"The people I know who live in Teddington and commute to Waterloo walk to the station. I wouldn't think many in the places you mention do."
Why not? I walk to the station to commute to Waterloo, it's not something that's peculiar to Teddington. There are dozens of places where you could do that.
"Multimillionaires don't buy £1.5million pound houses."
That depends I think.
"People buy these houses so they don't have to pay for private schooling. "
Eh what? I pay for private schooling, I can't afford £1.5 million for a house though.
"The state schools in Teddington are extremely good. Comparable with a lot of private schools."
No, really they aren't.
There cited school Waldegrave School for Girls has around £6k/year. Fees at senior London private schools are around £15-16k, and that money makes a difference, smaller classes, more trips, better facilities, etc.
If you compare to private schools GCSE results:
English Language:
LEH (private): 60% A, 96% A/A, 100% A*/B
Waldegrave: 7% A, 31% A/A, 67% A/B, 89% A/C, 11%: fail
Maths:
LEH: 100% A*/A
Waldegrave: 48% A*/A
LEH also offers Latin + Greek, which you don't get at state schools generally.
"I know this area. My family used to live there, by husband's family still do. Have done for generations. They are the original inhabitants, my MIL bought her house for £300. Not many people like that about now. Lots of young professional couples / new families / shared houses now on her road, where the houses are considerably smaller than the one you linked to. "
These bonkers prices haven't been here for generations though.
This house: maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=168+Waldegrave+Road,+Twickenham&hl=en&ll=51.433424,-0.338334&spn=0.006916,0.013078&sll=51.438099,-0.336285&sspn=0.006942,0.013078&hnear=168+Waldegrave+Rd,+Twickenham+TW1+4TD,+United+Kingdom&t=m&z=17&layer=c&cbll=51.433503,-0.338282&panoid=lq9eivWy8wE0CGKQ1rb1Xw&cbp=12,87.68,,1,-5.35
sold for £305,000 in 1996. Inflation-adjusted that's £485k in today's money. When you consider the people that have lived there for 15 years and hence didn't pay an outrageous amount, the buy-to-let subdivided flats, and so on, you will find that there aren't actually that many people who have put that much in.
And of course the people buying at £1.5m are probably feeding off a whole chain of fools - they might have sold a smaller place in Battersea, say (which in turns is perhaps going to someone trading up from a flat), and added in £0.5m of borrowed money and bob's your uncle.
The only winners are the bankers of course, the equity is a mirage (since the cost to trade up from a fully-paid off mortage-free house is more than it would have cost to buy the bigger house in the first place, outright) and it's just a big scam to enrich the landowners (the big landowners, if you just own a poxy 4-bed semi, you don't count), and bankers.
"I have no idea why you refuse to accept that some areas of the country are more desirable than others and that people pay a premium for a decent location. I also don't know why you keep insisting that because you don't like an area (that you seem to have little knowledge of) no one else should either."
It seems like a reasonable place to live, but that doesn't mean it's worth any asking price the cunt in Foxtons cares to stick on it.
"And trust me, there isn't going to be a price crash in Teddington any time soon. Houses are snapped up there."
Perhaps not soon, I wouldn't like to say. But to live in a £1.475m house normal logic would suggest joint income of around £400k. That's a lot of money, and is earned by a very small number of people. Perhaps there has been some fundamental, permanent change in the market and semis in Zone 6 suburbs with slow trains into London are now the most desirable places to live in the country, and you should buy at any price. Logic, however, would suggest otherwise.