Oh my god, my old flat is being sold for HOW MUCH!?

[LindaMcCartneySausage]

We lived there years ago (rented). It's a slightly poky 1.5 bedroom, top floor flat - up four flights of exhausting stairs. No garden or outside space, not even a balcony, no parking, and a teeny tiny bathroom.

And it's on the market for £850,000 give or take £50.

That's 32 times the average wage in this country. For 726 Sq Ft.

www.primelocation.com/for-sale/details/34278250?search_identifier=423bc6b3fc3b9100eb993b6607d3e359#WG49z6uT0rSZX8mZ.97

I will never ever understand London prices. Ever.

I live in the North East and that flat would fetch 92k ish on a good street next to an Ofsted Outstanding school and a leafy park round here.

What was your rental on that? What sort of return on investment might a buyer expect?

Ooooo we used to live very close to there. I love maida vale, those flats do look amazing and I guess it's pretty central (we used to walk to oxford st in 15mins)

£850k is a stupid amount of money though

Wow, crazy! I wonder if they'll get that for it?

We are in central/up and coming zone 2 and property around here is coming down ever so slightly. Asking price drops of circa 5% for example. I think lots of properties that were put on in the summer have found that the market has already peaked.

We bought early 2013 and our house has already conservatively gained 33% if you believe a recent valuation. Absolutely crazy.

There's a small-ish urban park nearby, but no outstanding schools afaik. No view, no lift.

I still live in London and thought I knew a bit about property but I am just open mouthed.

It had a perennial mouse problem too.

It's only 10 mins walk to Paddington (Heathrow Express and Crossrail soon) so I wonder if that's what has made it so expensive.

No idea what it would rent for now. DH and I paid about £800 a month back in the day

I will never ever understand London prices. Ever.

Simple supply and demand. A property will fetch whatever someone is happy to pay for it. I bet in the NE there are still areas where property is cheaper than others.

When I moved from Hackney the área I left wasn't safe for the police To walk. Now flats are going for 2 million pounds.

I made myself feel sick by looking at what my old London flat is on for....the house next door to our ground floor flat has just gone on the market for £999k, having sold for £400k at about the time we bought our flat....it's a 3 bed, Victorian, fairly ordinary house with a teeny patio garden in the grottier end of Earlsfield......and that's in less than 10 years!!!

I've found the flat next door to my old one in W14. On for £599. I bed, tiny.
We sold it for £125 in 1997
If only we'd rented it out.

don't do it to yourself. our house in northcote road was sold for £450K 10 y ago and sold last year for 1.9 million.

Maida Vale is a beautiful, very well to do zone 1/2 area, so doesn't surprise me.

The council flat that I grew up in in a grotty area of NW London is worth 750k now.

Our old house in Hackney, sold 8 years ago for 600k, is worth 1.2 mil now.

My uncle bought a house in Queens Park in the 60s for £8,000. Yes eight thousand. Sold it 5 yrs ago for 1.9 million. It sold again last year for 2.4 million.

Crazy, crazy London prices!

The Hackney property vibe makes me feel like a real old timer as well. In the 90s, our old area was murder mile. Now you cant get a 1 bed flat for under 500k, and houses are 1 million plus for 3 bed terrace.

Insane

Madness - 4 storey house I grew up in in Hackney - our extended family rented a floor each - go for about £1.2 mil

It was a really nice area near the park in the 60s - haven't been back for years but Time Out is Hackney mad so it's probably full of rich young professionals as Kirsty & Phil would say!

I remember Hackney being unsafe for anyone to walk through, I was astonished to see flats going for £150k- 15 years ago, the prices now are phenomenal.

I worked in Queens Park and regularly walked through Maida Vale, I loved the areas but the prices are shocking. I'll never be able to live in London and that saddens me.

It's nuts. We've had our (very unfancy in a very unfancy area) flat for three years and in that time it's earned about the same as me and DH combined.

And as for Hackney - not even the 90s, I remember the mid 2000s when it was just grubby flats and art kids. And now the corner shops sell Kargs spelt crackers, ALL the varieties of San Pel, and ritzy organic chocolate.

I'm happy for the corner shopkeepers though, they must be having a whale of a time if they've been there throughout the process.

Oh and your Maida Vale flat is completely bonkers. And like someone said - I thought I was pretty hardened to London's stupidity.

Of course there are places in the NE where property is more expensive than others. That's why ThinkIveBeenHacked specified a good street next to an outstanding school and a leafy park. You could probably get it for £15k if it were in a particularly scuzzy street in a very unpopular area (and the listing would specify it was aimed at slum buy to let landlords*).

• obviously not all landlords are slum landlords! but the ones who buy super cheap properties in the north east invariably are.

Crazy. This is why we had to leave London. I looked up all our old rented flats on zoopla recently and could not believe how much they're now worth, despite the grotty areas, poky rooms, damp walls etc. Madness!

Owlcapone - I do get the supply and demand point and what someone is willing to pay for it, but I guess it must be foreign investors who are cash buyers with squillions.

I'm a lawyer in City firm, so I know people with large salaries. But even a worker on £250,000k a year - waaaaay above the average salary -would struggle to afford that poky flat based on 3x salary mortgage affordability. They'd need a load of cash for deposit and SDLT too.

Property price increases over the past few decades are now providing the next surge, as much as foreign investors.

Inheritances from grandparents, parents etc who bought in the 60s, south east parents deciding downsize or move out of area using cash to get children on property ladder, all continuing to inflate property prices.

Maida vale and little Venice have long been £££ desirable places to live. I'm not remotely surprised.