Estate agent Martyn Gerrard has opened an office in Mill Hill. This is its eighth area office. The firm already covers Kentish Town, Finchley, Whetstone and Crouch End.

It has been quick to pick up instructions in Mill Hill. At the lower-priced end of the market, it is offering a two-bedroom ground-floor garden flat at Wardell Close, NW7, within walking distance of Mill Hill Broadway shops and local amenities, for £219,950.

Affluent buyers looking for extra space are now able to purchase a prime apartment six times the average UK house size on London's Billionaires' Row, with the launch of 14 palatial properties at 49 The Bishops Avenue.

New research by Zoopla.co.uk shows that buying a home beats renting in 74 per cent of cases around Britain, in financial terms. And the conclusion is that it is still cheaper to buy than rent in London, despite high prices. Huddersfield tops the list of places where renting beats buying.

According to the Zoopla statistics, buying remains cheaper than renting in around three quarters (74 per cent) of the locations studied, with average monthly mortgage repayments being eight per cent lower than the cost of renting (assuming interest-only mortgage at five per cent interest per annum).

New homes are selling well, even as the wider market cools.

The average price of a new home slipped by -1.2 per cent to £217,845 in June, as a number of short-term factors prevented the continuation of the recent steady growth. However, with the three-month change standing at +0.8 per cent and annual growth at +1.4 per cent, underlying market trends remain positive.

Looking for modern luxury? Perhaps you are a footballer with Tottenham or West Ham and want easy access to your training ground? Perhaps you simply want a family home with every facility money can buy? Heywood House, Emerson Park consists of six bedrooms, kitchen, gym, sauna, indoor swimming pool, as well as formal reception rooms. Set over three floors, the house has underfloor heating throughout, walnut and glass staircase, Crestron management control system, Lutron mood lighting system and the whole building is 6,796 sq ft. The price? £3.4 million

Estate agent Richard James has opened a new office in Hendon and has already sold two large houses there. The estate agent, which has been established in Mill Hill for six years, has sold two high-value properties in Manor Hall Drive, Hendon. One of them is a four-bedroom, two-bathroom house with scope to extend. The asking price was £1.125 million. The other is on a double-width plot and totals 3,600 sq ft with six bedrooms, three bathrooms an outdoor swimming pool and a Mark Wilkinson kitchen. Its asking price was £1.75 million.

A lack of supply is pushing rents higher, signalling a revival in the lettings market, says the latest RICS Lettings Survey. The net balance of chartered surveyors reporting rising rather than falling rents rose from zero to 30 per cent - a marked contrast to April last year, when 58 per cent more chartered surveyors were reporting falling rents, an all-time low for the survey. Surveyors are optimistic that rents will continue to rise with the rental expectations' net balance climbing to 36 per cent - the highest figure recorded in the survey's history.