4 ★ FTWeekend 2 November/3 November 2019Kentish frown
W
hen Karl Marx left the
“evil frightful rooms” of
his squalid central
London flat and moved
with his family to a
“truly princely dwelling” on Grafton
Terrace in Kentish Town, the rent for
his eight-room home was just over £4 a
month. Between 1856 and 1883, the
Marx clan moved twice again without
leaving the neighbourhood —the van-
guard, perhaps, of the left-leaningnorth
Londonerswhostillfavourthearea.
These days, that group is likely to
find their new neighbours in this largely
Victorian and Edwardian-built area
are young technology professionals. It
takes just 10 minutes to cycle on a
fold-up bike from Kentish Town to
King’s Cross, where many of Silicon
Valley’s biggest companies have set up
Londonoffices.
“We’re seeing a lot more of the Google
and Facebook crowd,” says James Dia-
per, associate director at Savills. “They
like the diverse high street, that there
are places that do craft beers and high-
end,non-Starbuckscoffee.”
But despite a growing millennial
cohort, the Kentish Town property
market is affected by a wider London
slowdown caused in part by Brexit
uncertainty. House prices rose by 56 per
cent in the past 10 years (adjusted for
inflation), according to LonRes, but fell
6 per cent between 2017 and 2018. The
number of transactionswas 47 per cent
lower in the first half of 2019 than in the
same period in 2015, according to Land
Registrydata.discount of just over 10 per cent off the
initial asking price. Last year, the aver-
age cost of a home was £1.526m, with
the average price of a square foot falling
by 5 per cent, according to LonRes. That
isdown15.2percentsince2016.
Nevertheless, there is no shortage of
estate agents, with 10 on the high street
alone.Localsworriedthatan11thwould
appear in a Victorian pub that closed in
2017 ut a planning application wasb
grantedtoturnitintoadentalsurgery.
Thatsuitedthenewcomers,forwhom
practicalities are more important than
glamour (and Kentish Town is certainly
grungy around the edges). “Young peo-
ple aren’t socially against moving to an
area because it doesn’t have a certain
cachet,” says Diaper. “They’re not
snobs,inotherwords.”
Neither are the French. Kentish Town
has a sizeable French population
attracted by the opening of the Lycéeschool in 2012.“Since Brexit, the
number of French families coming
here has remained pretty stable,”
says Mark Hyde, branch manager
of Martyn Gerrard, a local property
agent. Enrolment in London’s
international schools has risen by
nearly 10 per cent over the past three
years, according to ISC Research, an
education consultant. At the Kentish
Town Lycée, staff say they haveOn Caversham Road, the Xylo,
a development of one, two and three-
bedroom apartments, sprang up to
accommodate this growing market. An
agent for Savills says a flat selling for
£1.15m was recently sold to a buyer in
their late twenties. A two-bedroom flat
intheformerNorthLondonPolytechnic
building is for sale through The Modern
Housefor£1.1m.
On Rochester Road, “one of the most
popular roads in the area”, according to
Venn, Marsh & Parsons is selling a four-
bedroom period conversion for £1.7m.
The price has beencut by 19 per cent
sinceApril. On Gaisford Street, a two-
bedroom maisonette that has been on
the market since January has been
reducedby11.1percent.
“Selling your house isn’t as easy or
cheap as it was four or five years ago, so
fewer people are doing it,” says Pryor,
who is scathing about sellers’ high
expectations on prices. “Kentish Town
got drunk on the same dodgy cider that
wasgoingaroundLondon.”i/B U Y I N G G U I D E
The average price for a home was£1.53m
in 2018, down 6 per cent on the year
before, according to Land Registry data
From Kentish Town underground station,
it takes just over an hour to reach
Heathrow airport
Hampstead Heath’s mixed bathing pond
is a half-hour walk away. Camden Market
is 15 minutes in the opposite directionWhat you can buy for...
£500,000 two-bedroom flat just off theA
high street
£1.3m four-bedroomA period house
£2.195m four-storey Victorian houseA
with a large south-facing garden
More atpropertylistings.ft.comUK propertyKentish
Town’s prices have been hit
by the London malaise yetit still draws newcomers.
By George Steer(From left) Kelly Street; gable sign; Georgian housing stock— AlamyLeighton RoadRochester RoadGaisford StreetThe XyloCaversham
RoadKENTISH
TOWNLONDON
HILLDROP
ESTATE mmaps news.com/©HERESource: LonResKentish Town
Average price achieved ( per sq ft) Two-bedroom
apartment in a
converted
building on
Prince of Wales
Road, £1.1m
French + TyeHouse Home
hadnotroubleattractingstudents.
OliverVenn,salesmanageratFoxtons
Camden, says local schools — including
state schools rated outstanding by
Ofsted — will continue to attract young
families: “Camden School for Girls
and Eleanor Palmer primary school
are very popular, and both have
very tight catchment areas,” he says.
Henry Pryor, a London-based buying
agent, agrees: “People certainly aren’t
coming to Kentish Town for the good
air,”hesays.
That may be a little harsh. Leighton
Road, with its smart Victorian terraces
and wide, tree-lined pavements,is com-
parable togenteel Highgate up the road.
And that is Kentish Town’s appeal:
young movers — even those who
work for Google — may not be able to
affordHampstead or Highgate, but they
still want to be close to the green pleas-
uresofHampsteadHeath.Two months after they went on the
market,70percentofapartmentsinthe
Xylodevelopment emainr nsold.u
BetweenJanuaryandSeptember,46per
cent of properties in the area that did
sell had their prices reduced before sale,
with buyers negotiating an averageNOVEMBER 2 2019 Section:Weekend Time: 10/201930/ - 17:47 User:elizabeth.robinson Page Name:RES4, Part,Page,Edition:REU, 4, 1