Property journalism ~ Make a meal out of your next move

The Observer, October 2007

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Good local schools, handy transport links, convenient shops and some restful patches of green would probably top most people's search criteria when looking for a new area in which to live. But a growing band of London buyers are looking for something quite different: good food.

So strong is the lure of today's restaurants, eateries and gastro-pubs that well-run ones with buzzy atmospheres and enticing menus are transforming fringe city areas into feisty property hot spots.

Take Kensal Rise in north west London. Apart from its famous cemetery very few people knew anything about it until it was struck by a tornado last December. The 'twister' may just have given the area the uplift it needed, for a few months later several fading pubs were being converted into gastro-pubs and a group of big-name restaurants sprouted as if from nowhere.

'The place was a relative no-man's-land squashed between the more upmarket Queen's Park and North Kensington. It had a high crime rate and a serious drugs problem. Then it started getting street-smart and suddenly everyone was buying properties here,' says Paul Weldon, manager of local estate agents Harris and Company.

Among them were Sean and Amanda Feeney. The couple were living with their two young children in a top-floor apartment in fashionable Notting Hill Gate, but when they had a third child they needed more space. 'Our local is a Kensal Rise pub called the William IV, which has very good food and a delightful ambience, so we decided to move near the pub instead of paying an extra £100,000 to live in North Kensington,' says Amanda, a former sous chef.

The Feeneys, who bought a four-bedroom Edwardian house with south-facing garden for £570,000, now go to the William IV for Sunday lunch. Sean, who works for a Soho production company, logs onto the pub's wi-fi system on weekday evenings. 'Having our local on the doorstep makes the area feel like a friendly village,' says Sean.

Meanwhile Old Street, on the edge of Shoreditch, was far better known for its crime than its camaraderie until two years ago, when a Bacchus restaurant and Jamie Oliver's Fifteen opened there. 'It was an area of severe urban decay, drunkenness and street fighting until a few eating-places and bars moved in and attracted a more respectable and cosmopolitan clientele,' says Adam Fairweather, of the Hackney branch of estate agents the Property Bureau.

The new, softer-centred Shoreditch is only a few tube stops away from the City and the West End. A well-appointed one-bedroom ex-council flat here costs about £200,000, while a two-bedroom flat costs £285,000-£300,000. You can also buy large Victorian family houses for half the price of nearby Islington.

'One buyer recently sold her four-bedroom house and garden in Islington's trendy Upper Street for £800,000 and bought an identical one in Shoreditch for £460,000,' says Fairweather.

Property developer Robert Soning, director of marketing for Londonewcastle, says: 'It only takes a couple of restaurants and a gastro-pub to turn a run-down area into a highly sought-after location. Homeowners who have been living in Maida Vale, Notting Hill Gate and Islington are suddenly selling up and buying in these buzzy, competitively priced areas. They don't want to live in "name" areas any more, but ones with lively bars, pubs and restaurants where they can meet up with their friends and have fun.'

Akash Bhuwanee, 23, recently landed his first job as a property negotiator in Islington. However, instead of paying the high rents Islington residents have to pay, he bought an off-plan flat opposite a pub called the Narrow Boat in the area's less fashionable end, near Angel tube station.

'Buying a flat next to a pub-restaurant on a canal is ideal for a young singleton who has just left university. I can sit down and enjoy all my cooked meals here, meet up and socialise with my mates and work colleagues in the evenings and entertain my girlfriends at weekends,' he says.

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