Where in London will be gentrified next?

[Willow1086]

Where in London do you think will be gentrified next?

Because lots of the people in rough areas typically rent not own so either their rents go up or their landlord sells up to incoming gentrifiers. And since rents tend to get higher as you get nearer the centre, that probably means they have to move further out and increase travel costs.

@HeronLanyon

All I’m saying is twice I have bought in supposedly up and coming areas neighbouring areas I couldn’t quite afford. Well 20 years later neither upped or came and if anything got worse. I upped and moved on. Estate agents and developers and schools and the community all talk things up but it often just doesn’t happen.

I want to know which areas!

(^ in response to the poster who asked about the negatives of gentrification)

@Nameregretter

This is in Manor Park: Albany Road, Manor Park, London, E12 www.rightmove.co.uk/property/90191983

There are some nice streets near the flats/CoL cemetery. It’s near Wanstead, will be on crossrail. Forest Gate already well on its way too. Manor Park is a no brainer.

Manor Park Village? Who knew.

@sst1234

Why does gentrification have a negative connotation. Do people really like living in shithole areas, rather than having their area improve?

It prices out the people who have been part of these communities for years, disproportionately affecting those on lower incomes who rent rather than own.

@daisypond

Thornton Heath

Yes, this! The SN/TH area has really good transport links and green space but is one of the last affordable areas.

OPs clearly in the market to buy and wants to make a quick buck by scouting areas based on the collective MN wisdom. Manor park is your area to go OP... so much to choose from.

I love how it all manages to be gentrified whilst still being a shit hole.

Look for any area of ex-council housing that was bought via right to buy where the elderly residents are, erm, moving on. I suspect we are entering the tail end of this phenomenon though.

In those areas you have houses with one occupant, possibly a bit run down / dated. They die and the new owners do it up either to live in as a family home, or to make a profit.

In my area of South West London the Dover House Estate is a good example. Quite pleasant cottagey terraced houses with lots of green. Values have doubled or even tripled in the last 10 years, and the feel of the area has got more positive (not that it was bad before).

Key things:

• Demographic historically bought under right to buy (so not too much Council Housing left).
• Those that did right to buy liked the area so stayed. So a lot of elderly owners remain.
• Few houses moved to HMOs or other BTL.
• Area is mainly houses rather than blocks of flats.

Other estates I expect to be similar. Castlenau in Barnes is probably further down the 'on the up' path (until Hammersmith Bridge broke). There is an area near Wormwood Scrubs that looks similar from the A40 that feels like it is an opportunity.

Wikipedia has a list of the cottage estates: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_County_Council_cottage_estate

The same applies for areas of 1950s council housing too.

I dislike 60s and 70s council housing, it is usually flats rather than houses and doesn't seem to have lasted well due to poor designs. So the approach is often to flatten and start again (e.g. Elephant and Castle, Roehampton Alton Estate). So buying in those areas is a gamble on the compulsory purchase price being worthwhile to move up. In the interim the area gets worse.

Stockwell area - as soon as fancy Nine Elms is finished I reckon it will sweep across Lambeth.

Shepherd's Bush and the Wood Lane area?

Manor Park / Forest Gate in the East.

Wembley in the North

London gentrification of new areas is over. Who wants to live in over priced shoebox when they can work remotely?

The factors which drove London gentrification appear to be in reverse?

I am sure there are good arguments why I am wrong but there are plenty of people leaving London now.

@vimtosogood

I love how it all manages to be gentrified whilst still being a shit hole.

Depends what you mean by "gentrified" and "shithole", doesn't it?

Plenty of people think any part of London outside of South West is a shithole with the possible exception of a handful of streets in Highgate, Hampstead and Muswell Hill. People like that still sneer at Hammersmith let alone Walthamstow or Hackney. Others look at somewhere like Leytonstone and compare it to 10 years ago and say it's gentrified. They are both right, for a certain level of shittiness or gentrification, but at the same time there are a lot of shittier areas than Hammersmith, and a lot of areas more gentrified than Leytonstone.

Plenty more are arriving or staying. There's 9 million people in London. Only a small proportion are leaving.

The novelty of WFH full time permanently will wear off. For employees and for clients and customers. It's absolutely shit for young people just starting out or older career changers. Long term it's a lonely isolating and miserable way of life.

A previous poster asked where will de-gentrify. A good question. Pre-COVID it seemed that apart from the local supermarket chain other shops were centralising into larger centres so smaller high streets were losing out. Now the local parade of shops seems a good thing, but the mid-sized centres seem lost. I think the town centres of these places will struggle and look shabby, empty shops for a while before being re-built into flats. But the surrounding housing may not nosedive though.

In my area Putney high street is dying, too close to Kingston / Westfield / Wandsworth / Centre of London. Wimbledon town centre seems to be struggling a bit too. Hammersmith also not great.

Wandsworth is having money poured in, new flats, development and re-routing the south circ away from Southside shopping centre. Kingston is big enough to hold itself as a shopping destination.

Possibly any area with new build high rise flats. Popular with BTL investors or foreign money parked in empty flats. These areas have an oversupply, COVID has made outside space more important, Grenfell makes us wary of high rise fires. I think these areas will get 'worse' once the new-build shine starts to fall away and the lack of community shows through. Especially when the apartment blocks start to age. The high service charges on these new blocks seem crazy to me too.
E.g. the new flats in Vauxhall, Battersea Power station area or pretty much all along the Thames. The blocks built in the last 15 years will in future be viewed as we view 60s/70s tower blocks now.

What OooPourUsACupLove said. ‘Gentrification’ means moving from historically affordable to (for most already-local people) expensive and the. unaffordable housing, ultimately displacing them. Because more people who can afford the high new costs can afford to settle there.
Gentrification to me has no bearing on whether improving amenities, transport, more expensive middle-class oriented shops and cafes start to appear or not. It’s about housing and business rent and sale prices.

I find the idea of ‘de-gentrification’ interesting because logically you’d think it existed- but where in London has actually got cheaper to live and work and has higher earner flight in recent years? I can’t think of a single area that that has happened.

Thanks, MoChridhe (re Brick Lane).

Tealightsanddd it's already too late for Shepherd's Bush and Wood Lane - once Westfield came in, and they developed Television Centre, it had already happened. Hell, even Acton is waaaay too late if you want a bargain.

I now have a small mortgage, but before I settled down 20 years ago I rental-hopped between all the now-gentrified spaces, moving on often when the rental property was sold out from under me as the place rose. One place where my rent was £42.50 a week, food included, now has a bona-fide Roller in the drive. Two other places I lived have been (righfully, I have to say) demolished for being shitholes, and posh flats built in their stead.

Leytonstone was more suburban than urban to start with, so technically it cant gentrify

I agree with penge. But if you're talking house prices rather than hipsterishness, a pp has rightly pointed out theres £2m houses next to a council estate in many of these places mentioned

I think de-gentrification has taken place in NW London. 30 years ago Wembley Park was a really posh place to live - the High Street was a shopping destination - but collapsed with Brent Cross opening. Similarly Sudbury, Harrow - especially Wealdstone / South Harrow. Used to be just working families but I suspect people got pushed out from inner London as these areas became gentrified so these outer areas became bedsit / HMOs / houses chopped into flats for rental for workers. Not sure if this has happened in N London? But certainly hasn’t in SW, SE, NE and E London.

Planned and implemented well, gentrification can create a balanced community.

Examples, please.

I've yet to see it myself (in NYC, DC, London or Berlin)

To answer the OP: Catford

Someone mentioned Cricklewood much earlier as an area that could gentrify (I do hate that word as it sounds like the people who were there before are riff-raff!) - I have a friend who lived there for a long time, and I was always puzzled when I visited her that she was in a large area of very nice streets, just west of the Broadway, but the shops and cafes on the main road didn't seem to reflect the presumably quite well-off demographic of the houses. Where I live in Hackney it's a very mixed community in terms of wealth/poverty, ethnic diversity etc., and local businesses reflect this, with pound shops, greasy spoons and minimarkets catering to particular ethnic groups alongside artisan bakeries, fancy independent shops and so on. I guess for me "gentrification" is fine if there is still plenty of social housing, and genuinely affordable properties to buy.

@Sssloou I agree with you. I grew up there and it’s very different now. Harrow town centre is probably a typical town shopping centre that has struggled with the closure of high street branches. People will go to Watford, Brent Cross or central London for shopping.

@Tealightsandd

Plenty more are arriving or staying. There's 9 million people in London. Only a small proportion are leaving.

The novelty of WFH full time permanently will wear off. For employees and for clients and customers. It's absolutely shit for young people just starting out or older career changers. Long term it's a lonely isolating and miserable way of life.

There is some truth to that regarding permanently WFH but I do thing flexible working patterns are here to stay. I know of several companies who have decided not to renew the lease on their current office location. Others and looking to move to a more distributed model, with smaller , and cheaper , regional locations.

Also a number of agencies have predicted a 20% reduction in commuter numbers because of this, with I imagine will have the Beanies in City Hall and TfL shitting themselves. Not to mention the board of Canary Wharf.

It’ll be interesting to see how it all pans out.