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REGIONAL FOCUS
London’s SW postcodes off er not only better value than many of their capital counterparts, but also an identifi ably diff erent set of lifestyle choices
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he swathe of London below the gentle western
Tcurves of the Thames has achieved an extraordinary transformation in recent years. So much so that house hunters who would have previously barely clocked places like Balham, Brixton, Streatham, Tooting, and Wandsworth now clamour for homes in these revived urban areas.
Where students, artists and media folk once cherished SW London’s less polished streets and low housing costs, now a much wider range of house hunters are seeking out its fashionable haunts, discovering its more aff ordable nooks and crannies, and cherishing the wider streets and rolling green parks, which has reshaped the area’s housing market, retail, leisure facilities, pubs, restaurants and cafés.
Parks have had a huge role to play. Almost every area of SW London has a substantial green space and, in some cases, lidos too, including Brockwell Park near Brixton; Clapham, Streatham, Wandsworth and Tooting commons; Wimbledon Park and also Putney Heath – to name a few.
And let’s not forget the colossal redevelopment of the formerly industrial riverside area of Nine Elms and its
Branch star
KIRA SAPIETS Lettings Branch Director, Battersea
Kira Sapiets heads up one of KFH’s most successful lettings branches within its London network, covering everything south of Clapham Junction up to the border with Balham at Nightingale Lane and between Wandsworth and Clapham Common. She has worked in the industry since 2003 and for KFH during the past 13 years, arriving as an assistant manager in SW London before helping open a new o ce in London Bridge and then returning to head up the Battersea lettings operation seven years ago in 2014. “One key trend here is that the age of professionals sharing houses or apartments has been going up over the past ten years and now they tend to be in their early to mid-30s,” she says. “The other renters that are prevalent here are families, as most of the properties to rent between the Commons and directly off Northcote Road are four- or fi ve-bedroom houses, so it’s a family area, helped by its hugely popular schools. Family homes within these schools’ small catchment areas are very in demand. “There’s been a trend for people to pay premiums for properties with gardens in this area of up to 10%,” Sapiets says. “A larger garden fl at in good condition that went for £2,400 before Covid is now going for £2,700. “The area that has changed quite noticeably is St John’s Hill next to Clapham Junction station, which used to be very rundown a few years ago, but has been transformed,” she says. “You can still get a little bit more for your money there.”
LETTINGS - BATTERSEA
PROPERTY TYPE
STUDIO 1 BED APARTMENT 2 BED FLAT 2 BED FLAT WITH GARDEN 3 BED HOUSE 4 BED HOUSE
PRICE RANGE (monthly)
£1000 - £1200 £1400 - £1500 £1700 £2500 - £2700 £3000 £4000 - £5000
Source: Rightmove.co.uk
Branch star
REBECCA MAY Sales Branch Director, Earlsfi eld
Rebecca May has been with KFH since April 1996 after moving down from Yorkshire, starting out in Islington before eventually arriving at her current SW branch in 2003. May and her team run one of the top-performing sales branches within SW London and she says it’s down to both her hard-working colleagues and her 18-year track record in the area. “Once you’ve been running a branch for that long you benefi t from wordof-mouth recommendations and have a good name for yourself,” she says. “But we are very focussed, determined to be the best and good at the detail, but above all we communicate eff ectively and honestly, which is the secret of being a good estate agent – if someone has to ring us to fi nd something out, I feel we’ve failed.” The branch’s sales patch borders Tooting, Balham, Putney and Southfi elds, and May says rising prices in more established areas are pushing many house hunters into new neighbourhoods they would not have considered before. “For example, many people used to eschew any properties within the SW17 postcode, but now they will consider it because Tooting has come up in the world so much in recent years,” she says. “What would have been considered peripheral roads are doing really well now.” May says the strongest infl uence on demand and house prices in and around Earlsfi eld are the catchment areas of its seven hugely over-subscribed schools such as Earlsfi eld Primary and Wimbledon Park. Prices in the area start at £500,000 for a two-bedroom garden fl at, £650,000 for a larger ground fl oor fl at with an infi lled side return, and around £1.425 million for a refurbished four-bedroom house in a school catchment area. “The market has been quieter since the stamp duty holiday deadline hit, but I think it’s going to pick up again now in the autumn, assuming we can keep a lid on Covid,” she says. “I like that time of year because everyone’s focussed and wants to be in their new home by mid-December so they can celebrate Christmas there.”
The green, open spaces of SW London are a real draw
jewel, the former Battersea Power Station site, both of which were barely neighbourhoods until recently.
But despite several decades of change, SW London prices remain lower than many of its western and central London near neighbours. For example, the average price for an apartment in Chelsea is £1.4 million, with other SW areas boasting cheaper apartments (as shown right). House price diff erences are even more stark. A terrace in Chelsea will set you back £4.3 million on average and a semi £8.3 million, but venture deeper into SW London and terraces in Streatham go for £660,00 and semis for £880,000.
These are averages and prices vary signifi cantly based on location, local amenities, property layout and condition or size of garden. But it’s a good rule of thumb that property in somewhere like Brixton, despite being only 20 minutes by tube from Oxford Circus, can be approximately 30-40% less expensive than Fulham. No wonder so many people are venturing to SW London.
AVERAGE PRICES
APARTMENT LOCATION
WANDSWORTH CLAPHAM BALHAM BRIXTON TOOTING BEC FULHAM BATTERSEA
Source: Rightmove.co.uk
PRICE
£569,000 £589,000 £613,000 £492,000 £542,000 £720,000 £713,000
Rents off er a more complicated picture. The popularity of SW London among 20 and 30-somethings, driven by ‘must have’ areas like Brixton, has pushed up average rents. Although the pandemic has slackened demand among these renters and fl attened out rent rises, a long-standing mismatch between the number of tenants on the hunt versus a lack of available stock has kept rents in line with many parts of West and even Central London.
Lifestyle to rent
Esmee Jones, Lettings Director, South West London, says that since the first lockdown, she has seen the busiest property market she has experienced in her 21 years at KFH. Initially there was an influx of property met by plentiful pent up demand. However, in recent weeks the supply has far outweighed demand and as a result the overall stock levels in SW London have dropped considerably.
“Anything with a garden or some sort of outdoor space has been snapped up, particularly in Battersea and Clapham,” she says. “If you are being asked to work and live in your home, then outdoor space or an extra room is a must. People are spending less on commuting and socialising, and as a result have more to spend on upgrading their home.
“People want more because they are spending more time at home. Consequently, rents for this kind of property have been rising fast, while studio and one-bedroom apartments without gardens have been less popular,” says Jones. “I can see this trend continuing for some time.” Assuming there are no more lockdowns this year, Jones believes the trickle of young renters returning to the capital as o ces re-open is likely to swell to a throng in the coming months.
Immediately after the first lockdown her team noted that tenants were looking for shorter minimum rental contract periods of 12-18 months, compared to the standard average of 24 months – just in case Covid returned. Confidence in the market, however, has returned. Coupled with the shortage of properties, tenants are now looking to make their offers more attractive, with longer tenancies of 24-36 months.
The current challenge for renters and letting agents alike is that stock levels across SW London are down significantly compared to a year ago as properties begin to be snapped up again by returning young professionals and families looking to rent in popular school catchment areas.
And while these trends may be temporary, Jones believes the pandemic has changed some aspects of the rental market for good as many people have readjusted their lives. “The longer Covid has gone on for, the more people have thought about changes they can make to the way that they live,” she says.
SW top picks
Burstow Road, Wimbledon SW20 £3,200pcm
An immaculately presented four bedroom, two bathroom family home, with off street parking for two cars.
KFH Wimbledon 020 3993 5146 wimbledon.lettings@k .co.uk
Streatham High Road, Streatham SW16 £1,895pcm
A newly refurbished three double bedroom apartment situated within a sought after residential block close to Streatham Hill.
KFH Streatham 020 3993 9014 streatham.lettings@k .co.uk
Kingham Close, Earlsfield SW18 £1,250pcm
A well presented one bedroom flat situated on the first floor of this purpose built block close to Earlsfield Station.
KFH Earlsfield 020 8131 4307 earlsfield.lettings@k .co.uk
RIGHT: SW London is full of properties with charm and history
SW top picks
Sold on SW
Bockhampton Road, Kingston upon Thames KT2 £595,000
A characterful two double bedroom ground floor garden conversion, perfectly located.
KFH Kingston 020 3993 7206 kingston.sales@k .co.uk
Rastell Avenue, Balham SW2 £750,000
A wonderful period conversion featuring two double bedrooms and approaching 1,000sqft of accommodation.
KFH Balham 020 3993 7700 balham.sales@k .co.uk
Boscombe Road, Wimbledon SW19 £1,100,000
A truly exceptional four bedroom Edwardian house ideally located on a highly desirable quiet residential road.
KFH Wimbledon 020 3993 4587 wimbledon.sales@k .co.uk
Lisa MacKenzie, Sales Director for South West London, says this area of the capital has seen a huge increase in popularity among home buyers and therefore substantial growth for KFH too. “Most of SW London is really well known now so if you're a 20-something graduate with a good job you want to live in Clapham Common or Brixton, which are massive draws for first time buyers particularly if they’re being helped by the bank of mum and dad,” she says. “They will either come in and rent straight away and then transition or use family money to buy immediately. Back in the day I guess it was all about Fulham, but it's shifted south of the river for this generation.”
MacKenzie says that in Putney and Wimbledon purchasers tend to be older first-time buyers in their 30s, so they want green, open spaces, whereas the 20-somethings want the edginess of places like Brixton. Many of KFH’s vendors, on the other hand, are couples with children approaching secondary school age who then move down the A3 corridor
LEFT: Rebecca May and Lisa MacKenzie outside KFH's Earlsfield o ce
to Surrey or depart to Beckenham and Bromley to houses within the catchment area of a host of good schools.
“The ongoing gentrification of SW London along the Northern Line has been held up by Covid, but nevertheless it’s been slowly creeping and had reached Tooting Bec before the pandemic struck,” she says. “But it will take longer to get to Morden and Colliers Wood.”
MacKenzie says the first six months of 2021 were the busiest she’s ever seen during her 30-year career in estate agency, and that the starkest change has been the creation of a two-tier market: properties with gardens or balconies, and those without. But now that the stamp duty sales funnel has begun to taper down, she expects the property market to return to a kind of normal by the end of this year.
“There was a time when everyone worried that a large number of people would ‘exodus’ from London, but I think many companies are now starting to rethink their working-from-home policies,” she says. “I worry that some people who left during Covid for a new life in the country in the expectation of commuting in occasionally to London might now get caught out.
“But on the flipside that could drive a huge market for pied-a-terre properties next year both in the sales and rental markets.”
