We’re forever reading about the transformative power of infrastructure projects. As house hunters contend with the lottery of which project is actually going to break ground, there’s a valuable lesson to be learned from Crossrail. Since Gordon Brown approved the plans in 2008 and building work began a year later, research from agent Benham & Reeves indicates postcodes with a Crossrail station show rises 17 per cent higher than surroundings, with some centrally placed stations adding over 140 per cent. Hamptons International investigated projections in 2012 that prices of properties close to Crossrail stations would rise by 25 per cent by 2021. They found that rises in Slough, Woolwich and Uxbridge far outstripped that at 66 per cent on average.
For prospective buyers searching for value there’s likely a feeling of a stable door hanging off its hinges – so where should house hunters turn their attention to next?
Looking East, on the way and coming in Autumn 2022, is the Barking Riverside extension. Ostensibly part of a plan to bring almost 11,000 homes to the area this huge development will result in jobs and a significant commercial influx that can surely only push prices one way. Connecting directly to essential tube and overground means in an area poorly serviced currently will have it’s one overarching negative removed at a stroke.
The new Barking Riverside development is essentially the creation of a new borough, boasting homes, playing fields, eight new schools and a Thames Clipper link into central London to boot. These sorts of large-scale developments can have a tendency to feel soulless if the important influx of local bars, restaurants and shops doesn’t follow – take Surrey Quays for example. But the transport links alone give the area enough merit for it to be a serious prospect for buyers.
Perhaps more of a speculative punt, and if West London is your metier, the West London Orbital hopes to connect Hounslow with West Hampstead later this decade by upgrading existing rail lines. Quite apart from putatively adding around 16,000 dwellings along the way, as well as increasing Ealing’s lustre as it goes across the Crossrail route there, it’s an awkward route that ostensibly needs a lift.
Harlesden, which will gain a stop, has plenty of Victorian housing stock that will inevitably tempt the doer-uppers before the uplift in prices begins to set in. Neasden – the closest proposed station to West Hampstead – boasts green space in the form of Gladstone Park.
If it gets the funding it’s looking for then buying now near Hounslow Station, as an example, could prove a lucrative bet.
Comments