Dear Knut
thank you very much for answering. Other colleagues at VOA offices told me they are investigating the issue.
My preliminary conclusion is that there is no business value for this area, still classified as "residential" because it has been considered for cultural reasons not "marketable" for many years and, with regard to the particular building I am interested in, it is still considered not marketable for legal and fiscal reasons too because of a complex situation of ownership of several leaseholds (that may have also allowed some fraudsters to profit from it; that is why I reported the case to the National Frauds Hotline).
The same is with many books and collections of archival materials and data that have no market at present (but this is not a good reason to stop cataloguing or curating them, because market values can always change over time and so business justifications to access them). So, it was a sort of premonition that made me choose as the title of my first blog post "What's in a title proper" and... it is probably a sort of conclusive lesson learned the one I still have to write with the title "Cataloguing people and their relationships" at http://bit.ly/metadatapm (the blog is now available at http://is.gd/brublog and http://tinyurl.com/brublog too because it has been unaccessible for several days).
At any rate, two companies now dissolved, both started in the 1980s, had registered addresses in New College Court. And other two companies, incorporated very recently, in May 2010, have a registered address at the premises as well (according to very up to date business databases I have just checked this morning). A new betting and gaming shop has been given the permission to make alterations to a shopfront in New College Parade and this changed the previous land use category from "restaurant and cafe" to "financial and professional" businesses.
It is not easy to understand who is doing what and living or working exactly where in this almost very central area of London, called College Crescent or South Hampstead, between the Swiss Cottage pub in Finchley Road (close to Odeon Swiss Cottage) and The North Star Pub (almost in front of the petrol station and before the Waitrose store) also because buildings have similar names (New College Court, New College Parade...).
With regard to the entire conveyancing process, I have found that a really huge number of sources of information should be used to assess the value of areas and properties - including:
1) historical sources, like the archive of planning applications and decisions of Camden Council and the National Archives. The last was where I learned (among other facts) that New College London was a Divinity School (theological college) of the University of London "primarily for the training of men and women for the congregational Ministry". It was said to be "the product of a number of amalgamations of existing institutions principally of Homerton, Coward and Highburn Colleges in 1850 (from which New College was created) and of Hackney and New College in 1924;
2) business and company databases as well as law and financial experts' opinions. For instance "The Bahama Journal", March 28 2011 recently published an interesting article covering all the problems I have been experiencing myself ("Land law and conveyancing: buy property. The nature and scope of the seller's obligations").
The conclusion is that there are Property Titles that are not likely to be "valid marketable title" for many years in this Country because of... data management issues.
Brunella Longo
Information Management Adviser, Project Manager Prince2 Practitioner, Independent Scholar
7 New College Court
London NW3 5EX
T +44 (0)20 72095014 - 77229184 / +44 (0) 75 49921488 (mobile)
http://www.brunellalongo.info (http://www.brunellalongo.it)
--- On Thu, 28/4/11, Knut Maseide <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> From: Knut Maseide <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: RE: Conveyancing and VOA rates - printed sources
> To: "'Brunella Longo'" <[log in to unmask]>, "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thursday, 28 April, 2011, 10:24
> Dear Brunella,
>
> Without having found any further information about your
> flat, I might have found something that explains why there
> is nothing on the VOA website. (Unfortunately, I don't
> know enough about Italian tax to find it on Agenzie delle
> Entrate ... :-)
>
> Here's the possible explanation I've found for lack of
> info:
>
> "We publish lists of the rateable values
> of all business and non-domestic properties in England and
> Wales."
>
> source:
> http://www.2010.voa.gov.uk/rli/static/HelpPages/English/faqs/faq008-cant_see_my_property_in_search_results.html
>
>
>
>
> "New College Court in Camden NW3
> comprises 20 homes. Out of these properties, all are
> residential. This means there is no commercial
> property in New College Court."
>
> source: http://www.mouseprice.com/property-information/ref-17551845/13-New-College-Court
>
>
>
>
> Apologies if this does not tell you anything new!
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
> Knut Maseide
> Assistant Cataloguer
> Guildhall School of Music & Drama, The Library
> Silk Street
> London EC2Y 8DT
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: A general Library and Information Science list for
> news and discussion. [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> On Behalf Of Brunella Longo
> Sent: 21 April 2011 15:15
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Conveyancing and VOA rates - printed sources
>
> Dear all
>
> I noticed nobody answered this message. Trying to put the
> question in other words: I am completing the
> collection of information supposed to serve a conveyancing
> process for personal reasons. To assess the possible
> rateable value of the flat where I have been living since
> April 2009 I have tried to find the data from VOA site, then
> from http://www.2010.voa.gov.uk/rli/en/basic/find/select -
> Service "Find my property valuation".
>
> Unfortunately with whatever combination of search strings,
> including words from the address (that is 7 New College
> Court, Finchley Road, by the way) I always obtained
> the response:
>
> "Sorry, but we can't find any matches for NW3 5EX. Please
> change your search terms and try again"
>
> That sounds quite odd because I am sure that there
> are at least one or two businesses in the
> building.
>
> Whatever clue you could give me that may help me in sorting
> out the puzzle will be very much appreciated. Having
> reported the situation of my flat for other reasons to the
> National Fraud Hotline - and publicised the fact via
> Twitter - you may understand the importance of this
> type of information not only for assessing the value of a
> property but to understand the whole framework / context in
> which the information is needed.
>
> To be more specific about the excellent database at http://www.2010.voa.gov.uk: it shows there are some
> possible comparable data, provided for other confinant
> postcodes such as NW3 5EP or NW3 5ES - but being these
> postcodes related to office spaces mixed with restaurants,
> petrol stations and surgeries, I am not sure that it makes
> any sense at all to take them into account as comparable
> values for a conveyance (also because they may be very old,
> I have never seen surgeries in the confinant buildings
> actually, unless the denomination is used also for massages,
> nails, cosmetics and betting shops). And above all
> there is the evidence that no data is provided for my actual
> address (that in the meantime, coincidentally?!?, seems
> disappeared from the italian database of Agenzia delle
> Entrate as well!).
>
> Kind Regards
>
> Brunella Longo
> Information Management Adviser, Project Manager Prince2
> Practitioner, Independent Scholar
> 7 New College Court
> London NW3 5EX
> T +44 (0)20 72095014 - 77229184 / +44 (0) 75 49921488
> (mobile) http://www.brunellalongo.info (http://www.brunellalongo.it)
>
|
