The phenomenon of celebrities adding value to property is not limited to the entertainment industry. A-list politicians such as Lady Thatcher and Tony Blair can potentially increase property prices by 25%, although this impact remains to be seen in the case of the notorious purchase of the two flats in the Panoramic in Bristol. However, when Prime Minister Blair did sell his Islington home some years ago, it fetched a premium of almost 10%. Copping Joyce, the Islington estate agent, believes that the former Blair home will still be worth up to 5 to 10% more than similar houses next door, even in 40 years' time.
Hundreds of people travelling to Westbourne Grove to see a blue front door and having their picture taken posing in front of it? People paying 20% over the odds to live in an ordinary house once occupied by a Prime Minister? Neighbourhood property prices up by 35% because a rock star has moved in nearby? Really? But perhaps there is a rational explanation for this apparently irrational behaviour, which turns a two-bedroom flat worth half a million to one worth three-quarters of a million with no other changes to its accommodation apart from a previous resident.
It may just be that celebrities, being in the swim of the opinion-forming classes, are aware of the next upand- coming place and perhaps because they have professional advisers, time and money they can snap up bargains before others. And obviously if they are in a clique of people who move opinions, then their collective decampment to a particular postal code can become a self-filling prophecy and produce the rise in property values which benefits them and their friends and associates. In a sense this is 'insider trading' in reputation.
Rick Stein, who became a celebrity chef through his BBC TV series and his best-selling cookbook Taste of the Sea, has had an enormous impact on property values in Cornwall as a result of his entrepreneurial development and promotional ability. Locals refer jokingly to Padstow, the location of his seafood restaurant, bistro, caf´e, patisserie, delicatessen, hotels, cookery school and gift shop empire, as 'Padstein'! Anyone who bought a cottage there 26 years ago when Stein's restaurant first opened will have done rather well, as indeed has he, and now he's embarking on an ambitious project to regenerate surfer centre Newquay in the same way.
Property developers in Dubai are currently promoting an extraordinary concept called 'The Palm' and rumoured to have sold British Pounds 900,000 villas there to several celebrities including England football stars, with David Beckham and Michael Owen among their number. We await hard evidence that these sales were made, but it's evident that the futuristic resort has already gained great publicity from these reports.
All this reaffirms that celebrities lead opinion and that people are prepared to follow them in the most fundamental of their purchases, in this case the place that they choose to live and invest most of their money in – their bricks and mortar.
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