Living On The Edge

[pig]

So I had a bit of a thought experiment while bored on New Years Day listening to blanket coverage of the housing market as more or less being "London Good, Everywhere Else bad".

This seemed to make the 'edge' of London an interesting place. Conventionally this is defined this as inside the M25, but for many 'London' is basically its tube network. Also clearly the tube network must have an objective economic effect on the 'actual' M25 edge.

The question naturally evolved: how does housing cost compare at the edges of the tube network ? Of course the tube 'edge' includes stations from Zone 1 all the way to Zone 9 and indeed some 'end' stations are in the middle of other lines (I completely omitted the circle line) - but this made it all the more interesting.

So for fun I created a summary. Who knows it may succinctly indicate much more than the sliver of London it covers, anyway see what you think.

The information is all based on Zoopla, which I understand is based on average prices for 2 bedroom properties. From this I derived a 'cost/bed' to include the cost of rent + monthly travel card to the centre. Again very crude, but necessary for speed and simplicity. Note it is just purely travel and rent - for the moment I haven't included anything else eg council tax.

I've included below a couple of 'sort's for convenience - apologies for mistakes but hey it was New Years Day...

Sort By Travel + Rental Cost:

Sort By property price change:

[yodigo]

So I had a bit of a thought experiment while bored on New Years Day listening to blanket coverage of the housing market as more or less being "London Good, Everywhere Else bad".

This seemed to make the 'edge' of London an interesting place. Conventionally this is defined this as inside the M25, but for many 'London' is basically its tube network. Also clearly the tube network must have an objective economic effect on the 'actual' M25 edge.

Other definitions of "London" I've seen used. Any more?

The City of London

Sound of Bow Bells

Tube Zone 1

North Circular

London post codes

Greater London Boundary

[24gray24]

The rich can't be expected to do their own cleaning, or wash dishes in restaurants and a million other jobs they expect done for them at minimum wage.

Hence they have to pay enough to get the staff, or it's game over. Alternatively, they have to provide cheap accommodation somewhere in the zone.

Up to now, there has always been some fetid slum or other available with cheap rent. It needs cheap labour to function.

[RichB]

Just as an aside, the presentation would do better if the formatting were consistent with/without £ signs and drop the pennies....

Interesting stuff though, pretty sure they aren't comparing like for like in terms of property size in Richmond and Wimbledon though!

[wherebee]

Thanks for the analysis; the problem is that the datasets will ignore all the off-market rentals that the very bottom layer of workers will be using - sheds, someone's room on the side, sublet council flat etc etc. Wimbledon, for example, is expensive in the legitimate market but has a nice flourishing hidden layer of dodgy rentals (from experience!)

[The Ayatollah Buggeri]

Wimbledon, for example, is expensive in the legitimate market but has a nice flourishing hidden layer of dodgy rentals (from experience!)

And mine, too.

A relative of mine lives in South Park Road, Wimbledon (3-4 minutes' walk from the station), and has had no end of trouble from the fly-by-night semi-professional BTLer who owns the property next door. He orignally converted one large house into two smaller ones without planning permission (which my relative's surveyor found out about during negotiations to buy the place in 2000), has run the other half as an unofficial HMO, renting to a succession of (mainly South African) short-term immigrants for cash in hand, connecting the place to water and electricity supplies illegally ... you name it.

[pig]

Other definitions of "London" I've seen used. Any more?

The City of London

Sound of Bow Bells

Tube Zone 1

North Circular

London post codes

Greater London Boundary

...PR window for the UK housing market/ the place where prices will only ever go up ?

[Austin Allegro]

Other definitions of "London" I've seen used. Any more?

The City of London

Sound of Bow Bells

Tube Zone 1

North Circular

London post codes

Greater London Boundary

M25?

North Circular isn't really a boundary, although combined with the South Circular it was designated as the outer defensive boundary of London during WW2.

Bow Bells is only to establish if you're a true cockney. Most of them (or rather their descendants) live a bit further east, in places like Clacton or Marbella nowadays.

I'd say the only 'true' workable definition is the 'county' of London, eg the London borough boundaries, but in reality, London prices are for everywhere within commuting distance of London. I found that if rents are a bit cheaper far out of London, the amount less is nearly always the cost of a season ticket.

The only way round it is to:

• Work from home

• Work partly from home, so a full daily commute is not needed

• Live somewhere a long walk from a station. Rents will be cheaper but you can cycle to the station.

[pig]

Just as an aside, the presentation would do better if the formatting were consistent with/without £ signs and drop the pennies....

Interesting stuff though, pretty sure they aren't comparing like for like in terms of property size in Richmond and Wimbledon though!

No problem, will do - sure I will be fiddling and prodding the analyse over the next week or so. May add things like council tax...

re: Richmond and Wimbledon, it is interesting to note that in prime london price/sq ft is critical for just this reason. Irrespective of sizes I think I'd take Richmond over Wimbledon on this evidence though personally I'm surprised as I thought Richmond would be more expensive. I guess Wimbledon is better 'known', better connected to London, and may have some great property skewing the prices.

Thanks for the analysis; the problem is that the datasets will ignore all the off-market rentals that the very bottom layer of workers will be using - sheds, someone's room on the side, sublet council flat etc etc. Wimbledon, for example, is expensive in the legitimate market but has a nice flourishing hidden layer of dodgy rentals (from experience!)

And mine, too.

A relative of mine lives in South Park Road, Wimbledon (3-4 minutes' walk from the station), and has had no end of trouble from the fly-by-night semi-professional BTLer who owns the property next door. He orignally converted one large house into two smaller ones without planning permission (which my relative's surveyor found out about during negotiations to buy the place in 2000), has run the other half as an unofficial HMO, renting to a succession of (mainly South African) short-term immigrants for cash in hand, connecting the place to water and electricity supplies illegally ... you name it.

The analysis is meant to be 'hysterically' succinct - the minimum information about the tiniest sliver of the housing market just inside the point where London meets the rest of the UK - so a compare and contrast certainly needs to be done with care and/or experience of London. But a lot of the areas I am familiar with have their nice and their dodgy bits - Brixton scares the b'jesus out of ordinary god fearin' folk for example irrespective of the fact it is quite liveable in parts and with respect to Wimbledon 'Village', I knew a policeman who worked in Wimbledon who could tell a few stories.... So we can take micro markets around each tube stop as read and not necessarily a signficant factor.

Its still pretty meaningful food for thought though. Watford and Morden both seem to be similar value. One may be better value to rent, the other to buy - nevertheless they are quite close. Of course one is 'out' of London, having said that for many - well in specifically those new to London - South London is the dark side of the Moon !

Watford does seem to be enjoying a bit of inflation - 5% to Mordens 3%. If I was choosing between the two I guess I'd go for Morden as a 20/30 something arriving in London, Watford if I'd had enough of/intimidated by London and had connections up north...

It has to be said quite a large proportion of the prices seem to be falling against inflation - does this mean house price falls are starting to nibble at the edges of London ?

[Austin Allegro]

No problem, will do - sure I will be fiddling and prodding the analyse over the next week or so. May add things like council tax...

re: Richmond and Wimbledon, it is interesting to note that in prime london price/sq ft is critical for just this reason. Irrespective of sizes I think I'd take Richmond over Wimbledon on this evidence though personally I'm surprised as I thought Richmond would be more expensive. I guess Wimbledon is better 'known', better connected to London, and may have some great property skewing the prices.

The analysis is meant to be 'hysterically' succinct - the minimum information about the tiniest sliver of the housing market just inside the point where London meets the rest of the UK - so a compare and contrast certainly needs to be done with care and/or experience of London. But a lot of the areas I am familiar with have their nice and their dodgy bits - Brixton scares the b'jesus out of ordinary god fearin' folk for example irrespective of the fact it is quite liveable in parts and with respect to Wimbledon 'Village', I knew a policeman who worked in Wimbledon who could tell a few stories.... So we can take micro markets around each tube stop as read and not necessarily a signficant factor.

Its still pretty meaningful food for thought though. Watford and Morden both seem to be similar value. One may be better value to rent, the other to buy - nevertheless they are quite close. Of course one is 'out' of London, having said that for many - well in specifically those new to London - South London is the dark side of the Moon !

Watford does seem to be enjoying a bit of inflation - 5% to Mordens 3%. If I was choosing between the two I guess I'd go for Morden as a 20/30 something arriving in London, Watford if I'd had enough of/intimidated by London and had connections up north...

It has to be said quite a large proportion of the prices seem to be falling against inflation - does this mean house price falls are starting to nibble at the edges of London ?

Just wanted to say thanks for all the work on this - very interesting. The issue however is confused by the fact that in the London area, being 'near the tube' is seen as necessary, and yet the outer tube stations often take a lot longer to get to than mainline stations. For example central London to Watford Junction mainline is only about 18 mins but Watford Metropolitan (tube) is about an hour. It would be interesting to see prices of housing in areas based on the average peak hour journey time to central London by train of any kind.

Edit - this is why we are getting nonsense like Northampton being pushed by EAs as 'Londonshire' etc

Edited January 3, 2013 by Austin Allegro

[winkie]

Living near a mainline station 5 to 7 miles away from kings cross/Finsbuy park say is a better bet....no stops and starts like on the tube takes 15 to 20 mins journey on the fast morning train...but doubt you will get a seat, sometimes you won't even get on the train however hard you push to get on it.....they wouldn't transport cattle like that, why people?

[RichB]

Just wanted to say thanks for all the work on this - very interesting. The issue however is confused by the fact that in the London area, being 'near the tube' is seen as necessary, and yet the outer tube stations often take a lot longer to get to than mainline stations. For example central London to Watford Junction mainline is only about 18 mins but Watford Metropolitan (tube) is about an hour. It would be interesting to see prices of housing in areas based on the average peak hour journey time to central London by train of any kind.

Edit - this is why we are getting nonsense like Northampton being pushed by EAs as 'Londonshire' etc

Heh - I remember the adverts on the tube for Corby...

I think the site you are looking for is http://www.commutefrom.com/

[pig]

Just wanted to say thanks for all the work on this - very interesting. The issue however is confused by the fact that in the London area, being 'near the tube' is seen as necessary, and yet the outer tube stations often take a lot longer to get to than mainline stations. For example central London to Watford Junction mainline is only about 18 mins but Watford Metropolitan (tube) is about an hour. It would be interesting to see prices of housing in areas based on the average peak hour journey time to central London by train of any kind.

Edit - this is why we are getting nonsense like Northampton being pushed by EAs as 'Londonshire' etc

Totally agree. But this in particular is a very interesting example because 'Watford' s 'Living+Travel' metric I have down as £765 whereas Watford Junction is down as £836. Why ? Because the former is in zone 7 while the latter zone 9 ! (bear in mind my slightly unreasonable assumption that everybody commutes to Z1)

If you look at the tube map you have to conclude that this is very deliberate: yes Watford Junction is slightly further out, but in truth it looks like the zones have been distorted to take advantage of the fact that Watford Junction's access via rail is quicker - so they make you pay for it. I've not looked, but would be interesting to find other examples of this .

This points to the obvious but often confusing hypothesis - Londons sphere (and therefore 'costs') is measured/affected by 'time to' (including convenience) as much as distance. Visually thats what the tube map is meant to be all about - topological rather than topographical. Watford is deliberately contradictory - yes you may pay less for housing because its further out, but you compensate by increasing your 'time' proximity to London by going via Watford Junction.

[TrevorS]

key London boundary definition for HPC/I is the Metropolitan Green Belt. This has rigidly restricted London limit for over 50 years. It is more than 3x the size of London itself at 1.27 million acres. It is the lynchpin of the whole edifice.

Eric Pickles and Boris both vowed to preserve it. It is the core of the Tory core and will be defended to the last. The poor will be squashed tighter (I see communal bins overflowing) or squeezed out. The middle will live where the poor once did.

Wimbledon has the Village - house up there recently at £26m (1994 - £4m), several on RM at £4m+. Also in the SW London/Waterloo corridor which has seen prices go crazy as natives pushed out from central flee along known pathway back to central (cf similar craziness in Kingston and drab suburbs like Surbiton).

Morden has a huge LHA estate notorious for ASB, even so middle-classes are putting a brave face on it and squeezing in next to the dumped fridges etc.

Hammersmith is not an outer London terminus and is getting prime spillover from Kensington.

Interesting the Stratford effect over once the circus left town and back to reality.

No falls are nibbling at the edge of London. Still too much demand for too little supply and will not change while "two Englands" continues to grow and the Green Belt Defenders rule the roosts (as they have for centuries).

[The Ayatollah Buggeri]

Wimbledon has the Village...

Wimbledon is effectively four separate areas

1 - The village - as near as surburban London will ever get to a Beverly Hills.

2 - The town centre (area bordered by Worple Road/Hartfield Road/end of Queen's Road/top of the Broadway) - pricey, but not as much as the village, and with lots of BTLs and HMOs.

3 - The area around Kingston Road, the council estate behind South Wimbledon Station and the housing developments bordering the roads heading to Morden and north towards Tooting - cheap (by London standards) and not where you would want to be after dark.

4 - Merton Park and the housing alongside Kingston Road in the direction of Wimbledon Chase, Lower Morden and the A3 - a weird combination of stupidly pricey (e.g. the conservation area around the John Innes park) and relatively reasonable (Grand Drive).

[sf-02]

No falls are nibbling at the edge of London. Still too much demand for too little supply and will not change while "two Englands" continues to grow and the Green Belt Defenders rule the roosts (as they have for centuries).

Isn't most of outer London (with the possible exception of the SW) dropping or stagnant? Much of South and East London are below 2007 levels. Some are at 2004 levels. The LR figures show the massive rises concentrated in select 'prime' (foreign bought) boroughs. Mostly zone 1-2 only.

That could be down to not being on a tube map. It is weird the idea outsiders have about the map. There's just as many mainline stations in the south, with frequencies in the peaks almost at the same level as much of the tube (not the core with every 3 minutes but 5-10 minutes) but with a lot more seats and comfort than poky tubes.

[monkeyman1974]

Other definitions of "London" I've seen used. Any more?

The City of London

Sound of Bow Bells

Tube Zone 1

North Circular

London post codes

Greater London Boundary

Oyster Card zone (which includes overground outside tube network)

[chicker]

Isn't most of outer London (with the possible exception of the SW) dropping or stagnant? Much of South and East London are below 2007 levels. Some are at 2004 levels. The LR figures show the massive rises concentrated in select 'prime' (foreign bought) boroughs. Mostly zone 1-2 only.

That could be down to not being on a tube map. It is weird the idea outsiders have about the map. There's just as many mainline stations in the south, with frequencies in the peaks almost at the same level as much of the tube (not the core with every 3 minutes but 5-10 minutes) but with a lot more seats and comfort than poky tubes.

I find that the weekend rail service (which goes through london but is not part of london overground) is pretty useless as trains are infrequent . Tube is more reliable and takes the approx the same time from zone 4. Also if you want to leave central london at off peak time the service out is poor. if you work a standard 9 -5 Monday to Friday the service is good and more comfortable than tube but I don't.

Prices not going down round my way N London. Btw 2 stops from end of line !

[Greg Bowman]

Wimbledon is effectively four separate areas

1 - The village - as near as surburban London will ever get to a Beverly Hills.

.

Never been to Hampstead and Bishops Avenue then ? South Londoners I love the way you talk up your funny little collection of disparate high streets.

Next thing you will tell us is the South Circular isn't a collection of streets with road signs that appears to go through people's back gardens, it's a genuine orbital road

Edited January 3, 2013 by Greg Bowman

[Lion]

Prices not going down round my way N London. Btw 2 stops from end of line !

Southgate?

[sf-02]

I find that the weekend rail service (which goes through london but is not part of london overground) is pretty useless as trains are infrequent . Tube is more reliable and takes the approx the same time from zone 4. Also if you want to leave central london at off peak time the service out is poor. if you work a standard 9 -5 Monday to Friday the service is good and more comfortable than tube but I don't.

Prices not going down round my way N London. Btw 2 stops from end of line !

Not too sure about trains in north London (is that London midland?) but I find that Saturday is now identical to a weekday service. Has been for around the past 5 years for quite a few operators elsewhere from what I've seen (South West, Southern, South Eastern and those serving the East). Sunday has aaround half the number (about 4-6 per hour) and there's the constant engineering works like the tube. Weekday and Sat off peak frequency is now the same generally as peak but shorter trains.

There are gaps around stations that get skipped on late evenings which are worse than tube frequencies and some anomalies. Hopefully TfL take control of London rail and extend frequencies.

North London prices probably are holding up more. Generally more desirable and more things to do, and the transport image remains even hough trains have changed a fair bit in many areas the past 10 years.

[DTMark]

Being somewhere on the tube network doesn't necessarily get you into town any qucker.

Lived in Harlow, Essex and worked in Marylebone for years.

The tube from Epping (5 mile drive down a back road) took about an hour to get into London, you'd think the Central Line would hammer along the bit from Epping to Woodford, but it crawls. On the way back home any minor delay meant all the trains turned at Loughton or Debden and it could take you an extra half hour or more to get those last few miles.

On top of that the line was so horrendously unreliable that although it didn't happen that often I'd say at least three or four times a year I'd have to get a train (mainline) and taxi, or a taxi from Leytonstone, and once it shut down altogether for a week or two when the bottom of the trains started falling off.

I then adapted by driving to Walthamstow and getting the Victoria Line from there. About 20 mins to Walthamstow down the M11 and past Redbridge, then about 25 minutes to Oxford Circus. That line does fly along. Was actually the fastest route - whoever said "you can't beat the tube" was completely wrong.

In my later years I just paid the extra (double, actually) and got the mainline train from Harlow.

Then I got sick of it and got a job working from home paying more and never looked back.

If I had to do it again and wanted to live somewhere with quick access in that neck of the woods, I'd probably go for somewhere like Welwyn Garden City, not Epping.

[chicker]

Not too sure about trains in north London (is that London midland?) but I find that Saturday is now identical to a weekday service. Has been for around the past 5 years for quite a few operators elsewhere from what I've seen (South West, Southern, South Eastern and those serving the East). Sunday has aaround half the number (about 4-6 per hour) and there's the constant engineering works like the tube. Weekday and Sat off peak frequency is now the same generally as peak but shorter trains.

There are gaps around stations that get skipped on late evenings which are worse than tube frequencies and some anomalies. Hopefully TfL take control of London rail and extend frequencies.

North London prices probably are holding up more. Generally more desirable and more things to do, and the transport image remains even hough trains have changed a fair bit in many areas the past 10 years.

Lines I'm talking about are Great Anglia and First Capital Connect. Terminating at Moorgate (weekends kings cross) and Liverpool St.

[winkie]

Southgate?

Blast from the past.....remember when ASDA opened there in the days it was a good old British firm....had some brilliant youth clubs around there once, I believe they no longer exist....all very boringly suburban.

The thing with London the tube and rail all travel in one direction into the centre, try travelling anywhere fast east to west or west to east, you have to travel into town to travel out again.....then look at the North Circular and see the congestion every day, nose to tail torture with smog.

Edited January 4, 2013 by winkie

[Greg Bowman]

Blast from the past.....remember when ASDA opened there in the days it was a good old British firm....had some brilliant youth clubs around there once, I believe they no longer exist....all very boringly suburban.

The thing with London the tube and rail all travel in one direction into the centre, try travelling anywhere fast east to west or west to east, you have to travel into town to travel out again.....then look at the North Circular and see the congestion every day, nose to tail torture with smog.

Just an extension of 'Greek' Lanes now Southgate but always thought it a bit boring compared to MH. You are spot on about radial travel why the hell didn't they put one in with the M25?

In terms of quick and cheap (realtively) travel Goffs Oak is working for me. Cuffley to Moorgate £8 off peak and trains very reliable with some fast ones slowest is about 40 mins.

Also loads of options if playing up. Cheshunt, Potters Bar,Cockfosters tube. Thiis ring right on the edge of London seems to be very popular now but house prices reflect it.