The_Guardian_-_2016-12-29

would-be purchasers to the tower, including a “rainforest shower experience” involving a dousing to
the sounds of the jungle, a virtual golf course with a whisky bar, a wine tasting room, a hot stone
massage parlour and a 20-seat cinema.
UK housing market: what to expect in 2017
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The perks are being offered as demand for the most expensive new homes in the capital falls
dramatically, forcing some developers and estate agents to look for novel ways to encourage sales.
Nine newly built homes worth more than £5m were sold in the six months to October, down 83% on
the same period in 2015, according to analysis of Land Registry data published earlier this month by
property investment company LCP. Increases in stamp duty announced by the former chancellor
George Osborne and the uncertainty of Brexit have been blamed.
A Chinese developer in Battersea’s Nine Elms area, where there is a glut of newbuild luxury
apartments, is promising that staff will turn down buyers’ bedsheets at night, while a rival is offering
membership of a private club complete with a rooftop orangery and transparent swimming pool that
spans two towers.
Marketing staff for the Blackfriars tower believe the snow facility will contribute to a “five-star hotel
experience”. A similar attraction, Snow Paradise at the K West hotel in Shepherd’s Bush, west
London, consists of a 2m squared cave-like room kept at -15C (5F), with snow pumped into it from a
machine that uses air and water.
Natalia Rakowska, a marketing manager at K West, said: “It’s like Narnia. You rub your snow into
your skin and it feels amazing.”
While no affordable housing is being built on the prime site at Blackfriars – the developers have
made a £29m contribution to the construction of homes elsewhere in the borough – little expense is
being spared on attractions for residents.
As well as the snow cabin and rainforest shower, apartment owners will also have access to more
standard facilities: a 20-metre swimming pool, a sauna, a steam room, valet parking and a 24-hour
concierge provided by Harrods. The first residents are due to move in in 2018.
Tom Copley, Labour’s housing spokesman on the London assembly, said: “These kinds of additions
are vastly beyond the reach of most of the people we need to house in London. We need to be building
homes that people can actually afford to live in.
“If you juxtapose the image of the snow room or the jungle shower with the rising number of people
sleeping on the streets and in housing need, it paints a very uncomfortable picture of the inequality
that exists in London.”