Buy to Let
18 June 2025(2025 Jun) – Key Flats was the public name of the London and County Freehold and Leasehold Properties Company Ltd, a residential property landlord, incorporated in June 1909 whose assets then valued at circa £300,000 and which by 1945 had grown to £10,000,000.
It was 1945 because I have a booklet from then titled “Where Shall We Live” containing photos of all the company’s properties, details of its 8,000 flats, including number of rooms, amenities (hot water, central heating, passenger lift), and annual rents. For example, an 8 room flat in a block in Baker Street, London W1 could be had for £325 a year.
As luck would have it, while searching online for what happened to Key Flats, only to discover the company, at one stage a link with. MEPC (1946) Ltd, was liquidated voluntarily in 2024, I found a website for a company that owns the ex-Key Flats blocks in the London NW3 (Hampstead) area, and whose balance sheet is net asset value approximately £5M. A gesture of goodwill, I have sent them a copy of the pages for that portfolio with all the rents.
i find it particularly interesting from some of the photos is the easy free on-street parking and the cars themselves. I wonder if at that time anyone envisaged that on-street car parking in central and inner London suburbs would be pricey, or that it would cost £20 a day to drive in Central London. Or that nowadays a flat in Baker Street would fetch approximately £850 a week.
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