is there any point in buying property in rubish areas?

GreatApe

There aren't many bad unsafe areas anymore. Not sure if its a culture change or maybe more tech like cameras keeping people behaved better but certainly the London of today is safer and nicer than the London of my yoof.

lessonlearned

Exactly thus....its not always about residential property, the same gains can be had on both on commercial developments. It's the land that counts.

Friends bought a ramshackle house on a huge plot on the "wrong" side of town.

Did up the house, Sold the land to developers who built a school and a block of flats. Friends became multi millionaires, sold the house and moved out to where the smart set live.

There's still money to be made......

lessonlearned

Exactly thus....its not always about residential property, the same gains can be had on both on commercial developments. It's the land that counts.

Friends bought a ramshackle house on a huge plot on the "wrong" side of town.

Did up the house, Sold the land to developers who built a school and a block of flats. Friends became multi millionaires, sold the house and moved out to where the smart set live.

There's still money to be made......

More recently my son bought a house in a less than fashionable neighbourhood. It's gone up by around 50 per cent in 3 years.

stator

With regeneration the % of social tenants usually goes down, way down. So an area can go from being poor to relatively wealthy.

padington

Where there's muck, there's luck. Just don't expect to sell in five years time for a profit. No one knows when the next crash will happen. However over the long term, you will most probably kick yourself if you don't buy.

Planet earth is an increasingly sought after commodity.

AFF8879

economic wrote: »

Just want to start a new debate.

does it make financial sense to buy a property in a rubbish working class or poor area in london? given prices have risen so fast lot of these areas have outperformed as they started from a relatively very low level. does it now make sense to buy in these areas as an investment?

i feel no as barring any kind of massive regenration programme, poor working class areas will remain poor and so over the long term will underperform. its always better to buy in a safe area in demand.

what do you think?

Those "massive regeneration schemes" are actually extremely common over the past 20 years. Take the neighbourhood that started it all, Shoreditch....a place where you couldn't pay people to live, where now 1 bed flats are selling for a minimum of £600k.

Then think of Peckham, Brixton, Stratford, Bow, even now Deptford and Lewisham - all have become trendy property hotspots.

The problem now I guess is that there aren't really anywhere left in London that is fundamentally "dodgy" - I.e. Where there is scope for extremely large capital gains, certainly not as much as we have already seen. Except maybe Barking and Dagenham.....

Barking has always confused me, a zone 4 station with loads of tube lines / rail / bus etc, 20 mins into the city / Canary Wharf and yet property is so dirt cheap, even cheaper than area further out into Essex....it's like, extortionate prices through Essex which suddenly concave when you reach Barking before shooting up again

westernpromise

Aren't Harlesden and Willesden still pretty grotty?

economic

and kilburn

Out,_Vile_Jelly

Gentrification has been creeping down the Northern Line from Clapham to Balham and now Tooting (!), but if it makes it to Morden I'll buy everyone on this board a skinny mochachino and artisan cupcake.

economic

theres no point buying a home to live in a dodgy area in the hope it will gentrify (which may not happen quickly if at all). for an investment its a different story but for a home always buy in an area you are happy with NOW rather then what it could be in future.