Residents have started to take occupancy in the long-vacant Red Clover Gardens. But as housing correspondent BARRATT HOLMES reports, anyone owning a car is likely to get hit with extra bills
Money-spinners: someone’s making a load of money out the the BxB flats. Just not the people of Croydon
Private tenants looking to live in new blocks of flats in Coulsdon, built on what used to be a public car park, are being offered “parking options” for their vehicles – for an extra £100 per month on top of their already sky-high rents.
That’s the deal being offered to the residents moving in at Red Clover Gardens, the last development to be sold by Brick by Brick, where some flats are being marketed at £2,400 per month.
Croydon’s Tory Mayor, Jason Perry, announced triumphantly last week that he’d managed to find a buyer for the five “architect-designed” blocks containing 157 flats which had been standing unoccupied for almost the whole of the two years he’s been in office.
The development was sold to a little-known Essex property company Regen Capital for £38million.
What piss-poor Perry failed to mention was that the council has entered into a hugely expensive leaseback contract with Regen for three of the blocks, a deal which could end up costing Croydon residents £60million over 50 years, as revealed exclusively by Inside Croydon.
A subsidiary of Regen is marketing 72 of the “architect-designed” homes at Red Clover Gardens through a Reigate-based estate agency, Maxwell Valentine.
“Key features”, according to their sales blurb, include the properties being “New build” (they were finished in 2022), “luxury apartments”, “award-winning architecture”, and what they describe as “parking options”.
The flats are next to what’s left of the original Lion Green Road car park.
Powered up: the public car park at Lion Green Road, with EV charging bays, will soon have night-time charges – introduced by Mayor Perry
When one of Inside Croydon’s citizen journalists contacted Maxwell Valentine to enquire exactly what is meant by “parking options”, they were told that there is a limited number of spaces reserved, and these are available to tenants for an additional £100 per month.
So that’s £1,200 per year to park the motor, on top of possibly £28,800 in rent. Plus utility bills. And did anyone mention Croydon’s Council Tax, which since April 2023 has gone up 21%..?
Read more: Perry’s ‘sale’ of Coulsdon flats will cost Croydon £60million!
Read more: Brick by Brick’s final flats put up for rent at £2,400 per month
Read more: BxB’s collapse was predictable. Why did no one else notice?
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
Incredible. The whole history of this ill conceived deal was started with much fanfare last July 2023.
In addition, to what has been reported here, are a myriad of further questions about counter parties that are incorporated very recently, like confetti.
Yet none thus far, demonstrate any real
Capital adequacy🤔
Architect designed, as opposed to designed by…?
Full marks to IC for digging out this revelation. BTW, your well-informed readers may not know that ‘Red Clover’ is marketed in health food shops as a remedy for, amongst other things, ‘male pattern baldness’. No mention I can find of it ever being used for ‘perpetual balls-up disorder’. But there you go …