to want to move house in London just because the area where I live has become extremely poncey?

[Mintyy]

Yes, yes, of course we have been unbelievably lucky that we chose to live somewhere that became gentrified and therefore have made a lot of money on our house.

However.

We now feel like we have less and less in common with the people who live here. We are 49 and 51 and have good but not outstanding incomes.

I have just discovered that my new neighbours (who paid an extraordinary amount for their extremely average terraced house) are newlyweds in their early 30s. They are going to be doing building works, so I am imagine an extension and a loft conversion.

We are going to have nothing whatsoever in common with them are we?

I sincerely yearn for more authentic London living. Either inner city or further out and less pretentious and overpriced than where we are now.

Such a pita to have to move though! And nothing on the market .

incomers is risible term.do you hide the goat and pentangle when they pop into shops
Do you live in a Scottish Rural community,were incomers stand out?
No you live in a global city,that's constantly changing.

So what is a suitable period of residence before you are allowed to do building work? We had scaffolding up after a couple of years. Very annoying for our neighbours I am sure, but our roof was leaking.

We've not converted our attic, but we would if we could. People tend to do it before they have kids and their income plummets and / or their costs soar and they are on a treadmill of long hours, schleps to the nursery and exorbitant childcare costs.

I'm surprised there is such a social gulf on your street. I know all the oldtimers on my little stretch to chat to, but then, they are a friendly bunch, and they have evidently been able to see past the farrow and ball on our front door.

Balham has a Waitrose?! And is upmarket? When I lived there in the late 90s it was Safeway or Sainsburys. And dodgy men hanging outside the tube station offering you free rides in their taxis.

Charlton & Plumstead.
Still vaguely proper London - rough round the edges with no airs and graces.

I am so glad I got to spend all my youth in London when it was still fucking magnificent - before congestion charging and mass gentrification.
Wild horses wouldn't drag me back now.

Mintyy - agree about Brixton/Herne Hill/Tulse Hill. Depressing to go back now.

The eighties is such a long time ago though Mintyy. I lived there then too. What I find disorientating is as others have said the speed of change now. Gentrification of eg Herne Hill happened over a good few decades. Honor Oak happened in about 18 months. It just feels really brutal.

By the way I don't think forest hill proper will ever be really posh, the south circular is just too busy

I remember Hyndewood when it was starter homes for average earners .....

Before congestion charging? That's about 10 years ago. It was hardly the 1980s Berlin squatting scene or disco era New York. And the buses were dire then.

I found brixton depressing 10 years ago- getting attacked on the hight street as a teenager and threatened with a knife and no one stopping to help. I prefer it now.

I'd say the gentrification of Honour Oak has been going on for a long time. What has happened in the last 18 months is that the lending market has loosened up and a lot of pent-up demand is being unleashed. Also what little new build there is (at least the bigger developments) is being snapped up by overseas buyers. It's all combined to create a massive surge in prices. Most younger Londoners are being royally screwed by this, and those smug people who bought 20 odd years ago really, really ought to just count their blessings rather than assuming that their new neighbours are wankers.

For what it is worth, I love good coffee and nice bread that costs £2.50 a loaf. We sometimes eat out with the kids because we are lousy cooks and too tired anyway after a week at work, so yes the poncey cafes are our fault. We also have a house full of books and a secondhand golf. We talk to our neighbours, be they newbies or oldtimers. I hope they don't hate us just on the basis of what we paid for our house, because I like them. (Mostly).

Impossible to argue with defensiveness like that! Hope you are happy wherever you have settled.

Mintyy: "I actually think it is the height of fucking tosserish wankerness to buy a 3 bed terraced house and immediately set about expanding it to a 5 bed, with all the resultant inconvenience that gives to your two attached neighbours, the minute you pick up the door keys from the Estate Agent.

It has happened several times in my immediate vicinity recently and the natives are not happy. And the incomers do not speak, are never here (at work 7am to 9pm I guess, paying for it all). It is less friendly, less inclusive, less rubbing along together and all a lot more big bucks city workers flashing their cash around."

I think your true feelings are beginning to show. It is not wankerness, it is your hostility to what you perceive as money. I bet your new neighbours don't think they are flashing the cash. They got a crushing mortgage to pay off for the rest of their lives so they can buy a place in a safe neighbourhood close to reasonably good schools. It is probably the most they can stretch to. If they were so loaded, they would have bought a 5 bed house straight off the bat, rather than extend a 3 bed terrace into a frankenhouse. They now both have to work long hours to pay off the mortgage.

I bet they wish they had a chance to buy when you did and now have the choices that you do. It is not as if a young couple these days have that much choice in affordable housing stock. But of course it would be you resenting them, rather than the other way. Makes sense.

The thing is, places that were down-trodden are becoming gentrified because all the young 20-30 somethings can't afford to buy in the already gentrified places. The young middle classes are being pushed out of places that would have been prime territory 10-15 years ago. My fiance and I earn nearly 6 figures between us and (because we're not getting kick-backs from Mum and Dad) the choice was buy a small 1 bed in Clapham/Balham, a nice little 2 bed near Dulwich/Peckham or buy a massive 3 bed out in zone 4 SE London. Guess which one we chose? Where we are buying is nice enough but still getting a lot of investment over the next 5-10 years, so yes, being gentrified.

I can't even tell you how many flats we have looked at over the past 9 months that were being sold by overseas investors, with asking prices of between 10-30% (no, I'm not kidding there) over what other properties in the area (sometimes the same building) had very recently sold for. We would put in a low offer (though still well over other recently sold prices) and be told no, they want asking or they will re-let it'.

I want to live in a building/on a street where I can get to know my neighbours and we can have street parties and BBQ's for royal weddings and royal babies. That is what my life in London has been thus far in the poncey and gentrified suburbs, and that's what I will hope it will grow to be in my grim little corner of SE London I want to be a part of a community, not stabbed on my doorstep.

blueshoes, are you really suggesting I should feel sorry for a young couple who are paying over £800,000 for a house and are immediately going to spend many tens of thousands more on it? I am roffling gently at the idea of them being hard pushed and having no other choice. Poor things.

This thread seems to be highlighting an unstoppable drive to turn every district of London into Haslemere It will very soon be a plain of hand-painted uniformity & bunting, just like the suburbs Londoners used to be anxious to avoid.

All the underpaid workers who make the coffee and sweep up the pannetoni wrappers will have to bunk up in concrete sheds overlooking MrsDeVere's back garden.

Mintyy If you really feel that way, that just shows how out of touch you are. You say they're mad for paying £800k for a three bed house that can get planning permission to extend to 5 bedrooms in a nice, safe area of (what sounds to be within zone 2) London? I say that's a bargain! Property in London is completely crazy. You're just lucky the house wasn't bought by an investor and divided up into 8 flats and sold to foreign investors. You think I'm kidding? It's happening all the time. I have seen 3 story victorian terraces be subdivided into 6 flats (a grand total of 200sqf floor space per flat!) and sold on for £200k. You would be horrified at what developers are doing to properties all over the capital, they're the ones who are destroying the culture, not your yuppie family who has moved in next door.

Yes, poor you having to deal with a bit of renovation noise. Boo fucking hoo. You take your and your husbands salary that you had when you bought the house you're in now, adjust that for inflation into todays rates (of course take into account that pay having been frozen for the past 4 years because of the recession) and figure out if you could still afford to buy your house for what it is currently worth.

Maybe you should sell up so you will free up one extra decent family home in the capital.

Why don't you take issue with the policies that are promoting all this, ima, instead of yelling at OP? She shared her opinion/feelings. How come you're so personally offended by what she feels?

Those so called Incomers and gentrification benefit op,by raising her house price
By mere proximity to do-er uppers,the op financially benefits
She should be grateful,she can sell at huge profit and move as result of area change

TBH I am a bit annoyed by the snippy comment about feeling sorry for the couple spending £800k too. It's depressing when your options if you want a family home in London are move out of the area that you've lived in for years or get an absolutely crippling mortgage. Yes there are worse problems to have.....but there are also worse problems than your neighbourhood gentrifying!

I think it's the OP making it personal about the couple that has got people's backs up a bit, precisely because a lot of people here are facing the dilemma (though we can't afford £800k) and we'd bite someone's hand off to have the same opportunity the OP had.

Garlicbaubles, the reason people are cross with the OP is because she is blaming the people not the wider trend. She blames them for making her neighbourhood pretentious, and assumes she will have nothing in common with them. She blames them for the proliferation of shops selling useless gewgaws (and in the middle of her protests, ironically enough, does what must be a 20 minute drive to one of the very mega supermarkets that is in fact killing off the useful hugh street shops).

I've pointed out that the real victims of the situation aren't those with the luxury of taking their massive equity to an area more to their liking, but those renters who have no choice but to leave, and tht she should count her blessings. But she continues to sneer.

I am a little surprised at an unextended 3 bed in East Dulwich fetching £800k, and I am not asking for sympathy for people who can afford those prices , but I would ask again where exactly she expects these people to go so that she can be left in peace.

She sounds like she's had a pretty nice life, being able to afford a reasonable house in zone 3 for a sum of money that doesn't require you to sell your soul, but the choices she has just aren't available any more.

It's zone 2

Oh I used the phrase "pretentious wankerishness" as that was an accusation levelled at me for feeling this way.

I find it laughable that so many think I should be pleased and grateful that house prices have gotten out of control in London, I really do. Just because the value of my house has risen to a stupid level, I should be smugly sitting back and feeling content? What a short-sighted fool I would have to be to see it that way.

I don't think you should be pleased about house prices - I agree that it's a real problem. I do think that you shouldn't focus that annoyance on the couple moving in, who are also probably just trying to stay in a city that they love, and are having to pay a huge amount to do so.

Well you have been pretty rude to the young professionals who are moving to your area who represent a whole swathe of the london demography. They probably want to live where you live because of the demography you brought to the area a generation ago. Why shouldn't they live there? If you don't like the area any more just move, but don't be rude about what may be good, kind people because you don't like the fact that they are well heeled and have the money to improve the properties they buy.
Why not just be pleased for them?

Is Deptford still a shithole?

No it has a Waitrose!

Deptford also has Deptford High Street (not poncey) So what with poncey Waitrose and planned riverside development perhaps this is the 'real London.