Focus on Hammersmith: The town where prices have grown by half

These venues have been well served over the years by the great transport links, which run across four lines, the Piccadilly, District, Circle and Hammersmith & City line. A lack of new housing coupled with the fact many residents who grew up in surrounding boroughs are now being priced out of them means house prices in the area have sky-rocketed in recent years due to overwhelming demand. Alex Greaves, associate director of residential development at CBRE, thinks this state of affairs is sure to continue. “The lack of housing supply is much more acute in areas such as Hammersmith, due to the dominance of period properties and conservation zones that restrict potential development. There is simply a lack of developable land and this will remain the case over the long term. As a result, new schemes tend to sell extremely quickly.” 

 

 

Luckily, there are quite a few in the pipeline. In addition to Mount Anvil and Fabrica’s Queen’s Wharf project, Berkeley Group’s St George is developing Sovereign Court and nearby Fulham Reach, while Linden Homes is currently building Parkside Place overlooking Ravenscourt Park. According to sales agent Savills, prices for prime properties in the area have grown by over 50 per cent since 2009 and they expect prices to increase by at least 20 per cent again in the next few years. King Street shopping district is also undergoing a revamp with office space worth almost as much as residential space in parts of Hammersmith. It has one of the lowest office vacancy rates in London at around 2 per cent and has managed to attract some impressive names over the years including L’Oreal, Disney, AOL UK and architects Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners. 

 

The relatively reasonable property prices have drawn in buyers from Kensington, Notting Hill and even France looking for spacious family homes near elite schools such as St Paul’s, Godolphin and Latymer. 

 

 

“For properties priced over £2m, one in four buyers are now international,” says Christopher Bramwell, head of Savills west London, “largely western Europe as it’s particularly popular with the French who come for the French primary school in Brook Green.” 

 

Ooh la la, indeed.

 

 

Time to Canary Wharf	35 mins
Time to Liverpool Street	35 mins
Nearest station	Hammersmith

 

 

1 The Lyric Theatre, built in 1895, prides itself on staging original “ground-breaking” productions. It’s currently showing “A Stab in the Dark”, which is billed as a “classic British farce set in Afghanistan.” Visit lyric.co.uk.

 

2 It has a slew of listed pubs with historical architecture. The Dove is probably the most famous, as it boasts the smallest bar in the world, frequented by writers such as  Ernest Hemingway and Graham Greene.

 

3 Ravenscourt Park is a fantastic green space for local residents to enjoy. It has tennis courts, a basketball court, a bowling lawn, a paddling pool and playgrounds. Furnivall Gardens is also a popular riverside park.

 

4 Bottom fans will  appreciate the memorial bench dedicated to Rik Mayall fitted on the traffic island outside Hammersmith Broadway. It was installed following a successful social media campaign last November.

 

5 It’s a major transport hub for west London. With two Tube stations covering four lines and a bus station at Hammersmith Broadway, there’s plenty of travel options. It’s also linked to south London via Hammersmith Bridge.

 

 

DIGBY MANSIONS £1.2M

ASHLAR COURT £1.395M

HAMMERSMITH GROVE £3.75M