# Peckham House Prices and What My Dad Believes



## Favelado (Dec 25, 2012)

Hello,

In a conversation with my father yesterday he claimed that you can buy a flat in Peckham for 85000 pounds. When I told him that this was ludicrous he claimed that he knew someone who had just done it. I think he got his facts a bit wrong. He got angry with me when I told him this.

As this is a forum full of South Londoners who would know a thing or two about this, please can you tell me how credible you believe his assertion to be. So I can show him later.


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## Manter (Dec 25, 2012)

Ahhahahahahha

Bless him

Get him tested for dementia


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## Puddy_Tat (Dec 25, 2012)

may just be possible if it's any one or more of

a) very short remaining lease

b) both tiny and in need of serious repairs

c) is in the sort of tower block that mortgage lenders won't touch with a barge pole and there's a huge refurbishment scheme - which leaseholders will get stung for - hanging over it

d) on a shared ownership scheme and this represents X percent of the market value like this (£ 87,500)


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## gaijingirl (Dec 25, 2012)

not impossible... there was one going for similar in the Barrier Block a year or so ago (and yes I'm absolutely aware of the change in Brixton house prices during the last year or so).... usually it's for the reasons Puddy Tat mentions above (concrete block are a particular issue for example - blocks with "shared walkways" etc) ... one for sale here for not a whole lot more:

http://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/26523492?search_identifier=580194df9d070103936f33ca7e6188bf


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## Puddy_Tat (Dec 25, 2012)

sold prices in peckham - shows 2 under £ 85K in the last year.


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## Favelado (Dec 25, 2012)

Are there tower blocks that lenders won't touch? I thought everything in London was sought after to the point where you could get a mortgage for me.

Can someones explain the short-lease thing to me? I don't really understand leasehold. Daft I know.


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## gaijingirl (Dec 25, 2012)

Favelado said:


> Are there tower blocks that lenders won't touch? I thought everything in London was sought after to the point where you could get a mortgage for me.
> 
> Can someones explain the short-lease thing to me? I don't really understand leasehold. Daft I know.


 
not just tower blocks.. there are many many reasons why lenders won't lend on a property - especially at the moment. We had applications turned down (when they were easy to get) for XLA properties in concrete blocks and for having a shared walkway. I know someone who is having trouble atm because the (not XLA) flat is on a busy road, next to a church. We then went on to have a similar problem with somewhere with a short lease. Actually - that turned out to be more of a problem for the vendor than for us in the end.


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## Manter (Dec 25, 2012)

Favelado said:


> Are there tower blocks that lenders won't touch? I thought everything in London was sought after to the point where you could get a mortgage for me.
> 
> Can someones explain the short-lease thing to me? I don't really understand leasehold. Daft I know.


there are lots lenders won't touch- above a certain floor, for example can be nearly impossible to get a mortgage on.  

Leasehold:  someone owns a building (the freeholder) and they sell the right to live in it to a leaseholder for a certain number of years.  Usually starts at 99 or 999.  When you sell the house/flat, you sell what is left on the lease- so if you buy at 99 and live there for 20 years it is then a 79 year lease.  Sometimes that can get down to v small numbers- there was a place in South Ken for sale with an 8 year lease last year....


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## Puddy_Tat (Dec 25, 2012)

Favelado said:


> Are there tower blocks that lenders won't touch? I thought everything in London was sought after to the point where you could get a mortgage for me.
> 
> Can someones explain the short-lease thing to me? I don't really understand leasehold. Daft I know.


 
Mortgage lenders (or at least the mainstream ones) won't touch some properties, especially concrete construction. 

Leasehold - broadly speaking -

The freehold of the land and block of flats or whatever is owned by the freeholder.  A lease of X number of years is sold.  The freeholder still owns (and has responsibility for) the basic structure and grounds, the leaseholder (i.e. the person what has bought their flat) is broadly responsible for the inside of the flat.

At the end of X years, the flat reverts to the freeholder, however you have a right to get the lease extended, but it costs money.  The shorter there is left on the lease, the more money it costs, and the more complicated it is. 

(And the less likely you are to get a mortgage on it.)

(That's about as simply as I can put it.)


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## not-bono-ever (Dec 26, 2012)

innit - short lease can be cheap, but get to 80 years ( IIRC ), then you can apply for a lease extention after 2 years ownership and the holder cant deny you, and can go to to lease tribunral to decicde the cost - problem is, at less than 80 years, there is a marriage fee, whereby the leaseholder has to compensate the freeholder for 50% of the estimated increase in value if the property with an extended lease - this can be expensive, hence the realtive low prices for shortish leases


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## golightly (Dec 26, 2012)

i was told that it was virtually impossible to get a mortgage for a property in a building with more than six floors.  They tend to only be sold to cash buyers who are generally the buy to let crowd.


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## ViolentPanda (Dec 26, 2012)

Favelado said:


> Hello,
> 
> In a conversation with my father yesterday he claimed that you can buy a flat in Peckham for 85000 pounds. When I told him that this was ludicrous he claimed that he knew someone who had just done it. I think he got his facts a bit wrong. He got angry with me when I told him this.
> 
> As this is a forum full of South Londoners who would know a thing or two about this, please can you tell me how credible you believe his assertion to be. So I can show him later.


 
Unless it's ex-local authority and pretty delapidated, even a shonky studio will cost almost twice that in SE15, and the sort of decrepit ex-LA flat that you could buy for £85k in SE15 isn't one where anyone would want to live, given a choice.
In fact I can't thing of anywhere south of the river where you can buy that cheaply. The average price for a one-bed flat in greater London has been around £200,000+ for at least the last 5 years.

Tell your dad that I reckon he's either a bit mutton and didn't hear the "one hundred and" in front of the "eighty-five thousand", or he's a bit of a daft cunt who probably believes that the word "gullible" is no longer included in the Oxford English Dictionary.


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## ViolentPanda (Dec 26, 2012)

Manter said:


> Ahhahahahahha
> 
> Bless him
> 
> Get him tested for dementia


 
Then, if he tests positive, knee him in the nuts.

he won't remember it.


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## Manter (Dec 26, 2012)

ViolentPanda said:


> Then, if he tests positive, knee him in the nuts.
> 
> he won't remember it.


I don't really know why I like that bit feeling grumpy and vicious tonight


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## Greebo (Dec 26, 2012)

Manter said:


> I don't really know why I like that bit feeling grumpy and vicious tonight


Probably the enforced being nice "because it's Christmas" has been getting on your tits.


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## ViolentPanda (Dec 26, 2012)

Puddy_Tat said:


> sold prices in peckham - shows 2 under £ 85K in the last year.


 
Having looked at the addresses, I wouldn't touch at some of those, based on knowing people who lived on those developments, and the absolutely shitty quality of build and maintenance. Granville Square is shite, Peterchurch House is a tower block (so no mortgage), and the one on Rye Lane will be over a shop on a busy high street. I did that myself for 5 years and it's very wearing!
I strongly suspect that most of those places were bought by buy-to-letters who pretty much knew they could score a tenant on HB. If that's what favelado's dad is suggesting, fair enough if favelado doesn't mind exploiting the fuck out of someone, but if he's talking about somewhere to live, I wouldn't want a chimp to live in some of those places, let alone a human, and that's no reflection on the neighbours, but on the quality of the housing.


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## Manter (Dec 26, 2012)

ViolentPanda said:


> Having looked at the addresses, I wouldn't touch at some of those, based on knowing people who lived on those developments, and the absolutely shitty quality of build and maintenance. Granville Square is shite, Peterchurch House is a tower block (so no mortgage), and the one on Rye Lane will be over a shop on a busy high street. I did that myself for 5 years and it's very wearing!
> I strongly suspect that most of those places were bought by buy-to-letters who pretty much knew they could score a tenant on HB. If that's what favelado's dad is suggesting, fair enough if favelado doesn't mind exploiting the fuck out of someone, but if he's talking about somewhere to live, I wouldn't want a chimp to live in some of those places, let alone a human, and that's no reflection on the neighbours, but on the quality of the housing.


Busy high street = no mortgage at the moment. 'Established residential areas' at the moment...


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## Favelado (Dec 26, 2012)

We're not wanting to exploit anyone. I'm looking at a place to settle down and I can't convince him of how much a flat costs in some of the candidate cities. Madrid and London are two of these places and he seems genuinely incredulous that a decent flat in Madrid is 200 000 euros and a decent flat in London significantly more than that.

It's as obvious and well-documented as the fact that Paris is the capital of France to me but he claims to have compelling anecdotal evidence to the contrary. He is wrong.


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## Manter (Dec 26, 2012)

Favelado said:


> We're not wanting to exploit anyone. I'm looking at a place to settle down and I can't convince him of how much a flat costs in some of the candidate cities. Madrid and London are two of these places and he seems genuinely incredulous that a decent flat in Madrid is 200 000 euros and a decent flat in London significantly more than that.
> 
> It's as obvious and well-documented as the fact that Paris is the capital of France to me but he claims to have compelling anecdotal evidence to the contrary. He is wrong.


He is, indeed, wrong.


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## Puddy_Tat (Dec 27, 2012)

i think it depends if we're talking "a flat" or "a decent flat" here...

U75 isn't quite the place I'd expect to get into a property prices discussion, but since I'm trying to work out a way of moving back to SE London I'm keeping a fairly close watch on it all at the moment...

a few thoughts -

if it's going to be a flat, then chances are it will be leasehold - although 'share of freehold' does exist and can be better, although you're into the realms of committees and the like. 

Read up on how leasehold works before you go for it - this is probably a good place to start.  And when it does come to buying, don't try to save a few quid on the conveyancing as getting it done as cheaply as possible might cost you a bloody sight more in the long run.  If you can find out who the freeholder is, it's worth googling to see if anyone has mentioned them on the interwebs.  Some can be bloody useless and regard leaseholders as cash machines.

(The above assumes you're looking in England - housing law is subtly different in the 4 countries of the UK)

as far as London's concerned, it's pretty much impossible to say that X area / postcode is good / bad / indifferent - most of London is a patchwork and it's by no means uncommon to find a Georgian square a couple of streets away from a 'gritty' council estate.

As far as prices go, broadly speaking, the bits of London off the edge of the underground map are cheaper, but most of the suburban train services in London are at least 4 trains an hour and run until about midnight.  And also since they stop at less stations, a run in to central london from (say) a zone 5 station on south east trains is usually quicker than a journey in from a tube station a similar distance out.

If you're thinking investment*, you may want to consider transport developments that are already committed, e.g. Crossrail, which is going to improve transport links along its route, and chances are that will 'improve' (depending on your perspective) prices near those stations.

* - (pardon me while i await brickbats about 'gentrification' and pushing prices up and all that sort of thing.  Personally, I'm thinking that if I don't get back to SE London before Crossrail and the upgrade to Thameslink happens, I'm not going to be able to afford to.)


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## spanglechick (Dec 27, 2012)

there are still cheaper parts of london than peckham, but not many.  thornton heath (for example) buys you a lot for your money...  but it's on no one's list of 'cool places to live'.  However, you do what you have to do.

People complain a lot about the escalation in brixton prices - and they have rocketed, but when i was last renting as a singleton in 2004-05 it was a comparatively expensive place to live even then.  i lived a couple of zones further out in boring old selhurst because that was what i could afford, and i just had to cope with spending longer on the bus than my wealthier brixton mates.


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## Manter (Dec 27, 2012)

Puddy_Tat said:


> i think it depends if we're talking "a flat" or "a decent flat" here...
> 
> U75 isn't quite the place I'd expect to get into a property prices discussion, but since I'm trying to work out a way of moving back to SE London I'm keeping a fairly close watch on it all at the moment...
> 
> * - (pardon me while i await brickbats about 'gentrification' and pushing prices up and all that sort of thing.  Personally, I'm thinking that if I don't get back to SE London before Crossrail and the upgrade to Thameslink happens, I'm not going to be able to afford to.)



All perfectly sensible points 

I think we all think investment when we buy houses- or at the very least security. It's be odd to buy somewhere knowing it was going to lose value and you'd have to pay the bank to take it off your hands.


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## Manter (Dec 27, 2012)

spanglechick said:


> there are still cheaper parts of london than peckham, but not many.  thornton heath (for example) buys you a lot for your money...  but it's on no one's list of 'cool places to live'.  However, you do what you have to do.
> 
> People complain a lot about the escalation in brixton prices - and they have rocketed, but when i was last renting as a singleton in 2004-05 it was a comparatively expensive place to live even then.  i lived a couple of zones further out in boring old selhurst because that was what i could afford, and i just had to cope with spending longer on the bus than my wealthier brixton mates.


Agree- my first flat in London was in norbury, which was properly grim. But newly graduated with student debts, it's what I could afford. You do what you have to....


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## spanglechick (Dec 27, 2012)

Manter said:


> All perfectly sensible points
> 
> I think we all think investment when we buy houses- or at the very least security. It's be odd to buy somewhere knowing it was going to lose value and you'd have to pay the bank to take it off your hands.


well, yes - but if you buy a flat purely as somewhere secure to live then you're less likely to be selling in the shorter term.


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## Manter (Dec 27, 2012)

spanglechick said:


> well, yes - but if you buy a flat purely as somewhere secure to live then you're less likely to be selling in the shorter term.


That buy it and flip it thing always struck me as odd. Decorating in neutrals so nothing could ever offend a buyer. So you ended up undue which beige box you are in. Give me outré wall colours any day of the week


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## spanglechick (Dec 27, 2012)

a quick search shows £95k for a one bed flat in thornton heath. Not a wreck, 78yr lease.

http://m.rightmove.co.uk/quickPage....html5/homepage.html?goto=HOMEPAGE#description


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## spanglechick (Dec 27, 2012)

ooh, for £97k and a bit o redecoration you can have two bedrooms...

http://m.rightmove.co.uk/quickPage....&cc=html5/homepage.html?goto=HOMEPAGE#details


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## spanglechick (Dec 27, 2012)

serously, that's pretty bloody good for zone four, no?


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## Manter (Dec 27, 2012)

spanglechick said:


> serously, that's pretty bloody good for zone four, no?


It's just taking me to the homepage


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## spanglechick (Dec 27, 2012)

Manter said:


> It's just taking me to the homepage


oh, that's a shame - it's cos i'm on a tablet, probably.  you can search thornton heath and then put it in ascending price order if you care.  it takes seconds.


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## Manter (Dec 27, 2012)

spanglechick said:


> oh, that's a shame - it's cos i'm on a tablet, probably.  you can search thornton heath and then put it in ascending price order if you care.  it takes seconds.


You can get a lot for your money down there... Lots look like repossessions though....


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## Favelado (Dec 27, 2012)

Thank you for all your kind help people. I have got a good idea of prices and areas (I've spent 9 years in London despite being a Northerner who now lives abroad) but I have never bought a place and the processes are mysterious to me. I'd love to live in Brixton (if I did have to return to the UK) but that boat sailed a few years ago. 

x


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## not-bono-ever (Dec 27, 2012)

Just for comparisons:

http://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/17044358?search_identifier=0a9ebaf2a6f0ffda5b3e6124a682d0c0

brockley Se4 one bedder for 83K - not huge but a difficult sale cos of the 80 year lease and with an AST in place - this freeholder blates wont give an extention freely, so it will take years + will be subject to the marriage fee once a value has been decided.If youve got cash and patience, there are places around zone 2, but you will not get a mortage for this very easily


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## Chz (Dec 30, 2012)

spanglechick said:


> there are still cheaper parts of london than peckham, but not many. thornton heath (for example) buys you a lot for your money... but it's on no one's list of 'cool places to live'. However, you do what you have to do.


Fixed that for you.

As for Norbury, the northern bits nearer to Streatham and the station are nice enough. The bits near Thornton Heath though. Heck, anything near Thornton Heath... Dunno what it is about the place. It doesn't _look_ like a conventional London shithole, but it is anyhow.


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## quimcunx (Dec 30, 2012)

golightly said:


> i was told that it was virtually impossible to get a mortgage for a property in a building with more than six floors. They tend to only be sold to cash buyers who are generally the buy to let crowd.


 
I don't know if things have changed but when I tried to buy an ex local authority flat 15 years ago I couldn't find a mortgage because the building was more than 4 storeys. Had more of the properties been privately owned it might have been a little easier, maybe.


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## spanglechick (Dec 30, 2012)

Chz said:


> Fixed that for you.
> 
> As for Norbury, the northern bits nearer to Streatham and the station are nice enough. The bits near Thornton Heath though. Heck, anything near Thornton Heath... Dunno what it is about the place. It doesn't _look_ like a conventional London shithole, but it is anyhow.


Well yes, it's not 'vibrant' but it is zone four and its quite arrogant to dismiss the choices other people have to make just because you're lucky enough to be able to make different ones.


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## scifisam (Dec 30, 2012)

spanglechick said:


> serously, that's pretty bloody good for zone four, no?



Not if you can't get a mortgage because of the short lease. My gf and I have also looked at a couple of cheap places recently and they needed tons of structural work not apparent from the website - you'd have had to get a loan for another thirty grand at least and pay rent to live somewhere else for a few months. 

Tbh though, I still think it might be a goer if the bank will give her a mortgage on a place like that, but the odds are they won't.


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## Chz (Dec 30, 2012)

spanglechick said:


> Well yes, it's not 'vibrant' but it is zone four and its quite arrogant to dismiss the choices other people have to make just because you're lucky enough to be able to make different ones.


It's nothing of the sort. Rent wise, it's not especially cheaper than other places that are nicer. You may have to commute an extra 10 minutes for it, but it's worth it. 

Property wise, if that's all you can afford then fuck that - you can't afford it and rent for another while. That's what I had to do.


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