£235,000 for hotel room

It may sound like an extortionate price to pay for a hotel room but for £235,000 you could become the owner of a stylish boudoir in west London.

A developer is offering private investors the chance to buy a 99-year lease on each of the hotel's 20 rooms - giving them the right to stay in it for 52 days each year and take a share of the income it earns from guests for the rest of the time.

It is claimed that as London property prices may start falling

this year, buying a stake in a hotel could be a viable alternative to a buytolet flat, especially as London rents are falling and good tenants can be hard to find.

The rooms are on sale in the former Westbourne Hotel in Westbourne Grove, which has just been refurbished and renamed Guesthouse West.

Its owners are hoping to sell its 20 rooms to businesses and private individuals. The first rooms went on sale this week.

Each of the rooms will be let to hotel guests at about £120 a night.

The income will be shared equally between the management and the room owners.

This means that if the room is full all year round - excluding the 52 days the room's owner is staying there - it could earn investors a maximum of almost £19,000.

The promoter, GuestInvest Ltd,

expects average occupancy to be 80 per cent and the return on investment could be between five and seven per cent. Leaseholders pay nothing towards the management or maintenance of the room, apart from a £500 a year "sinking fund" contribution for major works.

GuestInvest now plans to expand the scheme to other hotels across the UK and the Continent in the next 18 months.

Its owner Johnny Sandelson said: "We are re-engineering the hotel industry to give consumers a lucrative slice of the action.

"We have identified a gap in the buytolet market.

"This new concept offers people an innovative buy-to-let with no management hassles, no worries about tenants-more capital-growth opportunitiesand better tax breaks. "Until now, people who need to stay in London on a regular basis either had to buy a flat or pay hefty hotel bills.

"Now they can enjoy the benefits of both - and get an attractive return on their investment without the hassle of traditional property ownership.

"The scheme will also suit companies facing regular hotel bills for visiting staff or clients."

The newly revamped Guesthouse West has attracted some big names. Its bar is run by Charlie McVeigh of Bush Bar & Grill fame.

Breakfast is served in a dining room but guests requiring lunch or dinner will order it from a Tavola, a deli run by Alistair Little, with whom the hotel has signed a partnership deal.

The number of council tenants buying their own home has plummeted since the Government tightened the rules on right-to-buy, writes Ross Lydall.

New figures show that the level of applications to London's boroughs is at a modern-day low of fewer than 1,000 a month.

This follows changes introduced by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott a year ago to make it more expensive to buy council houses in all but two of the capital's 33 boroughs - Barking and Dagenham, and Havering.

Previously about 2,000 applications a month were being submitted in London. This peaked at 10,000 a month as the deadline for the rule change approached last March.

Mr Prescott then reduced the maximum discount given to tenants in 41 boroughs in London and the South-East from £38,000 to £16,000.