The perfect location was essential for a journalist who needed a super fast commute into London and a quick route out to Heathrow, Craig Ferriman found it at the Old Vinyl Factory.
After seven years covering world news for ITV in the Qatari capital, Doha, Craig Ferriman came back to the UK with savings and in need of a base.
Following his promotion to News Editor at ITV, and with punishing 4am starts, a quick commute was essential – both for work and for his social life. Determined not to rent, Craig, 35, went in search of the nearest flat to central London that he could afford.
However, he readily admits that the first time round, he and his father got it wrong with their choice of a ground-floor conversion for £295,000 in a Victorian house in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire.
Dad, a solicitor in Dorset, had volunteered to scout for a property while Craig was busy packing up in Doha. ‘But we got the commute wrong – a mainline train into Marylebone and a Tube to the ITV offices in Gray’s Inn Road,’ says Craig. ‘The journey was too long and train times too inflexible for the unsociable hours of news desks. And when I was out with friends I was always looking at my watch for the last train home.’
IN THE FAB FOUR’S FOOTSTEPS
So the property search began again, this time within the M25. And a sixth-floor, one-bedroom apartment at The Venue in Hayes, west London, a site with an exciting modern cultural heritage, ticked all the location boxes for Craig.
The Venue is the final phase of the Old Vinyl Factory, the Weston Homes development of the 18-acre former EMI record label complex, where iconic albums by artists including the Beatles, Queen, the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd were pressed.
Hayes & Harlington station is a six-minute walk away, from where the high-speed Elizabeth line enables a 17-minute direct commute into London. The Venue is also a short drive away from useful motorway junctions. Plus, Craig’s new apartment came with secure underground parking. Perfect.
THE PRICE IS RIGHT
That was the good news. The bad news was selling his High Wycombe flat, when Craig was held to ground rent fees of £6,000. Legislation has since come in to prevent landlords making these demands on leasehold tenants, though leaseholders who bought before June 30, 2022 can still be liable to annually increasing fees.
Craig was relieved to hear that there was no ground rent on his Weston Homes apartment, just his annual service charge of £1,700 which includes maintenance of the landscaped gardens. He learned a lesson on the advantages of new build the hard way.
Other savings that please him are running costs. ‘I have only been in my apartment for four months but I know that I am using very little energy,’ he says. ‘In the Victorian flat everything cost a fortune. It was an old building, it was fraying round the edges, heating was off the scale and it was still cold in the winter. This is a new build and it feels solid, with good fittings, and you can tell it is well insulated.’
He was too late to choose his interior design colours and fittings from the large and varied range – including tiles, carpets and kitchen styles and shades – available from Weston Homes. However, he is more than happy with his fitted kitchen in silver-grey. Craig’s mother lives in Spain and is due to visit, so while interior design may not be top of this bachelor’s to-do list, he is convinced she’ll have some advice to give him on décor.
‘But having been caught up in the unforeseen costs of the last flat, I still have some debts to pay off before I can go shopping for furniture,’ he says.
A sizeable chunk of Craig’s library is still at his father’s house, so more bookcases will definitely be needed. But Craig has invested in a large sofa bed in practical, stylish charcoal grey, plus a TV of course. Curtains and pictures are some way down the agenda. And while he does want a new kitchen table, entertaining is not a priority, even though he was a food critic in Doha. But being an authoritarian regime there, what if the food wasn’t great? ‘You just didn’t write it up!’
JOINING A JET-SET
Of his neighbours, Craig says: ‘A lot of the people living around me work at Heathrow airport or they are aircraft cabin crew. Like me, at the end of their day they just want to get home, and that’s why Hayes works.
‘Heathrow is 15 minutes away. In fact, if I stand in the communal roof garden above me, I can see the tail-end of planes on the flightpath at Terminal 1.’Because The Venue’s location works so well for Craig, he is confident that it will easily attract tenants. ‘If I move abroad again, I know my flat will rent well,’ he says.
‘I have a big balcony which is like an extra room, and that is always a good selling point.’ The view from his apartment is over the landscaped courtyard gardens at second-floor level, which is another definite plus. ‘I’ll easily cover my overheads. My mortgage on my last place was £1,500 a month but here it is £1,000 and I get all the frills of a new-build apartment.’
For a career journalist, I think we will call this purchase a scoop.
