In the middle of a rush for tourists and athletes to secure a place to stay in London after the high prices and low availability, a company makes available numerous houses and rooms for rent during the forthcoming Olympic Games in London.

London – Feb 19, 2012 – The competition has already started because finding a place to stay during the 2012 Olympic Games has become a marathonic activity for thousands of athletes and tourists coming to London. With soaring prices and plunging availability, future visitors from all over the world are participating in a race to secure a good place at a good price.

Even though the city recently put back on sale thousands of hotel rooms that were reserved for officials and media, it hasn’t been easy for many visitors to find a place to stay.  Moreover, many Londoners are leaving their homes to make them available for rent and get that extra cash that would be very helpful in this time of economic crisis. However, property owners are not finding it easy to rent out their homes and flats due to difficulties to connect these owners with potential tenants.

The good news is that a London-based accommodation company has just put available numerous houses and flats throughout London to help visitors find a room to stay. The company has released a website called The Games Accommodation (http://www.thegamesaccommodation.com), where users are able to see all the properties including their photos, locations, and prices. Users can go online, search for availability and immediately book a room.

All the properties are fully furnished and ready for people to move in. All of them are located in easy access areas of the city, with public transportation within walking distances to make commuting to venues and tourist attractions hassle-free.

This new website comes in a moment in which the Olympic Games are just around the corner and thousands of people are still looking for a place to stay. The company has also said that new properties are constantly being added so they are able to meet the huge demand, as the city’s expectations to receive large amounts of visitors are quite high.

About The Games Accommodation
The Games Accommodation (http://www.thegamesaccommodation.com) is an online platform that allows users to easily search and immediately book properties and rooms. They are committed to provide high-quality and safe accommodation in London, helping visitors to get the most out of their journey through the UK.

Tags: ACCOMMODATION | ROOMS | FLATS | HOUSES | TOURISM | TRAVELLING

As millions of people from across the globe are expected to descend on the capital for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, many tourists will be looking for the perfect accommodation for their stay.

The event, which will take place in the summer, is expected to draw huge crowds – all of which must find accommodation.

Ticket holders hoping to stay in London during the international event can enjoy a number of ‘pop-up’ caravan sites close to the stadiums, offering them convenient access to key attractions.

Being so close to the Olympic village could allow visitors to enjoy the atmosphere and the buzz of this year’s event, whilst the cost-effective form of accommodation is expected to appeal to those wanting to save money.

Some temporary locations for various caravan sites will be found near tube stations, all of which are ideal spots for tourists looking to stay in the capital.

One particular site is situated near to Chigwell tube station, which can be accessed via the central line.

Being located on the central line allows visitors to reach the heart of the UK’s capital city with ease, making it a highly convenient place to stay.

As many Olympic events are set to take place in numerous locations dotted around the city, good transport links are a priority for those considering these accommodation sites.

The sheer volume of visitors expected to enter the city this summer means easy-access, transport links are expected to increase in demand and sites situated in close proximity to these will be a prime location for tourists.

The benefits of temporary sites

One of the many benefits of a temporary caravan site in that it can enable the busy capital city to meet the growing needs and demands of its visitors. Tourists like to travel fluidly through the capital and these sites could enable them to do so.

The convenience of these sites is also well pronounced, with one particular site just 15 minutes away from the main Olympic locations at Stratford. One campground is even said to be able to accommodate 133 outfits, supporting a large number of visitors.

Opening from 25 July to 11 September, this site is expected to be hugely popular with visitors preparing to attend the major sporting event.

One of the soon to be popular caravan sites is even located on the site of the childhood home of the Olympic champion Sally Gunnell, demonstrating how these sites are perfectly poised to cater to sporting enthusiasts.

The caravan sites therefore have historical and cultural relevance to the 2012 Olympic Games, making them the perfect place to stay over the summer.

Preparing for the Olympics

Whilst athletes have been undergoing training for years to prepare themselves for these events, visitors do not need such lengthy preparations.

For those preparing to camp at one of the temporary sites, investing in touring caravan insurance is highly recommended as it can offer the protection you need to ensure your caravan is kept safe at all times.

Source: County Times
Tags: ACCOMMODATION

It's now less than six months to go until the Olympics and the burning question on many Londoner's lips is: have you rented your property out yet? And if not, why not? According to some over-enthusiastic reports some of us in the capital are heading for a property "gold rush".

Rents on London homes, it is claimed, could be four- or five-times higher than normal. And the millions of visitors due this summer apparently come bearing fistfuls of cash clamouring to rent your house in Stratford, flat in Bow or one-bed apartment in Blackheath.

After all my attempts to get hold of tickets to the Games failed, I decide to have a go at cashing in on this gold rush.

I've got a slightly down-at-heel three-bed house in Stoke Newington, Hackney, an "Olympic borough", just four stops from the stadium. It's got ugly PVC front windows, no downstairs loo and a front door you have to kick to get open but, still, I thought it's worth a shot. When the man from Foxtons estate agents breezed in he took a quick look around and declared I could rent it for £3,250 a week. As I stood there greedily planning how I'd blow this windfall, he started filling me in on a few costs. Firstly they would take a massive 26 per cent of this amount in fees. They would also charge an additional £1,000 administration fee which I'd have to pay up front (this covers cleaning before and after and I'm not sure what else). I'd also have to get an Energy Performance Certificate which Foxtons could supply for £75. And on top of all that, I'd have to pay tax on the rental income too. All this before I'd even begun to think about the paperwork, the legal forms, the tidying away of my personal belongings and the shifting of my family to my mum's house. I began to wonder if it was going to be worth the effort.

Still he managed to coax me to sign on the dotted line and I thought if nothing else it would allow me gauge if the price was as pie in the sky as it sounded. The following week they sent around a photographer. "Did you forget I was coming?" she said, taking one look round the sitting room.

Then I heard about Accommodate London, the people who set up Tennis London, which successfully cornered the market in letting out people's homes in the Wimbledon area during the tennis fortnight. Joanna Doniger, who started it back in 1993 is an old pro and currently has 300 Olympic properties on her books and is charging a much more palatable 15 per cent in fees.

Doniger is much more downbeat about my prospects. She reckons I could possibly get £300 per night (£2,100 a week) for my house. "I think people are being pretty unrealistic about pricing," she says. "Half of London didn't get any Olympic tickets so they want to get out of town and rent their houses out. Plus we are in the middle of a recession – corporate companies aren't spending money on this sort of thing. Ultimately it could be a way of making a bit of money to go on holiday, but it's not going to buy you a car or change your life." The areas where properties are shifting, she tells me, are Canary Wharf, Isle of Dogs, Stratford and Victoria Park. "And there seems to be a market for bigger houses with say five to six bedrooms," she says. Doniger wouldn't even take my house on, she says, because of bad transport links (the nearest station, Dalston, is a 10 minute walk away). When I tell her there's also a bus which will get you to the stadium in 25 minutes she laughs. I try Knight Frank, which was quoted in the media as saying it was a "unique, exciting, buzzy time" for short Olympic lets. They have Sol Campbell's Chelsea townhouse on their books for £75,000 a week. Jemma Scott, head of residential corporate services, tells me she usually deals with people of a "high net worth", and from them she is receiving an overwhelming amount of enquiries. "The kind of properties we are dealing with are in Mayfair, Belgravia and Knightsbridge," she says.

"And for those the clients expect to turn up with a suitcase and receive the standards of a seven-star hotel." Not a shabby family home in Stokey then.

So I turn to the web. Rent for the Games (rentforthegames.com) is a Canadian company that was set up in 2006 prior to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. "All the hotels have been booked up by the IOC and lack of accommodation was a real issue," says founder and CEO Martin Schoenberg. "We came along at the right time offering the right service."

Schoenberg and his team are now hoping to take their specialist Olympic knowledge and apply it to London and other Games following that. Schoenberg says a good ball-park rental figure is £1,000-£1,500 per bedroom, per week. Currently he has 100 properties available on the site and has already rented out more than 40, including a mansion in Wimbledon and a four-bed in Cambridge Heath for £3,500 a week. Time is on my side, he tells me. If their experience at Vancouver is anything to go by, things only really start hotting up four to five months before the Games actually start, so there's still time to get signed up.

It now seems there is quite a collection of people, in Hackney at least, who didn't get tickets and are now also looking to rent out their properties.

Kelly Stainton asked Next Move to come and give her a valuation on her four-bed house in Clapton.

"They told me that the demand is not yet proven and so are giving much more conservative estimates than have bandied around in the press," she says. "I'm not sure it's going to be worth the effort."

Another had interest from a prospective tenant who was coming from abroad and offered them her four-bed house for £4,000 per week, despite being quoted at £5,500 (Foxtons again). After a brief silence he came back with an email saying they had managed to find a hotel close to the Games site.

Perhaps London's dearth of hotel rooms has been exaggerated. It's estimated there are around 135,000 rooms within 50km of the Olympic Park. But that certainly doesn't account for where all those extra millions of visitors are planning to stay.

Right now one thing's for sure – it's not at my house. I've now put it on Gumtree, Craiglist and Crashpadder and heard not a peep out of any. It's been "heavily marketed" with Foxtons since November and the only contact I've had is a courtesy call to say I've had no offers. Perhaps we are being optimistic about prices.

Perhaps I should have tidied up for the photographer. Or perhaps I've just been a little bit too greedy.

Source: The Independent
Tags: HOUSES | ACCOMMODATION | HOMES | FLATS

A seven-bedroom house in London's upmarket Mayfair district will likely set a British record rent of £433,000 (NZ$815,000) per month as landlords cash in on demand for space during this summer's Olympic Games.

The house has a floor space equivalent to three and a half tennis courts spread over three floors and includes a swimming pool, cinema and seven bathrooms. It can be also rented for 100,000 pounds a week.

In addition to a six-bedroom flat near the Harrods store in Knightsbridge that is for rent at the same weekly sum, it is the most expensive home on the findaproperty.com website, which displays houses being marketed by major estate agents.

"The figure is unprecedented for an open-market rental," said Jemma Scott, head of residential corporate services at real estate agency Knight Frank.

"It is purely due to the Olympics which, as a rule of thumb, will see monthly rents become weekly rents before reverting to normal after the Games."

The house would likely attract interest from overseas individuals in the Far East, Middle East and Russia, she said.

London homeowners are increasing rents by up to six times to meet demand from an estimated 11 million sports fans, media and corporate clients who will come to the city for the world's biggest sporting event this summer.

The total Olympics rental market for flats, apartments or houses could be worth 314 million pounds, based on one in three homeowners considering letting out some or all of their properties, according to a survey by findaproperty.com last year.

The luxury end of London's housing market has been buoyed by demand from overseas investors looking to shield their wealth from the euro zone crisis and Arab spring uprisings. Prices for the best homes rose 39.5 per cent between March 2009 and last November, Knight Frank said.

Renting homes was popular among certain wealthy individuals as it provided a greater level of privacy than a hotel, Scott said.


Source: Stuff.co.nz
Tags: HOMES | ACCOMMODATION | HOUSES

TEMPORARY accommodation will be built on Portland for around 220 police officers for the security effort of the London 2012 Games.

Dorset Police has agreed a further contract for accommodation at Southwell Business Park during 'the 22 busiest days' of the Olympic and Paralympic sailing events.

Chief Superintendent David Griffith, who is leading the Dorset Police Olympic and Paralympic Security Team, said: "It's going to be temporary buildings of stackable containers.

"We'll use the facilities of The Venue hotel - the catering hall and briefing rooms and some of the other rooms.

"The temporary buildings will be popped on land at the back of the building for 22 days."

It follows an announcement in December that more than 300 police officers and staff will be housed in mobile-home-style accommodation at Seaview Holiday Park in Preston, Weymouth during the Games.

The costs of the security operation, including accommodation, are met by the Home Office.

Source: Dorset Echo
Tags: SECURITY | ACCOMMODATION

(Reuters) - Harriet Howse is one of many Londoners looking to make a profit out of their property during this summer's Olympics, leaving the city and their homes to strangers to avoid the anticipated mayhem of an overcrowded capital.

One property website's survey says an estimated one-in-three Londoners are considering packing their bags and moving in with family and friends or heading abroad when 11 million sports fans, media and corporate clients descend on the capital for the world's biggest sporting extravaganza.

You don't have to hate sport either to be thinking about moving out.

Behind her blue door in northeast London, Howse, a fan of tennis who keeps herself fit, is planning to move out of her four-bedroomed terraced house and stay with her family. A housemate will be travelling to Japan.

"The cost of the tickets was so high that we couldn't afford to put a bid in for any of them ... and I think the mayhem and chaos caused by the Olympics would be a good reason to get out of London," Howse told Reuters.

"I'm pro-Olympics but I think the crowds are going to be crazy."

Her minimalist house, with its neutral colours alleviated by orange sofas and large paintings, is expected to fetch up to 2,000 pounds ($3,200) per week, four times the rent the 26-year-old university international officer could normally expect.

Other London homeowners are looking to ask for six times the usual rate.

A survey by property website FindaProperty.com last year estimated the total Olympics rental market for flats, apartments or houses could be worth 314 million pounds, based on one-in-three homeowners considering letting out some or all of their properties.

Estate agents say the number of short-let clients on their books has risen sharply.

Even high-end service specialists such as onefinestay.com, which handles properties typically worth 1.5 million pounds, is receiving between 100-150 calls a week from people looking to rent out their property during the Games.

"We're expecting it to be by far the busiest time we'll ever have had," said Greg Marsh, co-founder of the site.

"People are going to be taking off for the period of the Games in order that they can earn a bit of extra income while they are away."

WEST IS BEST FOR AMERICANS

Renting can prove attractive for visitors because it offers more flexibility while prices are likely to be cheaper than London's notoriously expensive hotels.

"You could have a bowl of cornflakes for breakfast and you don't have all the associated costs of living in a hotel," said Sarah Tonkinson, lettings director at estate agents Foxtons.

Block booking has reduced the number of available hotel rooms, with the danger that it will push up prices, though London Olympic organisers (LOCOG) recently released more than 120,000 unwanted hotel room nights for resale.

Some hotels are reportedly holding customers on long waiting lists before releasing prices, but some tour operators have said the industry's expected visitor numbers are hugely inflated.

The trick for both hoteliers and homeowners is getting the timing right when looking to charge a premium.

"It's better to take something at the lower price earlier and know you have definitely got something secure rather than run the risk and try to achieve a higher price later on," said Darren Rebeiro, head of Olympic services at Keatons estate agents.

Prices advertised before the Sydney 2000 Olympics were seven times the market rate.

"I think it is unlikely anyone achieved that," he said.

Renting is proving popular with foreign media, security firms, embassies and athletics federations, some of whom will look to book 200 rooms at a time. Others who are renting are corporates, especially from the U.S, Asia and Russia.

Demand has focused on historic Greenwich, with its maritime history and open spaces as well as its proximity to the equestrian events and other Olympic riverside venues.

One seven-bedroom property is on the market for 24,000 pounds per week.

Other popular areas, especially among Americans, include west London, with its upmarket shops, museums and luxury properties.

Wills Thomson, 48, is renting out a room in his two-bedroom flat in Chelsea to a father and son who booked last year on Crashpadder.com.

The archivist said it was an opportunity to meet "charming people from all walks of life from around the world" as well as earn a little pocket money.

"It's like staying with a friend of a friend, though they are paying for that privilege," he said.

Stephen Rapoport, founder of Crashpadder, said he expected to double the site's 2,100 hosts by Games time, while bookings were up by 245 percent compared with the same period last year.

BUY-TO-LET BONANZA

People living in Stratford, gateway to the Olympic Park, are also looking to cash in.

But estate agents in the formerly run-down part of east London, once home to noxious industries and slaughterhouses, are warning locals they may not be sitting on gold mines.

They urged caution against the expectation among some that "Mr and Mrs American" would be prepared to pay bloated rents for their properties.

Residents are likely to lose out to developers and buy-to-let property tycoons who moved in after London was chosen to host the Olympics, investing in new modern luxury apartments, which are proving more desirable.

"It's going to be the investors that earn the money," said Daniel Barbanel, sales and marketing director at local independent residential property agents Outlook.

"Because ultimately, the local people -- with respect to them -- their houses and flats aren't particularly well decorated."

Source: Reuters
Tags: HOUSES | ACCOMMODATION