No kitchen. No decent bathroom. No upgrades. All original features absolutely untouched. A cinch for … around $1.2 million. A three-bedroom house in Darlinghurst, close to St Vincent’s Hospital, has just come on to the market for the first time in 75 years after the same family lived there since 1940, when it would have cost under $4000. They rented the home until 1968, then bought it off the owner in 1968 for $8000. With only a single tap for the kitchen, they probably used a separate Read more [...]

WASHINGTON U.S. home resales fell in October as a persistent shortage of properties limited choice for potential buyers and pushed up prices, suggesting some softening in the pace of the housing market recovery after strong gains early this year.Still, housing remains on solid footing, with sales for the full year on track to be the best in eight years. That should see housing take up some of the slack from a chronically weak manufacturing sector."The housing market is in decent shape but could Read more [...]

House prices are stablising after months of rapidly increasing prices, especially in SydneyThe end of the boom is making houses more affordable, but also eating into returns for ownersBut good deals still exist, with the right property in the right location forecast to grow in valueThe best rates of return are up to 12 per cent in Byron Bay, and Melbourne suburbs like Balwyn and Glen Waverley Cities where the end of the mining boom has hit the economy, like Perth and Darwin, are the worst Read more [...]

You don’t have to be able to read yet to enjoy a visit to the library. From babies to pensioners, everyone in the community can enjoy a good book. Pictured here is an 18-month-old Ellen Garbutt from Redcar sorting the footprints inside the old library on Coatham Road, back in 1997. The library was built in 1971 but closed several years ago. In March 2011 the Architecture Minister John Penrose refused to allow the library to be given protected Grade II listed building status despite a request to Read more [...]

In one tax record from 1667, he came across the description of a house on what is now Vlamingstraat in Delft - a house where numbers 40 and 42 now stand. “It is important because Vermeer has remained a kind of mystery, and we haven’t really got to grips with his oeuvre,” said Prof Gijzenhout. “This is the first time we can really connect a work of art that is definitely by his hand to personal history and his biography. It gives a better insight into his brilliant technical ability as Read more [...]

Comments (4) A Jeremy Corbyn-style question time has been held for the first time at Hull City Council. Questions were submitted from members of the public on a range of issues around the city. All 36 are listed below. Scroll down to submit your own question to the council and to see Angus Young's report from the meeting on how the new format went down. The questions: 1) When is the council going to resurface and in some places level the public pavement on the Read more [...]

They gathered, one week on to the minute from the assault of Friday the 13th, around what seemed to be a shadow devoid of life and light – a heavy black tarpaulin draped over the entrance to the Bataclan theatre: or “ba’ta’clan café”, as the awning reads. The previously illuminated sign is still there, now unlit: Nous Productions Présente Eagles of Death Metal. Across the road: the vast blanket of candles, flowers and personalised tributes. They form a lineage, somehow, from Washington Read more [...]

Who doesn’t love the movies? Well now you can buy your own cinema in Birmingham. The city was once littered with picture houses in the days before everyone had television. But gradually they closed and were turned into bingo halls, nightclubs and function halls. Others were simply torn down. Two remnants of the first golden age of cinema are currently up for auction in Birmingham, including this 1930s cinema in Windmill Lane, Cape Hill, Smethwick. The old Rink/Gaumont in Cape Hill became the Read more [...]

A previous application to restore the Old Hall and create seven homes, by Johnny Smith of Manor House Farm, was approved by Stockton Council in August, despite 29 objections from villagers. Planning officers stressed that the new plan was not for 12 extra homes on top of the seven already approved as the applications relate mostly to the same sites. The Hall has not been occupied since the 1960s and is owned by more than one person. But the proposals have met with 70 objections from nearby Read more [...]

Comments (0) If you are counting down to a special occasion, hiring a large holiday home is a great way to bring your loved ones together to share in the fun, scenery and special memories.It's hard to imagine a more beautiful country setting than the rolling farmland surrounding of Cadhay, and with the capacity to sleep 22, there's certainly lots of scope for a party. Cadhay is a mile from Ottery St Mary, and is one of Simon Jenkins' 'England's Thousand Best Read more [...]