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Will the Olympics win gold for Stratford?
There has been feverish speculation about the Olympic property market in and around Stratford in East London for years but, as the first athletes arrive and the opening ceremony prepares to kick off in ten days, will the Games really be good news for the area’s property market?
We’ve looked at all the homes for sale within a mile of the Olympic stadium, covering Stratford but also reaching north to Hampton Wick, south to Bromley-by-Bow, east to West Ham Lane recreation ground and west to Well Street Common. See our Smart Map below.
It’s a market largely made up of Victorian and Edwardian semis, post-war council properties and recently-built glass and steel apartments, and there are currently 618 properties on the market. Prices remain inexpensive by the capital’s standards and east of the stadium are the more prime addresses where most of the new apartment blocks have been built. Homes to the west of the stadium are substantially cheaper.
And according to our property data, the average value of a home within Stratford is £234,034, approximately 20% lower than East London’s average (£289,832) and 46% lower than London’s overall average.
At the top of the market is a four-bedroom apartment for £595,000 on Gerry Raffles Square, two streets east of Stratford’s shiny new train and tube station.
The bottom of the market is a one-bedroom shared-equity apartment for sale at £94,500 opposite Strand East, an urban village being built by furniture store IKEA, most famous for its 150 foot ‘Olympic Torch’ nearing completion at the moment (artist’s impression pictured below).
But you’ll need at least £200,000 to buy either a one-bedroom apartment within an upmarket apartment block or a two-bedroom period house, and those with clear views of the Olympic site (such as the one pictured below) attract a premium of between 5-8%.
The area’s most expensive properties kick off at £300,000 which buys an entry-level and new two-bedroom apartment or a three bedroom period semi. But the best apartments with views over the Olympic site are within Stratford Eye (pictured below), a new, cigarette-lighter shaped apartment tower on Angel Lane, and many flats within it have 180-degree views of the venue.
But the house price boom that was expected has yet to arrive, although prices have been rising reflecting the number of high-end apartment blocks coming on to the market rather than rising values for the rest.
Prices have picked up over the past six months or, we have noticed, stopped dropping and begun to swing upwards (by 1.20% over the past three months).
This is hopefully the ‘Olympic effect’ kicking in as the Games have loomed, but more likely it’s the area benefitting from the £15 billion the surrounding borough will receive directly and indirectly from the Olympics, including 62,000 new jobs and 59,600 new homes.
