Olympic Village Homes Hitting the Market

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Almost a year after London's Olympics hosted Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps and other top athletes, a new firm is starting to market apartments for rent in the Olympic Village, which is now known as East Village.

Qatari Diar, an investment company controlled by the Qatar royal family, and property developer Delancey bought the village for £557 million ($852.5 million) in 2011. At the time, the deal was characterized as the "first U.K. private sector residential fund of over 1,000 homes to be owned and directly managed as an investment."

Qatari Diar and Delancey established a new company, Get Living London, to manage 1,439 homes on the 67-acre site. About 370 of the apartments will be available this summer, with the first move-ins expected by August.  

The remaining 1,379 homes in the complex are managed by Triathlon Homes, which plans to sell some on a shared-ownership basis to first-time buyers, while renting the rest to people on an affordable housing waiting list.  

East Village is touted as a new model in developing long-term, large-scale housing for rent in London.  

By creating a new entity to market and manage the apartments, the company is eliminating small-time landlords, agents and middlemen from the process, Get Living London chief executive Derek Gorman told Home and Property. Renting directly from a professional company, there will be no fees or charges, offering people "flexibility," he said.

"More and more people are renting in London -- 25 per cent of Londoners live in the private rented sector, but often with a poor quality of service," Mr. Gorman said.

The question now: how much will the rentals cost? The company is not saying, although Mr. Gorman promised rents "will reflect the market in Stratford." A three-bedroom house in Stratford typically rents for about £450, while a two-bedroom flat costs about £350 a week, Home & Property notes.   

East Village will feature easy transportation connections, a school, health center, restaurants, shops and, of course, a gym and Olympic-sized pools. The Queen Elizabeth park nearby.  

There will be few signs of the Olympic heritage evident--and there is no record of which star athletes stayed in which apartments--but streets will carry names such as Prize Walk, Cheering Lane, Medals Way and Celebration Avenue.