A £250m guide price has been placed on New Scotland Yard as the Metropolitan Police prepares to move to a smaller headquarters on the Victoria Embankment.

The office block near Victoria station has housed the Met since 1967, but is being sold off as part of a cost-cutting effort. Having housed the force's headquarters since 1967, the 0.7-hectare (1.7-acre) site could accommodate three or four blocks of flats, shops and offices with views of Buckingham Palace, St James's Park and the Houses of Parliament.

Up to 200 police buildings are due to be sold by 2016, with £124.5m already brought in by

A tiny, unmodernised one bed London flat, which is currently uninhabitable has been sold for more than its £600,000 asking price by Hamptons International.

Not the most appealing of properties....as well as having only 30 years remaining on its lease, it is said to shake when tube trains pass nearby.

However its location on Stanhope Gardens in South Kensington has attracted a lot of interest from potential buyers, with the new owner expected to spend at least an additional £350,000 to extend the lease and fully renovate and update the interior.

James Wardle, director of the Hamptons office in

Russian bank, Sberbank, one of the country's biggest lenders, is giving free cats to people who take out a mortgage, in an attempt to capitalise on a Russian superstition that a cat entering your home first is good luck.

Customers are being offered a choice of 10 felines, which will be delivered to their home. The bank's website features 10 breeds, including Toffee, a siamese, Timothy, a tabby, and Kuzma, a Sphynx.

Sberbank's advert features two van drivers handing over a white cat to an excited couple who have just bought a home. It also shows the couple in a branch talking about a mortgage

And no, we're not telling you porky pies!  The "unique" one-bedroom house for sale in Ipswich apparently comes with a resident pig.

A bizarre property listing featuring a photo of a very large sleeping pig has sparked online intrigue.  The photo listing also features a cat sitting on top of an oven!

There is no mention of what the pig is doing inside the property or if the animal will be residing there to greet prospective buyers.

Ipswich-based estate agents, Connells, who listed the detached property on Rightmove, later removed the photo.

Can you spot the pussy cat?

New research from London rental website Rentonomy has earmarked the south-east London district of Woolwich as the capital’s top area for students to rent.

The report, which analyses 200 postcode districts across the capital, compares average monthly room costs, journey times to central London, crime levels - and the all-important number of local pubs, bars and clubs - to rank the top 25 areas for students to live throughout the capital.

THE FULL LIST: RENTONOMY'S TOP 25 PLACES FOR STUDENTS TO RENT

More than 160,000 new property millionaires have been created over the last year in Britain, according to property website, Zoopla, with nearly half a million home owners who can now call themselves property millionaires, at 484,081 in total. This figure is a 49% or 160,397 increase on a year ago.

It found that 12 streets now have average house prices of more than £10 million, all of which are in London, where competition from buyers has been particularly fierce.

Kensington Palace Gardens, which was once again named by Zoopla as Britain's most expensive street, now has an average property

The average monthly cost of running a three-bedroom house for someone taking their first step on the property ladder stands at £677, which is £110 lower than the typical monthly rent paid on a similar property, according to research undertaken by Halifax.

Cheap mortgage deals have helped to widen the cost gap between buying and renting a home in recent years. Five years ago, the average cost of owning your first property was around £37 a month more expensive than renting, Halifax said.

Buying has become even cheaper compared with renting over the last year, the research found. A year ago, the

London’s property buyers are prepared to pay an average of £42,000 extra to secure a home within a five-minute walk of an Underground or railway station, a new survey claims, and as reported in the London Evening Standard on Tuesday.

The “station premium” has widened drastically from £27,000 in the past two years, as improvements to the Tube and Overground networks have made access to public transport even more valuable for home- owners.

The survey, by the Nationwide building society, looked at prices at various distances from stations, ranging from 500 metres — equivalent to a brisk five

The most desirable postcodes in England, Scotland and Wales have been revealed by Royal Mail.

The firm evaluated the employment opportunities, quality of health and education, crime rates and housing affordability of areas across Britain.

The garrison town of Tidworth, in Wiltshire - postcode SP9 - was crowned the best place to live in England.

G44, on Glasgow's south side, topped the Scottish table, while LL78, Brynteg on the Isle of Anglesey, won for Wales.

The study, carried out to mark the 40th anniversary of the postcode, was conducted in conjunction with the Centre for Economic and

House sellers' asking prices in London, Cambridgeshire, Berkshire and Surrey have made the strongest gains since the financial crisis struck, while those in County Durham, the Isle of Wight, West Yorkshire and Teesside have the furthest distance still to recover, according to property website, Rightmove.

With an average price tag of £1.5 million, average asking prices in central London and the City now tower 41.9% above the levels seen when the housing market was at its pre-crisis peak in May 2008.

West London has seen the next strongest price growth since the previous peak of the market, with