Location lowdown Thamesmead, London
person than the London
average”. That’s 593 acres,
spread across five lakes, three
nature reserves, three miles of
Thames Path and 53,000 trees.What’s the commute like?
Southeastern trains will get
you to London Bridge in about
30 minutes, but Crossrail will
take you further, faster.Do move If you believe ugly
ducklings can turn into swans.Don’t move If you can’t get
A Clockwork Orange out of
your head.
Hugh Grahamsome funky, beige brick
apartment blocks centred on a
new lakeside square; a sleek
library; an arts centre; and a
community radio station (all to
open later this year). There’s
talk of cafés, pop-up markets, a
gym and — gentrification alert
— a craft brewery. A sailing
club, temporarily closed, will
reopen. The sense of optimism
is palpable. Peabody is bigging
up a grassroots arts scene
(rappers, poets, painters,
dancers and more).Green spaces The PR mantra
for Thamesmead is “double the
amount of green space perWhere? Built in the 1960s on
drained marshland on the
Thames, between the London
boroughs of Greenwich and
Bexley. At the time modernist
architects hailed its brutalist
tower blocks, concrete
walkways and man-made lakes
as a brave new world, but it
became a byword for social
decay. It was the dystopian
setting for the film version of
A Clockwork Orange. So not
the first place you’d think of
buying property in, then.
Why go there now? The
opening of a Crossrail station
at Abbey Wood this month has
put Thamesmead in the
spotlight: journey times will be
11 min to Canary Wharf and
26 min to Bond Street. What is
more, the housing association
Peabody has embarked on a 30-
year, £10 billion regeneration of
the estate. One-bedroom flats
in Southmere Village, the first
phase of the new scheme, start
at £305,000 (or £91,500 for a
30 per cent share) and
Peabody has submitted an
outline planning application
for 1,950 homes.What’s it actually like?
When you emerge from the
curvy timber and glassCrossrail station you think
you’ve got off at the wrong
stop. Before you is a landscape
of green hills and forests that
are more Cotswolds than
concrete; this is the titular
Abbey Wood, home to the
ruined 12th-century LesnesAbbey. Turn left, however, and
things get more real: A-roads,
MoT garages and grey
concrete loom in the distance.
The town centre, about 30
minutes’ walk from Abbey
Wood station, resembles a
retail park. Peabody is trying
to get permission to bring the
DLR from Gallions Reach
station and bring it back to life.
Some of the bleakest
brutalist estates have been
demolished, but Peabody has
retained four “iconic” towers
on the lake and cleaned up the
concrete. Southmere Village
feels promising: the cool Dutch
architects Mecanoo have builtWish you lived here?
Sardinia, Italy
This Med marvel has dramatic
mountains, an Amalfi-style coastline and
buzzy nightlife. Buy in from €60,000
and Kent-born, moved here from Olbia
in 2017 and hasn’t looked back.
“The streets are packed; restaurants
and bars are full year-round,” he says.
The Poetto beach, a sandbar welding
Cagliari to its neighbour, Quartu
Sant’Elena, is where locals spend lunch
breaks. “You sit on the beach and chat —
it’s easy to get to know people,” Clarke
says. Cosmopolitan Cagliari is gay-
friendly, too, he says: “There’s a sense of
community that I never saw in Olbia.”
Any downsides? “It’s an island,”
says Roberta Paterlini, Stefano’s sister,
whose agency, Immobiliare Brunati, in
Porto Cervo on the Costa Smeralda, is
Knight Frank’s on-the-ground agency.
“It’s not like resorts on the mainland
where you can drive to a major city. And
it’s very unpopulated — 1.6 million
compared to Sicily’s 6 million. You have
to really love nature,” she says.
But for those who do, it’s paradise.
Julia Buckleysays — prices have rocketed by up to
30 per cent since the pandemic started,
compared with the Costa Smeralda’s
11.5 per cent. Prices here start at €1,600
a square metre for a doer-upper flat
and €2,000 a square metre for key-
ready ones, meaning you can nab a
one-bedder for under €120,000. A sea
view costs double.
Olbia may be small, but its
infrastructure punches above its weight,
with two airports (international and
private) as well as ferries to the Italian
mainland and public and private
hospitals. The seafront promenade
has been overhauled — “it wasn’t
beautiful, but now it’s stupendous,”
Paterlini says.
The southern coast is quickly catching
up. Here, what Cvjetkovic describes as
“stunning” resorts such as Chia and
Villasimius wrap around the capital,
Cagliari, where studio apartments start
from about €60,000. Daniel Clarke, 53says Jelena Cvjetkovic, director at the
estate agency Savills’ global residential
network, who used to live in Sardinia.
“The fine sand and granite boulders —
you see that in the Seychelles.”
What sets it apart is the lack of
overdevelopment. Much of the coast is
uninhabited; strictly enforced rules mean
little urban sprawl or Costa-style high-
rises. “Sometimes it’s a pity for buyers,
but it preserves the area,” says Diletta
Giorgolo, the head of residential for Italy
at Sotheby’s International Realty. “It’s
rare to find somewhere like this.”
Essentially there are two markets,
Giorgolo says: the Costa Smeralda and
everywhere else. Prices in the former
vary wildly, where houses are valued
individually rather than by size
— location and plot size is
all. However, she says you
can get an apartment,
with a far-off sea view
if you’re lucky, for
€9,000 a square
metre, meaning a
studio pied-à-terre
starts at about
€350,000. Villas
are about eight
times that.
The mountains
above the coast —
where villages such as San
Pantaleo nestle on green plains
between Dolomite-cragged outcrops,
the Med glittering in the distance — are
becoming increasingly popular. Prices
there start at €3,500 a square metre
(€175,000 for a one-bedroom flat).
Olbia, the gateway to the Costa
Smeralda (a 15-minute drive without
traffic), is a great bet for those wanting
to invest, says Stefano Paterlini of Costa
Smeralda Villas. A dynamic new city
administration is planning sustainable
expansion, he says — the population of
60,000 is expected to double within
seven years, with apartment blocks of
up to 15 storeys planned.
“Last year we saw huge growth,” heK
aren Rowley was 23
when she first visited
Sardinia. A carer from
Doncaster working in
Rome, she and a friend
holidayed in Alghero,
on the northwest coast,
in 1982. “Lovely
weather, great beaches, lively discos,” she
says. “I liked what I saw.”
On that week-long trip Rowley met a
handsome Sardinian. Nearly four
decades later, she and Franco are still
married. They live in the three-bedroom
apartment where Franco grew up, 300m
from the seafront.
It’s easy to see why. While the nightlife
has moved east to the Costa Smeralda,
Alghero remains a thriving town
of about 45,000 residents,
whose numbers can
quadruple during
summer. A medieval
Catalan colony, it has
a walled old town,
where one-bedroom
flats start at about
€80,000 (£67,000),
and a sweep of
sandy beach
delineating the
modern overspill.
Beyond is an island that
is as varied — Amalfi-style
coastline, dramatic mountains,
rolling hills — as it is pristine.
Sometimes it seems that the prehistoric
settlements (called nuraghi), still liberally
scattered around Sardinia, outnumber
the modern ones.
For many outsiders Sardinia is the
Costa Smeralda — the 12-mile stretch of
coastline developed by the Aga Khan in- In fact the second-largest island in
the Mediterranean has about 1,000 miles
of coastline, and it’s all spectacular.
Looking for the great outdoors? Sardinia
has it in spades — hence, perhaps, the
increase in property prices of up to 30
per cent since the start of the pandemic.
“It’s like the tropics, but in Europe,”
AlgheroOlbiaTyrrhenian
SeaCosta
SmeraldaSARDINIA20 miles
CagliariVillasimius
ChiaSan PantaleoTop: Bosa. Above left: a five-bedroom Porto Cervo villa is on sale
for €7 million with Knight Frank. Above right: a four-bedroom
house in Pantogia is on sale for €3.2 million with Knight FrankNeed to
know
6 Foreign buyers
without Italian
residence pay stamp
duty of 9 per cent of
the cadastral value of
the property. This
varies by property and
area but is far lower
than the real price.
6 Since Brexit, British
passport holders
without residency must
abide by the “90-day
rule”: you can spend up
to 90 of every 180 days
in the Schengen area.i
Bricks
& Mortar10 Friday May 27 2022
the timesGETTY IMAGES*