Houses in the North of England can cost a third of the price of the South. How long it will take people to wake up to this imbalance in prices and quality of countryside remains to be seen. (Go North young family?).
Once run down areas can become very expensive – after the students, artists and sundry bohemians have made them trendy while they were cheap.
Witness Notting Hill in London which was basically a slum area in the sixties, Whitechapel in London which thanks to being colonised by artists has become very expensive.
So Watch for Where the Students and Artists are Living
If the area has reasonable artchitecture, a park, a couple of trendy organic style cafes, then grab a cheap property fast.
It’s the work of a moment to get a journalist round to do a glossy piece on how the area is up and coming… and double your money inside a couple of years. OK that’s an exaggeration but you get the idea…
It seems however that some places will never break free from their original image. For example Hackney in London still struggles to be totally cool despite over 25 years of determined colonising by young professionals – following the same principles as above.
Admittedly there certainly are a few hip enclaves. But no one who can afford otherwise says “dahlink let’s move our love nest to Hackney”.
It’s a big area to generalise about but its problem is, despite a beautiful Victoria Park and some lovely Victorian streets it just doesn’t have the overall look and feel of an attractive place to live.
Just Outside of a Fashionable Area…
A related point is to note the differences in price of being just in or just out of a fashionable area.
During a recession you can buy just outside cheaply ie right on the borders. But if you bought such a property at the height of a boom, when it was at its top price, you may lose out because of the “shrinkage effect”. (Read more in Don’t overpay for being almost trendy)
And check out some tricks used by the professionals to get the most money out of you for the minimum spend in Home selling tricks