Skyrocketing prices in friendly Forest Gate
Good value period homes on Crossrail are a draw to the area, says Ruth Bloomfield
Mini markets, junk food, and betting shops. If you are looking for a chi-chi London village then Forest Gate isn’t it. Crossrail was supposed to spark a stripe of regeneration across London but a decade after work began on the line, Upton Lane, the area’s de facto high street, still looks pretty forlorn.
The reason to consider Forest Gate is that what it certainly does offer is good-value period houses and flats. This is what brought Jennifer Earle,
40, and her husband Sam, 38, to the area back in 2015 when they swapped a flat in Wandsworth for a £725,000 four-bedroom house in Forest Gate.
Since then Jennifer, who runs food and chocolate tours, and Sam, who works in software, have had a daughter, Maya, two, and begun renovating their run-down house.
The property is still a work-in-progress but they have rebuilt its shabby extension, installed a new kitchen and bathroom and converted the garage into a fifth bedroom. “I think we could probably sell it for a little bit more than we have spent on it,” says Jennifer.
She agrees that Forest Gate south of the station has changed little since she arrived. “It is pretty dirty,” she says. But to the north you’ve got local gems like Burgess & Hall Wines, Ramble Café and Tracks, a café/bar/record shop that hosts live events from poetry readings to pop-up markets.
For green space there is Wanstead Flats, and you can hang out in the garden of the Forest Tavern on sunny days. If you have green fingers the Forest Gate Community Garden brings like-minded volunteers together. Woodgrange Market, with its street food, crafts, and vintage clothes, is worth a rummage on a Saturday, and every summer locals get together to organise the Forest Gate Festival.
“There are lots of nice community things going on,” Jennifer says. “There is a jumble trail and an art trail, and it has a very friendly feel.”
Jake Everett, office manager at
Wilkinson estate agent, says two things have put Forest Gate on the map for buyers: Crossrail and the Olympics. “Prices just skyrocketed,” he says. “Then in 2018 and 2019 there was a bit of a slowdown, because of the delays in the line opening, and the pandemic. But since the stamp duty holiday everything went mad again.”
House prices in Forest Gate have inched up by 3.4 per cent in the past two years. Everett estimates buyers would need to budget around £750,000 for a three-bedroom terrace or around £400,000 to £450,000 for a two-bedroom flat. The rental market tends to be more local than the buying market, with two-bed flats coming in at a typical £1,300pcm, he says.
THE FUTURE
There haven’t been any big-bang regeneration projects in Forest Gate, and there is nothing major on the horizon — probably thanks to a lack of big building sites. There have been a series of small boutique developments however, the latest being a four-storey infill scheme with flats and shops on Woodgrange Road — work is expected to start on the site later this year. And railway arches on Winchelsea Road have just been repurposed as a flexible workspace for local businesses.