The FT on Lewisham: The new Hackney

The FT has more research from estate agents Savills, who claim that London's 'mid-tier boroughs', including Lewisham, Ealing, Barnet and Tower Hamlets - where housing stock and transport links are good - will see the biggest house price rises in the capital over the next five years.

The paper's profile of Lewisham, says we can look forward to welcoming Hackney's sloppy seconds, as the borough becomes the "on-trend place to buy south of the river". It claims:

Lewisham is the natural heir to Hackney. Both boroughs were once home to tatty, forgotten housing stock, reputations for crime and substandard transport systems. But prices in Hackney have soared in the past five years, jumping 12 per cent in the past year alone, according to the Land Registry, as artists, trendy twenty-somethings and families looking for something a bit livelier than humdrum suburbia have flocked here.

Lewisham, now benefiting from the East London Line, which passes through Shoreditch in Hackney down to Forest Hill and Sydenham, is drawing those same punters farther south, where three- and four-bedroom homes are just about still available for under £500,000, although prices are rising rapidly. “The media and arts crowd are often the pioneers of gentrification,” says Lucian Cook of Savills. “Hackney is a very complete borough in that it has great period properties, beautiful parks and great shops and restaurants. Lewisham is similar in that it has great housing stock and has the parks and shops of Dulwich nearby. Now that it has the transport links too, it has taken over from Peckham as the new on-trend place to buy south of the river.”