Property / The Going Rate: Where Hackney meets Haywards Heath
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Your support makes all the difference.HACKNEY was set to become one of London's most fashionable areas for the Nineties. Easy access, cheap homes and green spaces drew in City workers, artists and media workers to a cosmopolitan mix of locals. But things have not gone according to plan. Buyers and prices have fallen away without even the compensation of a post-election honeymoon. This month is even worse than July last year, says Brenda Hobday of Winkworth, and prices are down more than 8 per cent since January.
A two-bedroom garden flat in Thornby Road, originally on the market for pounds 78,000 in late 1990 (and agreed at pounds 74,500 until the sale collapsed), came up again at pounds 72,000 in February this year. It was recently sold for pounds 63,000. Another in Albion Drive fell almost pounds 10,000 to the same price over nine months.
But deals are quicker for less ambitious sellers. A one-bedroom flat in Amhurst Road sold in a month after dropping pounds 3,000 to pounds 52,000, and a three-bedroom terrace house in Powerscroft Road went in weeks for pounds 94,000 because it was 'well priced' at just under pounds 100,000. Yet the same sort of house in Glenarm Road priced at almost pounds 85,000 took 10 months and fell to pounds 76,000.
HAYWARDS HEATH follows the economic fortunes of central London, where most of its residents work. Colin Pratt of Fox & Sons says the town has had its best six months since the boom, but no one is betting that the rest of 1992 will be as good.
His deals are relatively quick because Fox takes a tough line with owners who refuse to cut prices when homes fail to sell: it takes them off the books. A two-bedroom flat in Turner's Mill Road took two months to sell at pounds 46,000 after dropping almost pounds 4,000, while a three-bedroom semi in Gower Road went in the same time for pounds 55,000 after falling a similar amount. A large, four-bedroom semi in Haywards Road dropped pounds 15,000 to sell for pounds 125,000, also in two months.
Some deals are even quicker. A three-bedroom detached house in West Common Drive sold in a fortnight at pounds 10,000 less than the pounds 135,000 asked, while an historic five-bedroom house in Lindfield High Street took only 24 hours to go for pounds 370,000 after the owner accepted a pounds 25,000 cut. But a four-bedroom detached house in Wivelsfield Green, outside the town, hung around from early 1990 at pounds 217,000 until it was taken on by Fox at just under pounds 200,000. It then went quickly for pounds 170,000.
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