It reads like a page from a celebrity Who's Who. The actresses Sadie Frost and Helena Bonham-Carter, actors Bob Hoskins and Derek Jakobi, comedian David Walliams, musician Noel Gallagher of Oasis fame and multi-millionaire record producer Trevor Horn all live or have sold a home in Steele's Road in the highly sought-after London postcode of NW3.
One of their neighbours is estate agent John Morris. He said that when he helped set up his agency, Day Morris, in 1989, an average town house cost about GBP250,000 (HK$3.8 million ). Now it would fetch as much as GBP1.5 million.
This year, Mr Morris has seen prices rise 15 per cent. Hoskins bought his house for less than GBP1 million a decade ago. He has just sold it for GBP7.5 million.
But, Mr Morris says, there is a difference in today's market. It is not like any other he has experienced in the past 18 years. The number of houses for sale is at an historically low level yet the number of buyers is soaring.
And the consequence, he says, is a cutthroat market and the return of gazumping, where buyers renege on an offer they have accepted when someone else turns up with more cash.
'We have 1,000 customers registered with us who are seriously looking to buy a property, but an embarrassing shortage of sellers. It's in single figures,' said Mr Morris.
He cites a four-storey unmodernised house on his books which had been lived in by members of the same family since it was built in 1880. It has dry rot, a filthy kitchen and damp. It suffers from subsidence. It is on a busy road opposite a council estate notorious for crime. Mr Morris valued it this year at offers above GBP795,000. So far he has had two bids for more than GBP900,000.