homeandgardenlistings.co.uk Miniblog

The Pro Shopper May Be Saving Lowe's

Lowe’s is finding money where the mood is lousy. The housing market is soft, DIY shoppers are hesitant, and people are not exactly skipping into a store to buy mulch and optimism. Yet the retailer still managed a solid first quarter, and the pro customer looks like a big reason why.

Net sales rose just over 10% to $23.1 billion. Comparable sales edged up 0.6%. Online sales jumped nearly 16%. Operating income improved to $2.6 billion from $2.5 billion, while net income held basically steady at $1.6 billion. In a shaky home improvement market, that is not glamorous, but it is sturdy. Very sturdy.

Spring did a lot of the lifting. Lowe’s said its seasonal event boosted demand for live goods, landscaping products, hardscapes and patio furniture, while nine of 13 merchandising categories posted positive comparable sales, including appliances, paint, electrical and millwork.

But the more interesting story is the tradesperson. While DIY remains under pressure, pro comparable sales were positive, helped by the MyLowe’s Pro Rewards scheme. That matters because Home Depot has long been the default for professionals, and Lowe’s is clearly trying to change that habit.

It is also chasing younger shoppers with partnerships like MrBeast and Dad Social, hoping to shift loyalties early. For the full year, Lowe’s expects sales growth of 7% to 9%, with revenue reaching as much as $94 billion.

Posted on 13 August 2026

The 40-Year-Old First-Time Buyer Is Reshaping The Housing Market

The typical first-time buyer is no longer thirty and full of hopeful compromise. In 2025, the median age hit 40, up from 30 in the early 1990s, and that shift is changing not just who buys, but what they buy and what they do next.

Millennials, now aged 30 to 45, are spending more on home projects than any other group. Angi’s 2025 figures put their average annual outlay at $14,199, ahead of Gen X at $12,956 and Baby Boomers at $12,454. Boomers still spend the most on pure improvements, but millennials lead overall because they are pouring money into upkeep, urgent repairs and homes that need work.

It makes sense. Prices have outrun incomes, mortgage rates have made moving less attractive, and nearly three-quarters of younger owners say rates are pushing them to stay put and improve what they have. Meanwhile, searches for fixer-uppers have more than tripled in four years.

This is a practical generation, but not an unromantic one. They want efficient layouts, durable materials, smart appliances, natural wood, concealed storage, better outdoor space. A house, but edited.

For sellers, the message is plain: tired flooring, peeling paint and neglected maintenance now read as expense, not charm. For buyers, the 40-year-old first purchase is increasingly not a finished home, but a project with promise.

Posted on 8 August 2026

Why Did Home Improvement Leads Fall Off So Fast In Q2?

Home improvement leads didn’t vanish in Q2, but they lost their swagger fast. The market is still growing, just with more doubt in the air.

The latest US Remodeler Index shows home improvement specialists — the firms selling roofs, windows, siding, decking and bathroom refits — dropped to 62 in Q2 from 69 in Q1. That still signals expansion, since anything above 50 means the sector is moving forward. But the slide matters. So does the mood change: near-term sentiment sank 13 points after a very upbeat start to the year.

The sharpest warning light was lead flow. Only 25% of firms said enquiries were running above normal, down from 38% in Q1. At the same time, 45% said leads were below normal. Backlogs averaged just 3.0 months, which is not much shelter if fresh enquiries stay patchy.

Demand hasn’t collapsed. It has cooled. The demand reading slipped from 60 to 55, moving from strong into merely normal territory, while current activity eased from 68 to 62. Completions were still 3% higher than a year ago, but growth is slowing.

Why the drop-off? Mainly shaky consumers. More than half of pros cited uncertainty, with buyers taking longer, collecting extra quotes, trimming project scope or opting for cheaper bids. Higher rates, labour shortages, material costs and fiercer competition all added drag. Revenue growth expectations for 2026 have now been cut from 9% to 4%.

Posted on 31 July 2026

The Real Shock Is Not The Color Change - It's The Carpet Effect

Hydrangeas changing colour is hardly front-page shock. They’ve been doing that for years, quietly and with better manners than most garden trends. The real surprise is that this new lot doesn’t behave like a shrub at all.

Groundbreaker Hydrangeas, newly launched in the US after being bred in the Netherlands by Alex Schoemaker in 2017, stay low and spread wide, forming a flowering groundcover rather than the usual bulky mound. They reach only around 12 to 16 inches tall, but can spread up to 32 inches, producing panicle blooms for as long as 100 days from July into November.

That changes the conversation. Instead of one hydrangea standing there like a puffed-up wedding guest, you get a dense sweep of flowers along a path, at the front of a border, or in a pot. The three cultivars are Blush, which shifts from white to soft pink, Greeny, with lime-green flowers fading creamy white, and Ruby, which starts pale and deepens to red by late summer.

They suit USDA zones 5 to 9, like fertile, well-drained soil that is neutral to slightly acidic, and need about four to six hours of sun, ideally away from harsh afternoon heat. Keep the soil evenly moist, feed in spring, and cut stems back to roughly eight inches in early spring. That’s it. The shock, really, is how practical they are.

Posted on 25 July 2026

Not All Insects Are Vanishing - So Which Ones Are Actually Winning?

Once, after a summer drive, you had to scrape your windscreen as if buttering toast. Now you can cross half the country and arrive with barely a corpse to show for it. That isn’t just nostalgia talking. Studies across Europe, including the UK, have found real drops in many flying insects.

The losers are often the species that relied on the old patchwork of meadows, hedgerows and wetlands. We’ve tidied, paved and ploughed much of that away. Intensive farming has reduced food and shelter, pesticides have finished off some of what remained, and climate change has started fiddling with the timetable. Add artificial light, pollution and invasive species, and it’s less a single villain than a mob.

But not every insect is heading for the exit. Some are coping perfectly well, even thriving, especially the adaptable generalists that can make do with disturbed habitats and shifting weather. Insect numbers also rise and fall naturally; a warm spring can bring a sudden boom, while a cold, wet one can leave gardens feeling oddly vacant.

So which insects are winning? Usually the flexible ones, not the fussier specialists. That may be good news for them, but it’s not much comfort if fewer moths circle the porch light and fewer butterflies drift past the buddleia. The fix is not glamorous: more native flowers, rougher gardens, restored hedgerows and fewer unnecessary chemicals.

Posted on 15 July 2026

Why Are Home Prices Breaking Records In A Dead Market?

The housing market is behaving like a car with no fuel somehow rolling uphill.

In June, sales of existing US homes fell 2.4% from May to an annual pace of 4.09 million, below the 4.21 million economists expected. That sounds weak because it is. The market has been stuck near 4 million sales a year since 2023, well under the long-run norm of about 5.2 million. Yet the median sale price still rose 1.8% from a year earlier to $440,600, the highest on records going back to 1999. Prices have now climbed year on year for 36 straight months.

The trick is supply. There were 1.56 million homes on the market at the end of June, only a 4.6-month supply at the current sales pace. A balanced market is usually more like five to six months, and before the pandemic there were roughly 2 million homes for sale. In other words, demand is tired, not dead, and stock is still too thin.

Mortgage rates have not helped. Many June deals were agreed when 30-year rates sat between 6.23% and 6.53%. That freezes out plenty of first-time buyers, who made up 33% of purchases, still below the historic 40%.

There is a wrinkle, though: asking prices are softening in some areas, especially in the West and South. So the market is not healthy. It is merely scarce. Posted on 10 July 2026

Australia’s Luxury Suburbs Are Taking The Hardest Hit

Australia’s priciest postcodes are discovering an unpleasant truth: prestige is no protection when credit tightens and nerves fray. The sharpest falls are now at the top end, where aspiration has met arithmetic and lost.

In Sydney, the top quarter of the market has shed roughly $90,000 from the median value in just three months. Melbourne and Canberra are also sliding, while in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth the luxury tier has slowed markedly. Even Hobart, still rising overall, has seen its upper slice reverse. The old glamour has turned a little stale.

This is not just a story about wealthy buyers pausing. The broader market is cooling too. Loan applications in May were down 10.9% on a year earlier, and first-home buyer applications fell 13.4%. June was weaker again at some brokers. Higher rates, with new loans above 6%, have done what sentiment often does not: they have made people stop and think.

Investors are also stepping back from established homes. Lending dropped sharply after tax changes and banks trimmed borrowing power by about 20%. Yet new builds remain an exception, with investor applications for them up 31% year on year.

Meanwhile, auctions are spluttering. Fewer than half are clearing, many homes are selling before the hammer, and withdrawals are rising. Stock is up, urgency is down, and buyers suddenly have the one thing Australian property rarely grants them: choice. Posted on 6 July 2026

The Garden Objects Time Has Already Approved

New garden décor often feels counterfeit the moment it touches weather. The pieces worth bringing home already bear time’s verdict.

Amanda Thomsen, owner of Aster Gardens in Lemont, Illinois, has spent 25 years pushing gardeners toward stranger, better choices. Her buy-it-now list begins with cast-iron urns, vintage watering cans—including plastic ones from the 1960s through the 1980s—stone troughs, salvaged gates, and old terracotta pots. True antique troughs are scarce; when she cannot find one, she makes concrete or hypertufa versions instead.

She also singles out antique gnomes, wrought-iron plant stands, and 1950s patio furniture in iron, aluminum, or woven vinyl, often with original patterned cushions still turning up cheaply. Dead wheelbarrows become mobile stages for annuals, herbs, or shrubs. Architectural salvage—columns, corbels, finials, stone fragments—adds the illusion of age, even if it may crumble.

Old hand tools earn a second life as wall pieces or bucket-fillers. Vintage peony rings, handmade tomato cages, and other metal supports usually outperform modern equivalents; searching online without the word vintage can keep prices lower. Antique tubs in zinc, galvanized steel, ceramic, or stone work as planters or water gardens; standing water should be treated with BTi, Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis, which kills mosquito larvae without harming plants, pets, or beneficial insects. Thomsen’s current favorite is vintage rolled metal fencing, still undervalued—for now.

Posted on 2 July 2026

When Summer Exposes the Truth About Your Garden

Midsummer is a terrible moment for grand planting fantasies if you actually expect plants to enjoy themselves. It is, however, the season when a garden tells on itself. The light is loud now. You can finally see which corner is a sun-drunk diva and which patch is basically a cave with aspirations.

That makes this stretch after the summer solstice ideal for reconnaissance. Last June, before contracts were even exchanged on a new place, there was already impatience to inspect where the sunlight landed. Access, understandably, was awkward while young renters still lived there. Still, the urge made sense: before changing a garden, you need to watch it.

This one has invited more looking than digging so far. Grass has been allowed to stretch out, a desire path has formed through the middle, laundry has had its little runway moment, and familiarity has slowly replaced urgency.

The real work now is noticing how the space is used. There is no need for an outdoor kitchen for hosts who are bad at barbecuing. What is missing is seating, children’s hideaways and proper shade. Maybe everyone drifts to a tucked-away corner, or maybe eating outside feels too far from the house. Check whether herbs and compost are in sensible places. Sketch the sun’s movement. Save notes, collect ideas, ditch thirsty plants, and consider self-sown volunteers. Then return in September with a plan.

Posted on 28 June 2026

Small Waters, Small Wonders: Why Micro Ponds Are Taking Over Tiny Outdoor Spaces

A little water can alter the character of a place. This summer, micro ponds—also called patio ponds—have become a favored answer for people with only a courtyard, balcony, or narrow garden to spare. Compact, inexpensive, and notably undemanding, they offer the pleasures of a pond without the excavation, cost, or continual fuss of a full-scale installation.

Their appeal is practical as much as decorative. A small vessel of water can become a miniature habitat, drawing birds, bees, butterflies, and other pollinators into urban spaces while supplying drinking, bathing, and breeding opportunities. The effect is also atmospheric: light on water, a bit of movement, a reflective surface that quiets a corner.

Cherry Lane Garden Centres’ Senior Gardening Buyer, Tom Douglas, notes that their popularity is tied to the wider rise of wildlife-friendly gardening and the wish to support local species without needing a large plot or major expense. Green Feathers expert James Ewens similarly describes patio ponds as stylish, space-efficient, and useful for biodiversity.

Maintenance is modest. In hot weather, top up with fresh water, remove debris, and trim aquatic plants before they dominate. Add a small ramp so wildlife can enter and leave safely. Keep planting restrained, favor oxygenating species, avoid vigorous marginals such as yellow flag iris and bulrushes, and skip fish, whose waste can quickly foul a tiny pond.

Examples include Thompson & Morgan’s Flowering Pond Kit at £24.99 with Anemopsis, Pontederia, and Flag Iris; B&Q’s Patio Pond Kit at £25.99 with pot, plants, basket, and gravel; Crocus’s Pond in a Pot at £139.99 with a 55cm planter, three marginal plants, and a water lily; and Amazon’s Jsdoin Solar Fountain Pump at £12.99.

Posted on 24 June 2026

When London Stopped Being the Sure Bet

London used to be the sure thing, the gilt-edged bet in Britain’s property racket. If you wanted a house to fatten while you slept, you bought in the capital and waited. That trick has stopped working like it used to.

Rightmove’s latest numbers show London posted the feeblest asking-price growth of any major British city from 2016 to 2026. Over that decade, prices in the capital crawled up 7 per cent, from £639,593 to £687,080, a cash rise of £47,487. It still wears the biggest price tag in the country; it just no longer has the fastest pulse.

Elsewhere, the story has sharper teeth. Manchester and Wolverhampton each logged 63 per cent growth, lifting typical asking prices to £261,891 and £229,094. Newport, Nottingham, Wakefield, Salford and Bradford all cleared 50 per cent. Stoke-on-Trent, Doncaster and Swansea also ranked among the strongest markets.

The reason is plain enough. London spent years outrunning local pay packets, until buyers hit the wall. When prices start high and wages do not, the room for another boom gets cramped.

Hybrid and remote work helped finish the job. Daily access to the capital matters less than it did, so more buyers have swapped nearness for space, lower costs and a calmer life.

This is bigger than housing. Britain’s market is no longer orbiting one city.

Posted on 16 June 2026

The Garden That Forgot Supper

Once, a garden was a small insurance policy against hunger. It produced beans, apples, mint, onions—things that could be washed, chopped, and eaten before the sun went down. Now, in many suburbs and cities, the garden has become theater. The lawn is clipped like a marine haircut. Shrubs stand in formation. Flowers perform bravely. Dinner still comes from a truck.

People pour thousands into ornamental landscaping while giving little ground to vegetables, herbs, or fruit. It is a curious trick of modern life: we have learned to cultivate admiration more faithfully than nourishment.

Earlier households commonly kept vegetable patches, fruit trees, and herbs as part of ordinary living. Now plenty of people can fuss over a rosebush but have never raised a tomato. Gardening, in many places, has drifted from household skill to lifestyle accessory.

Culture helps this along. Social media prefers a polished border of blossoms to a practical row of potatoes. Garden centers sell what catches the eye. Television and magazines linger on design, not food. So the public imagination fills with petals and empties of peas.

Flowers are not the enemy. Beauty is one of the few decent things we have. But at a time of higher food prices, fragile supply chains, and louder talk of sustainability, it is odd to lavish such care on plants that cannot be eaten. The garden remains. Its purpose has changed. Posted on 9 June 2026

Three Interior Choices That May Be Raising the Temperature in Your Home

Summer heat in many UK homes is not only a matter of architecture; decor can quietly worsen it. Three common interior choices are especially likely to hinder cooling.

One is furniture placement. Chloe Barrow, Head of Creative and Brand at Laura James, says bulky pieces set hard against walls can impede airflow. Air circulates around cooler surfaces such as walls and floors, so sofas or sideboards pressed tightly in place may create pockets of trapped warmth. Shifting them even a few centimetres can improve movement of fresh air.

A second culprit is the heavy rug. Thick-pile and large area rugs act as insulation, which is useful in winter but less welcome in summer. They also cover hardwood or tiled floors that would otherwise feel cooler underfoot. Barrow recommends lifting heavier rugs for the season, or swapping them for lighter flatweave versions and leaving some busy walkways uncovered.

Window dressings matter too. Blinds, especially thin slatted ones, often admit more sunlight and heat than people expect. Curtains with blackout or thermal linings form a denser shield against the sun and can help keep rooms cooler when closed during the hottest hours.

For those wanting lighter summer flooring, examples include the Herringbone Jute Border Rug at Dunelm for £47.20, Habitat’s Modern Country Block Natural Flatweave Rug, 120x170, for £45, and Next’s Nina Campbell Multi Paradis Flatweave Rug, size 80x150 cm, for £120.

Posted on 2 June 2026

The Suburban Roommate Era Has Arrived

Roommates used to feel like a city problem: three adults sharing one apartment and one emotionally complicated Brita filter. Now the habit is spreading to the suburbs.

New data from SpareRoom, based on more than 16 million area searches in 2025 compared with 2024, shows a clear rise in people looking for shared housing outside major urban cores. The shift is especially visible across the Sun Belt and in outer parts of New York City, including the Bronx and Coney Island, along with nearby Long Island.

The notable part is that many of these places already have reputations for being less expensive than big-city neighborhoods. Even so, affordability pressures are pushing renters toward shared living.

That lines up with broader economic signals. A CBS News poll found that in April, inflation and overall consumer prices rose slightly faster than incomes for the first time in three years. Rising gas prices were a major factor, and more than three-quarters of respondents said they were worried about their personal finances.

SpareRoom says search trends suggest roommate culture is no longer concentrated in dense urban neighborhoods. Shared housing is becoming a suburban strategy for renters across age groups who are trying to avoid the full cost of living alone.

Among suburban areas, Fort Worth, Texas posted the sharpest jump in roommate searches, up 739 percent from 2024 to 2025. Columbia, South Carolina followed with a 282 percent increase, and Macon, Georgia was next at 259 percent.

Posted on 1 June 2026

Why Permeable Paving Is Poised to Overtake the Traditional Garden Deck

Garden decking had a nice run: planks, stains, annual regret. Now homeowners are eyeing permeable paving, a surface that does the radical thing of letting rain go where rain used to go before we covered the planet in decorative lids.

The appeal is practical first. Permeable paving is built so water moves through the surface and into the ground instead of skidding off into drains or sitting around as puddles. Olivia Harris, a green infrastructure and stormwater specialist, notes that flexible permeable pavers are gaining favor partly because they cut runoff, especially in flood-prone areas. But the trick only works with the full system: a permeable grid, such as one sold at Home Depot, laid over a permeable base like soil or crushed stone. Catherine Trudeau and Paul Blanding of The Outside Design Studio emphasize that the gaps between pavers are filled with clean, angular stone so water can pass through the whole assembly.

It also solves a design problem. Unlike timber boards, which can look imposed on awkward plots, permeable systems can take curved or custom layouts. Fill the grid with gravel, turf, or bark mulch and the surface blends into the yard instead of interrupting it.

There’s a climate upside too. Dawn De Feo points to less puddling, erosion, and water collecting near the house. Aaron Brundage adds that in drier places, rain is held in the ground rather than lost to storm drains, and the process can lightly filter contaminants.

Posted on 31 May 2026

Before the Lightning Finds the Wires

In the South, storm season has a way of arriving all at once: blue sky, then thunder, then the nervous flicker before the lights steady or fail. The real damage is often less visible. A lightning strike, a downed line, even the return of power after an outage can send voltage past normal levels and through a house’s wiring. What suffers first are the small, intricate things: microprocessors, circuit boards, the quiet electronics built into nearly everything now.

Before a storm, the safest move is to disconnect the vulnerable and the expensive. TVs, desktop computers, laptops, gaming consoles, tablets, Wi‑Fi routers, printers, and even phone or laptop chargers are common casualties. Devices do not need to be switched on to be damaged if they remain plugged in.

The same is true of smart-home gear: thermostats, voice assistants, video doorbells, lighting hubs, streaming devices, and security systems. Surges can also travel through cable, internet, and satellite lines.

In the kitchen, smaller appliances such as microwaves, air fryers, coffee makers, toasters, stand mixers, and countertop ovens are at risk. So are space heaters, portable ACs, and window units, whose motors and compressors can be strained when power drops and returns.

Large appliances are somewhat sturdier, though modern refrigerators, washers, dryers, ovens, and dishwashers still contain sensitive controls. Surge protectors help, whole-home systems help more, but in severe thunderstorms unplugging remains the surest defense.

Posted on 29 May 2026

Solar Panels in a Heatwave: Strong Sun, Slightly Weaker Nerves

Heatwave logic can fool a sane homeowner: blistering sun feels like it ought to supercharge rooftop panels. It doesn’t. Solar panels feed on light, not heat, and once the cells climb much above 25C, efficiency starts to sag.

Most modern panels are engineered to survive roughly -40C to 85C, but they’re happiest nearer that 25C laboratory benchmark. The mechanism is simple and mildly cruel: stronger sun boosts current, yet hotter cells lose voltage, and power depends on both. Result: bright summer weather can still produce excellent output, but extreme heat trims it.

The key number is the temperature coefficient. For every degree above 25C, output typically slips by about 0.34 to 0.5 percentage points. Using Britain’s record 40.3C on 19 July 2022 as a rough guide, that suggests a good panel might run about 5 per cent below its optimum rating. Panels themselves can get hotter than the air, but even near 85C the reduction is usually around 20 per cent versus standard test conditions, not a 20 per cent collapse in yearly yield.

Another weak link is the inverter, which can throttle in hot, badly ventilated spaces such as lofts.

Even so, on 19 July 2022, Sheffield Solar’s PV Live estimates showed solar generating 66.9GWh, covering about 8.6 per cent of UK electricity demand; over the previous week, it supplied around 9 per cent.

Posted on 27 May 2026

Why Rock Gardens Keep Coming Back

Rock gardens are back again, which feels reassuring. In a world that keeps trying to sell us novelty, here comes a landscaping idea that has already survived multiple comebacks. Rockeries surged in the 1920s, faded for about 40 years, returned in the 1960s, and have now rolled firmly into the 21st century.

The timing makes sense. Much of North America is in drought, and xeriscaping has shifted from niche virtue to practical necessity. A garden built around stone and tough, drought-tolerant plants uses less water and generally asks less of its owner than a traditional flower bed forever pleading to be deadheaded, watered, or rescued.

That restraint is part of the appeal, but not all of it. Designers in 2026 are highlighting rock gardens for their year-round structure: even in January, when ordinary beds can look bereaved, a rock garden still has shape and presence. There is also room for invention. The format can be as spare as a place to display a favorite stone collection or as elaborate as a sensory landscape for children.

Landscape designer Gerardo Loayza of Bacqyard, gardening expert Irvin Etienne of Newfields, and Instagram grower Misilla dela Llana have all pointed to the same core strengths: strong seasonal form, creative flexibility, low upkeep, and reduced water use. In other words, the old rockery has returned because it still knows how to behave. Posted on 25 May 2026

The Summer Truce: Keeping Wasps at a Safe Distance

Wasps are the small, bright mechanics of summer: pollinators, hunters of caterpillars, stink bugs, flies, even spiders. Most are not looking for war with people. Trouble begins only when a colony fastens its paper city to a porch light, wall void, grill, shrub, attic, or patch of ground near daily life.

Mike Raupp, Ph.D., University of Maryland professor emeritus of entomology and extension specialist, notes that solitary wasps are largely non-aggressive. The real risks come from social species. Yellowjackets are the chief menace, with late-summer colonies swelling into the thousands; they nest in soil, walls, and behind siding, sting repeatedly, and grow fiercest in fall. European hornets, common in the South, build tan paper nests in hollow trees, walls, and attics and are drawn to lights at night. Paper wasps use sheltered spots such as shutters, mailboxes, doorways, and porch lights. Bald-faced hornets build football-shaped nests in shrubs, trees, and on buildings. Mud daubers rarely sting.

Frequent sightings, buzzing indoors, dead wasps inside, visible nests, or wood damage can signal trouble. Sydney Crawley, Ph.D., North Carolina State University, recommends prevention: cover meat, fruit, sweets, and drinks; use lidded cups instead of soda cans; clean and cover trash; pick up fallen produce; seal eaves, siding gaps, doors, windows, and screens; move compost away; fill ground holes; destroy small spring nests early.

Essential oils, decoy nests, traps, and soapy water offer limited help. For necessary removal, treat nests at evening with an aerosol spray reaching 10 feet or more, then stay away a day. Leave low-traffic nests alone. Call professionals for allergies, wall nests, aerial nests, large infestations, difficult access, or uncertain identification. Queens may live up to a year; workers and drones about two to three weeks. Posted on 24 May 2026

How to Make a Small Home Think Bigger

Tiny homes punish impulse. Colin Chee learnt that in 2010, when he collected the keys to a 37 sq m off-the-plan flat in central Melbourne and discovered, too late, how badly it worked. That frustration eventually became Never Too Small, the YouTube channel he launched in 2017, now followed by more than 3 million subscribers.

With apartment living rising, Chee, Claire Scorpo of Agius Scorpo Architects, and Tahj Rosmarin of Card Practice will speak at the National Gallery of Victoria this weekend at Small Spaces, Big Living.

Their shared lesson is that compact homes need patience, not panic-buying. Chee, now in a 40 sq m converted warehouse with his partner, spent about $5,000 on secondhand pieces and Ikea and Bunnings systems. He recommends moving in first, then discovering what the rooms actually need. In his kitchen, a bar fridge and separate small freezer replace a single bulky unit; slim-legged furniture keeps more floor visible; a stool can stand in for a coffee table and a stepladder.

Rosmarin’s North Melbourne walk-up resists the usual open-plan reflex. Instead of removing a load-bearing wall, he and his partner cut a cafeteria-style opening between kitchen and living room: connection without exposing clutter. A six-metre custom joinery wall, costing about $5,000, handles seating, storage, shelving and TV.

In Fitzroy’s Cairo block, Scorpo and her husband reworked a poorly renovated 23 sq m bedsit. A fluted-glass bathroom partition allows dressing and bathing at once. Their raised double-bed nook hides storage and a washing machine below. Chee adds that even ordinary apartments can feel taller by pushing shelves and curtain rods close to the ceiling and using glossy ceiling paint. Posted on 22 May 2026

Two Winters, Two Systems

Postwar Britain and Sweden made opposite bets on how homes should feel in winter, and the bill is still arriving.

In the UK, roughly 6 million households cannot reliably afford to keep warm. Homes are often badly insulated, heavily tied to natural gas, exposed to price shocks, and associated with excess winter deaths. Sweden, though markedly colder, keeps homes warmer at lower relative strain and records far fewer cold-related winter deaths.

The split began after 1945. In Britain, the urgent problem was coal smoke, sharpened by the 1952 Great Smog. When North Sea gas was discovered in 1965, the country moved hard toward gas central heating, selling it as cleaner, simpler, more modern than coal. By the 1970s, gas was built into domestic life.

Sweden attached heating to folkhem, “the people’s home,” where decent housing was part of collective welfare. Through the 1960s and 1970s, cities expanded district-heating systems, and “warm rent” commonly folded heating into the rent itself. At the same time, Sweden spread risk across hydropower, nuclear, biomass, waste-fuel heating, insulation and broader efficiency measures.

Then the 1970s oil crisis hit. Sweden doubled down on efficiency and energy independence. Britain stayed more exposed to fossil fuels, endured power cuts, and left many homes thermally weak. After 2010, UK efficiency efforts were further slowed as programmes were rolled back.

The result: Sweden largely “futureproofed” heating. Britain’s gas habit now drives both climate pressure and unaffordable warmth, even as both countries confront the new strains of electrification and heat pumps.

Posted on 20 May 2026

Monaco Penthouse Sets New Record at Over $500 Million

There are extravagances which, if they do not invite admiration, at least compel attention; and Monaco, that diminutive principality of immense prices, has now furnished one of the grandest. In one of its most coveted districts, a 21-room penthouse in Le Renzo has changed hands for €471 million, or about $554 million, establishing the highest residential sale yet recorded.

The buyer was System Capital Management (SCM), the holding company of Ukrainian billionaire Rinat Akhmetov. The residence crowns the waterfront building across five levels, extending over more than 26,900 square feet. Its inducements are as lavish as one might expect: eight private parking spaces, terraces opening directly upon the Mediterranean, a pool, a jacuzzi, top-tier interiors, and the latest home-automation systems.

Its astonishing price is less a whim than the consequence of several converging advantages. Monaco, second only to the Vatican in sovereign smallness, has for some time commanded exceptional housing values; last year, estimates placed prices above €70,000 ($82,300) per square metre. Le Renzo itself is singular, being the first project in decades to alter the principality’s skyline. The penthouse, moreover, is arranged less like a flat than a five-storey villa suspended above the sea.

The purchase comfortably surpasses prior benchmarks: Nick Candy’s London mansion at over $350 million and Ken Griffin’s New York penthouse at roughly $240 million. Experts take the sale as further proof that the ultra-luxury property market is still advancing.

Posted on 17 May 2026