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East London property values rocket 800%

Samantha Partington
Written By:
Samantha Partington
Posted:
Updated:
29/08/2014

The total value of East London property has grown by more than 800 per cent since 1987, outrunning any other area in the capital, including the upmarket West End borough of Kensington & Chelsea.

Research from London estate agents Stirling Ackroyd revealed that since the liberalisation of planning laws in 1987, Hackney has led the way in total price growth.

This compares to Tower Hamlets and Southwark which have seen increases of 684 per cent and 668 per cent respectively, since 1987.

The borough of Kensington & Chelsea has seen growth of 661 per cent over the same period ranking it in fourth place for residential property price inflation.

Of all London boroughs, Hackney has seen the fastest individual house price rises since the opening up of the local residential market almost thirty years ago.

The value of an average home in Hackney now stands at £545,000 as of June 2014. This is 583 per cent more than Hackney’s average residential property price of £79,700 in 1987.

Second is Kensington & Chelsea, with the average home now worth 549 per cent more than in 1987. The average home was worth £1,284,000 in mid-2014, compared to £198,000 in 1987.

Andrew Bridges, managing director of Stirling Ackroyd, said: “Old hotspots like Kensington or Westminster remain enormously valuable. But now London is looking east. As the capital’s economic and cultural heart grows outwards and eastwards, the City fringes are demonstrating the greatest dynamism.”

The 1987 Town and Country Planning Order allowed boroughs greater freedom to change the use of existing property which was embraced by Hackney council initially as a way of generating more income.

Andrew Bridges, managing director of Stirling Ackroyd, said: “Finding sites for new homes is a vital part of stimulating prosperity. And thanks to open-minded planning rules, some boroughs have done a better job of this than others.

“But conversions from one use to another are just as critical in providing the most useful – often the most valuable – types of property. This is the flexibility that allowed the development of Shoreditch as an artistic centre in the early 1990s. Mixed-use spaces allowed a working and living community of like-minded people, where before there were only dilapidated warehouses.”

In the same year as the overhaul of the planning regulations the capital saw the opening of City Airport and the Docklands Light Railway, helping to drive up prices further in London boroughs.

Bridges said the same principle of flexibility and variety in planning had allowed Tech City or Old Street tube which borders Hackney and Islington to flourish and had helped to provide thousands of new homes in the Olympic Park, in Stratford, Newham.

He added: “To let [continued development] happen policy-makers need to help find the space, in a literal sense, for future economic growth.”


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