Has Wanstead escaped house price gloom?

More falls in house prices are expected in the coming months, according to at least one survey published this month. But according to one group of close observers, Wanstead appears to have bucked the trend.

On the House Price Crash website, poster Worzel wrote earlier this month that he and his wife had been looking for a house in Wanstead in 2006/7, but had been outbid. At the time the houses on the street he was looking at (unfortunately he doesn’t specify which streets) were being priced at £300k. He wrote:

Recent sales on the roads we were looking at had sales in July of this year for £410-£425k. So about 35ish % up from “peak”… The area in question is fairly close to the olympic site, but still, seems like madness to me for what are small 2/3 bed terraces in Zone 4 with leytonstone on one side, stratford to the south and Redbridge on the other side. The crash is not yet with us!

Fellow poster Miko responded that though he thought Wanstead had a lot going for it, he had found the prices staggering – he cited a three-bedroom semi with small side access to the back garden at £575k, and a larger four-bedroom semi at £725k. He wrote:

If i had taken a bet on Wanstead in 2006/7 I would have bet that the prices would have fallen by now. How wrong I would have been… I was working with a woman a little while back, and we were reading a property paper, she had been divorced a few years and had been forced to sell the house in Wanstead she was just a little short from being able to buy her ex-husband’s share and taking over the mortgage herself. So they sold and she bought a flat.While reading the paper she spotted her old house up for sale and the price that it was on at nearly bought her to tears.

Other posters say there might be an “Olympic effect” bolstering prices, though there is no clear reason why this should be the case, and some speculate that prices will crash in London next year. The numbers of sales are no doubt down on the busy times of the property boom, but the return of Churchill’s to Wanstead High Street hardly seems to be a signal that houses here are not selling. It’s no doubt the case that prices in some roads are holding up while others aren’t doing as well, but any specific examples Wansteadium readers can cite will be welcome, either in comments below or anonymously if you prefer, via e-mail: wansteadium[at]gmail.com. Below is a table, waiting to filled…

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