Over the years she has lived there Rachel Beech has grown quite tired of friends and family asking her the same question over and over again: “Why on earth do you live on the Isle of Dogs? There is nothing there.”
For Beech, who lives with her husband and their 15-year-old son that is precisely the point.
Sheep and donkeys graze peacefully in the shadow of skyscrapers at the local city farm
Set on the tip of a peninsula on the north bank of the River Thames, the Isle of Dogs is only 1.5 miles from Canary Wharf but it could barely be any more different.
Sheep and donkeys graze peacefully in the shadow of skyscrapers at the local city farm, and because it has water on three sides there is almost no through traffic. But when Beech wants to get off the island, the transport links are superb. “It is incredibly quiet for central London,” she says.
And, according to a new study by estate agent Savills, the Isle of Dogs, for years the ugly duckling to Canary Wharf’s swan, is one of the best value spots to buy a home.
The firm has identified the areas where local house prices are at least 20 per cent below their neighbours, and which it describes as pockets of “hidden value” in an increasingly unaffordable city. “They look underpriced relative to potential, pointing to where future growth has the greatest scope to catch up,” it says. These are our pick of the best.
Purley: Where London and the home counties meet
Leafy, affluent Purley is the posh end of Croydon. Its relative affordability is probably thanks to its distance from central London — some 13 miles. However it does have excellent commuter services, with services to either London Bridge or Victoria taking around 25 minutes.
It was partly these links which drew Dan and Molly Stevenson to the area early in the pandemic. The couple were living, with their chow chow dog Bear, in a three-bedroom flat in Brixton, when they joined the race for space. “We wanted somewhere greener, we wanted a house and a better quality of life,” says Dan, 35.
Molly, 31, works for a prop-tech start-up based in Shoreditch, and she also wanted a reasonable commute — her journey to work now takes her less than an hour, only slightly longer than it did from south London.
The couple did price up Brixton houses and realised that what they wanted was going to cost them around £1.2m if they stayed local. By moving to Purley they were able to buy a four-bedroom Edwardian house for £675,000. “It is too big for just the two of us but it means that we won’t have to move again if we have a family,” says Dan.
With future proofing in mind Molly and Dan also checked out the local schools and were impressed. Almost all have good or outstanding reports from Ofsted and the hugely popular grammar schools in Wallington are also within reach.
The average house price of £486,000, according to Savills, belies a huge variety of property types and prices. At the top end there is the Webb Estate, a 260-acre private conservation area filled with huge gated homes on tree-lined roads with price tags of up to £3m.
But for around £500,000 you could pick up a three-bedroom 1930s semi or a period terrace in the town centre. A modern or period two-bedroom flat would cost around £350,000.There is a little bit of anti-Purley snobbery around, perhaps because it is Croydon-adjacent, but Dan, director of Haboodle estate agents, says it really has more in common with Surrey. “There are lots of beautiful walks, if you are a dog owner it is amazing, and there are lots of beautiful places to go for a pub lunch, like Botley Hill Farmhouse and the Rambler’s Rest.”
He admits that the high street “could be better”. “There are lots of plans to improve it though — there is a new M&S coming, and a new leisure centre being built.”
The Isle of Dogs: Peace in the heart of the city
Beech had an unusual reason for moving to the Isle of Dogs: her love of rugby.
Almost 20 years ago she founded a women’s rugby club but struggled to find a place to play. Then a team member mentioned Millwall Rugby Club, who agreed to host the team, still going strong, named Millwall Venus. Beech, now 45, moved to the area to be close to the club, met her husband there, and 20 years on has absolutely no plans to leave.
When she first arrived she found there was a distinct divide between the old islanders, people born and raised locally, and “new money” incomers who worked at Canary Wharf 1.5 miles away. “Over the years that has evolved a lot,” she says. “There are such a lot of different cultures and communities that it is now a real melting pot.”
The majority of the homes on the Isle of Dogs were built in the 1980s and 1990s. Beech, founder of school-run app Fetching, and her family live in a four-bedroom townhouse which her husband owned before they met. In the early Noughties it cost around £300,000. Today it is probably worth twice as much.
According to Savills the average price of homes around the Isle of Dogs’ DLR stations stands at between £506,000 (Mudchute), £515,000 (Island Gardens) and £540,000 (Crossharbour). While you could spend seven figures on a luxury penthouse on the southern fringes of the Canary Wharf estate, the further south you venture the more value you will find.
There are streets of period dock workers’ cottages, as well as more modern townhouses to choose from, priced from around £700,000 for a three-bedroom property. You could equally buy a two-bedroom flat with a water view for around £400,000 to £450,000, or forgo the view and spend around £300,000 on an inland home.
What Beech appreciates about her neighbourhood is the peace and quiet combined with connectivity. “The brilliant thing about the Isle of Dogs is that you can get anywhere else, incredibly easily”.
And although it lacks a high street, it is not entirely true to say that there is nothing at all to do on the island. Green spaces include Mudchute Park and Farm, home to a surprising variety of farm animals and birds, and Millwall Park with its outdoor gym. Proximity to the river is a big draw too — you could learn to row with the Poplar, Blackwall & District Rowing Club, enjoy open water swimming in Millwall Outer Dock, or simply chill out on the tiny beach on the island’s east coast and enjoy spectacular views of the O2 Arena.
For going out The Space Bar is a cool café bar within a Grade II listed former church, which also houses a theatre and a fabulous roof terrace. The former Millwall Fire Station is now a Turkish and Mediterranean restaurant, The Old Fire Station, and Kinkao is a Thai restaurant with river views from its airy dining room. The Isle is in Zone 2, and although the DLR only really gets you around south-east London it is easy to pick up the Tube at Canary Wharf. The Greenwich Foot Tunnel provides a pedestrian crossing to Greenwich.
Local primary schools mostly hold “good” Ofsted reports although the local secondary schools have issues — careful research will be needed for parents of older children.
Looking forward there are signs that the development of Canary Wharf is spreading down into the Isle of Dogs.
Plans to redevelop the long-defunct Westferry Printworks include more than 1,300 homes plus a 1,200-place secondary school, a rejuvenated dock front, and new shops, and restaurants.
Newbury Park, Redbridge and Gants Hill: The wrong side of the road
The great wave of gentrification which has swept through east London in the last two decades has not quite breached the boundary of the North Circular Road – yet.
That means these three Ilford suburbs remain pleasingly affordable. Average sale prices in Newbury Park stand at £492,000, in Redbridge you are looking at £718,000, while Gant’s Hill average sale prices stand at £507,000.
All are highly commutable with average journey times into central London of around 40 minutes. And they are a lot cheaper than Wanstead, just the other side of the A406, where prices stand at £732,000.
For around £500,000 you could buy a three-bedroom period terrace in Newbury Park, a semi in Redbridge, or a four-bedroom period house in Gants Hill.
In terms of green space you are spoiled for choice with the lovely Wanstead Park with its riding stables, cricket and tennis clubs, and network of ponds to the west and the expanses of Fairlop Waters Country Park to the east.
And local schools mostly hold good or outstanding Ofsted reports.
As to whether these neighbourhoods stretched along the Eastern Avenue out to Essex have the potential to emulate the likes of nearby Leytonstone and Wanstead remain to be seen.
But as yet there is no sign of the kind of artisan delis, micro-breweries, and gastropubs that litter postcodes just across the borough boundary in Walthamstow and Waltham Forest, suggesting that change is still a way off.
