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New Festival Quarter / in London's Poplar Area


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From the Frugal Living thread... A Walkable Community - for People with Money to Spend?

 

Did you know that GBP 2 Billion pounds will be spent on stations for Cross Rall? And one of the really big ones will be right next to Poplar station in the docklands.

 

03jul17crossrail.jpg

 

I learned from Fred Harrison that a good way to make money in property, as to invest near near new infrastructure spending.

 

Canary Wharf's Crossrail station unveiled

 

Canada Square Mall shoppers got a glimpse of the Foster and Partners design as part of a public exhibition.

 

The scheme will feature an open-air park, 100,000sq ft of retail, restaurants, cafes and bars.

The timber lattice roof will also feature translucent facades to attract natural light, and the station will also glow in the dark while operational.

. . .

Plans for the station itself will not be revealed until the Crossrail Bill receives royal assent as expected this summer. But the West India Dock-based station is set to be among the first to open on the £16 billion London rail line when trains start rolling in 2017.

 

/see: http://www.wharf.co.uk/2008/07/canary-wharfs-crossrail-statio.html

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  • 4 weeks later...

Here is the video

 

 

Looks like a bit of a dump. How much are places? Anything 'sustainable' about the area (excluding crime)? Think I'd rather stay in Kowloon. At least you can go out at night without fear. Church is a monstrosity, too. But what do I know?

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Looks like a bit of a dump. How much are places? Anything 'sustainable' about the area (excluding crime)? Think I'd rather stay in Kowloon. At least you can go out at night without fear. Church is a monstrosity, too. But what do I know?

"Looks like a bit of a dump. How much are such places?"

(It isn't Kensington, of course. You can buy something new in Kensington for maybe GBP1,000-1,500 psf. To get a new property like this at under GBP400-500 psf, you have to go far away from London, or into a "gentrifying area", like Poplar's Lansbury Estate, which was for a long time a working class area. The other obvious areas at similar distance to Canary have already been developed, and are more expensive and more crowded.)

 

"Anything 'sustainable' about the area (excluding crime)?"

(Sure - the jobs! As you know, there is nothing within London that can really be considered "sustainable" from a food-growing point of view. You are unlikely to find that within one of the top cities of the world. You will have to go to some bombed out third world city like Havana, or maybe the Detroit of the future to find a place where a city grows a substantial amount of its own food. What you look for is jobs to sustain your investment. Nearby jobs will mean that people can afford to pay the rent. From NFQ, you can walk in 10-12 minutes to Canary Wharf where there are many high-paying jobs in law, finance, accountancy, etc. We can expect a decline in the earnings in that sector. Paradoxically, that might increase demand for good quality properties in the immediate area, as people with falling incomes choose to save money by living in something nice-but-cheap which is close to work and so has less commuting time and expense. But whether or not it will play out that way, time will tell.)

 

"Crime?"

(Again, the area is obviously not as safe as Kensington, or other "safer" and much-more-expensive neighborhoods. But neither is it the first new development in the area - Look around (!) there are many. But this one is large enough to begin to change the character of the neighborhood - which was the main reason that I was interested. I think this might represent the "inflection point" wherein the gentrification really starts to take hold and change the neighborhood. The fact that it is next to a park (Bartley Park), where the developers will spend GBP 1 million on landscaping and other up grading expenses will also help. Reading these future changes in not a science, it is more of an art. I have years of experience in making these assessments, and if I can walk around on the ground, I usually get it right. But I did not do the walk in this case, and of course it will take months and years to see if the gentrification really happens."

 

NFQfoto3.jpg

 

"The Church is a monstrosity."

(Beauty, or the lack of it may be in the eye of the beholder. The Church of St. Mary and St Joseph is a Grade II listed church, prized as an example of the work of architect Adrian Gilbert Scott. Like you, I would prefer a church by Thomas Hawksmore. But this one is meant to be very nice from the inside, and would look far better if/when it is cleaned up, and the landscaping is improved. Fortunately, the flat I choose was a top floor flat, looking across the top of the church, so it would be a small but important part of the view, rather than completely dominating it.)

 

I do appreciate the questions, but am disappointed that you seem to have not bothered to at least skim the many hours of research that has already been put into developing this thread. But thanks for the questions whether you looked at the prior posts or not. It does help to clarify the thought process.

 

Part of the reason I did all this work, and then left it posted on GEI, was to show the sort of work that I think a person should do on a large property investment before they invest 100,000's of Pounds. As someone once said, many people will invest 5 years or 10 years worth of income in a property without doing as much work as they do in deciding what stereo system to buy.

 

I think it would be great if others would do research like this on a property investment, and then post the results oin GEI/GPC. What a wonderful resource this website would become !

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  • 4 months later...

"ITS ABOUT RISING RENTS NOW... not rising prices", says Bloomberg

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8mSvsmj5XM

 

But near the end that old phrase comes back:

You want property "in your pension pot". Really ?

What if those rents don't rise afterall, and there's a post-Olympics slump?

 

Will we see a post-olympics crash in london property? maybe

 

i am in london now, and had an interesting chat with an estate agent yesterday. he was surprisingly honest, and not overly bullish. in fact, he was in some ways more bearish than the comments here. his office is in the poplar area, near canary wharf

 

some points:

 

+ the sales market has changed since 1-2 years ago, and it is much more difficult to find buyers.

 

+ the "over gbp.250,000" is healthier than the "under gbp.250,000" market - where buyers really struggle to find the required deposits. because of this weakness in prices, you can get higher yields in the lower tier of the market, where yields close to 7% are achievable. in the higher priced sector he has seen buyers "keen to push their money" into the uk property market, bacause they can a higher yield thasn in the banks, and "bricks and mortar" are safer than lending depositing money with wobbly banks.

 

+ the rental market remains firm, but it is partly related to olympic hype, and he expects there to be a downwards shift in rents after aug-sept next year

 

+ olympic hype works in an interesting way. landlords are reluctant to sign one year leases unless the price is high enough - at full market, or with a uplift. for existing leases, they prefer to leave the rent on a month to month basis at renewal time, so they will be free to find new tenants in march (or whenever the new olympic related tenants would appear.) they would then hope to sign a 3-6 months lease at a much higher price, and push out the existing tenant,or find a new 12 months tenant that will be desperate enough to pay more.

 

+ meantime existing tenants are willing to pay a bit more for 12 months leases to get them through the olympic period. when asked if this was pure hype, or there was real new demand coming, he did say that he had rented flats to people who were working on olympics-related projects, mostly construction related. he expects media people, camera men and such to start showing up in march-june, and they would rent flats through august or september. after that, all the extra demand will disappear, shifting rents downwards. And normal tenants will alo know that the olympics are over, so they will be looking for lower rents too

 

many countries see a drop in their economies after the olympics, so london and the uk are expected to be no different

 

I will be back in London in about two weeks, and hope to get an update

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  • 3 months later...

NOW FOR SALE - Penthouse: Guide Price

 

£795,950

 

newfcq.jpg

 

Key features:

•Contemporary Kitchen units with square edge worktops and matching upstand

•Roca white sanitaryware

•Video door entry system with proximity access

•Security chain and spyhole to apartment entry doors with multi-point locking

•Carpet to all bedrooms

•Passenger lift to communal areas

•10 year NHBC warranty

 

/see: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/new-homes-for-sale/property-32217145.html

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