Hot property
You have to look closely to pick it out, the shot-fish vertical orange line to the right-hand side of the Tube map that starts promisingly at Shoreditch then comes to a grinding halt at New Cross Gate. Compared with its more established companions, the East London Line has a long way to go. As has Hackney, an area that is supposed to be the next big thing but which is still, to my mind, bedraggled and quite frightening in places.
Enter the East London Line Project, a scheme that will unite the two, extending the existing line north to Highbury & Islington, south to West Croydon and West to Clapham Junction, thereby breathing life into Tube-deprived areas such as Hackney. Be gone shops that sell evetything for a pound, branches of Lidl and Pritnark, fried-chicken outlets and huddles of hooded adolescents; hats off to Caffe Nero, the Gourmet Burger Bar, healthfood shops, delis and hordes of gimlet-eyed would-be investors.
Anne Currell of Currell estate agents is confident. Having invested in plush offices in Hackney, she is putting her mouth where her company's money is and predicts a rise in property prices of a spectacular 65 to 75 per cent over the next five years. And when the Tube extension opens, she expects an immediate capital value uplift of 20 per cent.
As things stand, stations are scheduled to open at Shoreditch High Street, Hoxton, Haggerston and Dalston Junction, but the timeframe is frustratingly nebulous. The best the ELLP project team has to offer is that it 'could be delivered in good time to support a successful Olympic bid in 2012'.
And even the ebullient Ms Currell introduces a note of caution: 'If the Tube opens, and I only say if, because we have waited so long. . . 'Other estate agents in the area greeted my ELLP-related inquiries with a small sigh and a raised eyebrow that seemed to say something along the lines of 'Well, yes, but I'll believe it when I see it.'
But prices are rising fast compared with other boroughs, and so long as greed is tempered by patience, the area is an attractive option for first-time buyers who lack wealthy, benevolent parents or the will to save gargantuan deposits, and for buy-to-let enthusiasts looking to to fend off a destitute old age.
Despite living on so-called 'Murder Mile', one dedicated Hackney dweller bombarded me with a list of its attributes — the startling proximity to the City and to groovy Hoxtori and Shoreditch, Walthamstow Marsh nature reserve, Columbia Road flower market, the award-winning Turkish restaurant Mangal Ocakbasi — and wisely pointed out to me that there is far more to an area than its prospective transport links.
Lucy Vickery
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