the wealthies are doing these days, darlings. Whilst reports claim that it's all for swimming pools, spas and car parks we......

Transport unions to ballot members on Tube strike action London Councils ace performance and efficiency assessments Scottish property market outperforms London; Crown Estate flogs off an historic house or two. Straight to the heart of Gothamist Towers from London City? Sounds good to us. Yah boo sucks, Heathrow. Stunning image of Lloyds of London courtesy of Homemade via the Londonist flickr group.......

Our Ken’s been getting a little hot under the collar of late – what with tubes strikes aplenty and London landscape controversies, lest we forget the fast tick-tock till election day – the time has never proved more ripe to woo the electorates of his London. The latest in Ken’s bid for our affection? Cheap housing! Yep, angered by what he perceives as individual councils aligning themselves against the acquisition and distribution of affordable......

They’re rehousing their residents in some pretty odd places, that lot at Wandsworth Council. In an impressive initiative called Hidden Homes, the chief bods of this creative borough are re-evaluating all their abandoned nooks and crannies, coal holes and closets to see if they can be reclaimed, redesigned and refurbished. There are many redundant corners to most council estates – stores and community facilities which are no longer in use. These are not only......

Surrey towns have always been known for being a bit lacklustre, but one is taking on the distinction of being heartless as well. In an act that would’ve made Jerry and Margo proud, more than 100 residents of Ashtead, near Epsom, have objected to a request by the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association (SSAFA) for planning permission to convert a local property into a six-bedroom guest house. The house would be used by......

This is not another article about the high cost of living in London, though it has great relevance to the silly prices of houses inside the M25. All of that is well documented elsewhere - we're far more eager to devote screenspace to sensible, affordable and frankly brilliant ways to get by in this city without compromising your cool. Camelot Property Protection have been featured in today's Telegraph for their clever way of pleasing......

We all know that London property prices are shockingly expensive. But just in case you were in any doubt about it, Halifax, Britain's biggest mortgage lender, has released new figures that leave little room for debate. The average price of a home in London is now £313,122. In the rest of the South East, that figure drops slightly to a mere £259,904. That means that the average home is now above the level at......

If you're a first-time buyer looking to get onto the property ladder, you may be interested to know that Witanhurst, the 94 year old Georgian-style Highgate mansion, and second largest private residence in London (the largest being the Queen's gaff), has been sold to Marcus Cooper for an estimated £32 million. His firm The Cooper Group plan to "restore and develop Witanhurst beyond its former glory", and transform it into the capital's first £150......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 2nd July 1865: One-time Methodist minister William Booth preaches to a large crowd at an open-air ‘mission’ in Whitechapel, founding the ‘East London Christian Mission’, which would later be renamed ‘The Salvation Army’. Tuesday – 3rd July 1981: A punk concert at the Hamborough Tavern in Southall, West London, leads to fighting between skinheads and Asian youths. The riot is just one of many violent ‘uprisings’ to......

What price a corner of Hampstead Heath? Harry Hallowes has got one for nowt. Well, not nothing. It cost him twenty years of squatting and a 2 year legal tussle with frustrated swanky flat developers and the Land Registry. However, it seems that Harry’s finally earned the right to call his exclusive, secluded plot of heath land home. Now that’s perseverance paying off. Harry started sleeping rough on the heath when he got thrown......

Last week we mentioned the drop in garden birds within the capital, this week we have an increase to report. The grey heron is apparently thriving in London, with a record 32 pairs nesting in Battersea Park. Ecologist Valerie Selby elaborates on why this is a particularly good thing. They are a native species and a top predator in the food chain and eat a whole range of fish, frogs and ducklings which helps......

Here's a nice follow up to the rubble filled box that was put on the market for £170,000; a single windowless bedroom flat for £210,000: "KingstoniPad aims to address this by maximising the use of space, minimising environmental impact and encouraging a less car dependent lifestyle." Or you could just tip a car on it's side and rent that out. At least it would have bloody windows. And the use of the name iPad......

Yup, the towering innuendo has been sold by Swiss Reinsurance for over a billion dollars. German real estate company IVG are the proud new owners, but Swiss Re will remain the main tennants. OK, it's rather dull news. We got bored trying to work out if it means anything interesting. It doesn't. So here instead are an assortment of other things the investors could have got for their money... - All the heart failure......

Always fancied your own place in Chelsea, but were under the impression the postcode was too far expensive to even bother looking? Well think again: A flat roughly the size of a snooker table has gone on sale for £170,000 in London's upmarket Chelsea. The former janitor's storeroom measures 11ft by 7ft and has a cupboard place for a shower and kitchenette area. It comes with its own rubble and a glowing recommendation from......

Maybe you've been hit by a freak tornado lately. Or perhaps you've reached that age where half of all dinner conversations revolve aroud the property market (trust us, it happens to everyone). If so, you might be interested in a new feature on Londonist. We've teamed up online property search specialists Nestoria to create an interactive guide for London. Whether you're hoping to buy or rent, the area searches and annotated map take a......

Reader Geoff Spiteri alerted us to this one. A garage for sale in Beckenham for nearly £15,000. That’s roughly equivalent to a taxi ride into central London every day for two years. It’s not just the price that tickles us - garages have previously been on the market for more than ten times the amount. The real pearl here is the optimistic estate agent spin of Wooster and Stock: Affectionately known as "Garage No.......

Remember Noel Coward's Mr Bridger? Not only did he run the prison, but managed to orchestrate The Italian Job. Then there was Grouty in Porridge who, despite what the screws thought, was running the prison from his comfy cell and set in motion the football match that saw Fletcher and Godbar on the run. And now we have cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, who it seems is also more than capable of casting his influence......

A murder hunt has been launched after a 23-year-old man was shot dead inside the Scala over the weekend. When almost two million tonnes of raw sewage poured into the Thames last week oxygen levels in the water dropped to a dangerously low level and thousands of fish were asphyxiated. A copy of the Mona Lisa, due to go on display a the Dulwich Picture Gallery, might give us a clue as to what......

For Crying Out Loud. Will this never stop? In Tim Moore's excellent 2002 book, Do Not Pass Go, there's that lovely story of the cabbie who turns to his fare and says, "London. Great town, this. Or it will be when it's finished." And that's fine, that really is fine. London is a Work In Progress. But this is just taking the piss somewhat. We'd just got through bemoaning the fact that one of......

In the last few minutes it's been announced that Capital & Counties, a subsidiary of Liberty International Plc have bought 31 properties covering 450,000 square foot off the Covent Garden Market Limited Partnership for £421 million. In case you're wondering who Liberty are, apparently they're "the country's third-biggest listed property firm" and they own Lakeside among other things. And what are they going to do with the maket? Develop it of course, so that......

... is pretty fugly. Judging by how it chooses to be presented on the small screen, at any rate. Take Gordon Ramsay's F Word (Wed 9pm C4): We're not denying that it's entertaining. It is hugely entertaining, especially when Gordon picks on twattish City trader boys from Essex and reduces them to tears, much as he reduces all sorts of delicious juices to make a lovely concentrated sauce. Mmm, we're hungry just thinking about......

We're not sure when Silly Season officially starts - maybe when the rotting corpse of Big Brother is dragged by hooks back onto festering television sets - but it's now in full swing as the press begin investigating the TfL Lost Property office: In the last year almost 150,000 items of property have been left on Tubes, buses and taxis, with mobile phones and books among the most-mislaid articles... Let's break this down: A......

Tottenham Hotspur FC wants to create a 'cutting edge' £30 million training centre in Bulls Cross, Enfield. The problem? The 56-acres of land they're looking at developing is believed to be home to a protected rare species of bat called the barbastelle. (The barbastelle's other claim to fame is that it's one of the ugliest type of bat, but let's not hold that against them eh?) No communtiy of barbastelle's has ever been seen......

Just when you thought there could be no more depressing London property stories and just as you were beginning to pray that lazy journalists couldn't come up with any more contrived Olympics-related crap, along comes: First time buyers will not win housing gold until London Olympics. 'Housing gold'...God help us. Yes the story here is that evil old house price inflation and the fact that those of us still on the 'first diving board......

The new series of Doctor Who (Sat 7.15pm BBC1) is well underway now – and what do you think? So far it has elicited a muted response from the only critic who counts; not a good start, although he does say that this Saturday's offering is "flipping great" and it's onwards and upwards for the rest of the series. Fair enough – but what did the incredibly dedicated, oh-so-devoted fans over on the Digital......

A couple more proposed skyscrapers have emerged over the past week. Both of them are only at early design stages and seem to set new standards in bonkers architecture. We mean that in a nice way. If London has to grow tall, then it should do so in its own unique style. And quirky is what London has always done best. This curvy fiend is the proposed replacement for the forgettable 1960s tower at......

That's a confusing headline isn't it? What we mean is that Mick Jagger, who has apparently "been living out of hotels for the past few years" is thought to be finally settling down with his girlfriend L'Wren Scott (pictured). According to the online gossip the couple have been scouring west London for "plush Victorian houses": The properties the pair have viewed range from £2 million to £6.5 million in price. Most of the swanky......

Being the kind of Londoners who find it difficult to hold onto our money and yet not wanting to live anywhere else we quite understand why someone with a spare twenty million quid or so would want to move here: For billionaire first-home buyers or those recently come into money down Tonbridge way, London's newest development, high-end luxury flats with a price tag of up to £20m, could be just the thing. Planning permission......