Families make THEIR MOVE In the heat of summer, buyers compete for homes near the best schools before the start of term, says Zoe Dare Hall
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hile debate rages in W8 over what should be done about Holland Park School – the so-called “socialist Eton” that has attracted the rich and famous for decades was recently downgraded from Outstanding to Inadequate by Ofsted, amid reports of a toxic culture of bullying and discrimination – some families are weighing up their options. A school’s fortunes may change overnight, but property buyers and sellers can rarely move so fast. And super-prime Holland Park will never be solely reliant on the young family demographic for its white-stucco mansions or huge lateral apartments in developments such as Lodha’s new project Holland Park Gate, hot on the heels of No. 1 Grosvenor Square. While Holland Park School attempts to rebuild its reputation, the area’s first-rate independent preps and the Catholic Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School remain a strong pull to buyers. Jack Davison, senior lettings
manager at Marsh & Parsons in Holland Park, adds that the strong demand for family houses in his patch that began last autumn is showing no signs of waning. “We attribute it to families moving back to the capital, and houses are being let extremely quickly,” he says. Davison recently let a four-bed house on Portland Road with an asking price of £1,795 per week. It saw 12 viewings on the first day, and let for its highest price achieved since 2014. Some families are keeping a keen eye on preps that are opening secondary schools, such as Thomas’s Battersea (though some of the lustre may be lost now that Prince George and Princess Charlotte are reportedly decamping to Windsor). Others are finding their answer a few miles west in Chiswick. Whether they have managed to buy (many have been house-hunting since the start of the pandemic) or are either opportunistic or accidental tenants who have sold up and are in rental accommodation until the right house
67%
INCREASE IN DEMAND FROM PEOPLE LOOKING TO BUY IN CHISWICK (JOHN D WOOD)
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comes up for sale, they will have battled to be settled in time for the new school year in September. And they’re fuelling eye-watering sales and rental price rises in the area. John D Wood, which has upsized offices locally in response to a 67 per cent increase in demand from people looking to buy in W4, reports a 27.4 per cent rise year-on-year in the price of semi-detached homes in Chiswick, and a 16.2 per cent rise in detached house prices, with properties typically seeing 20+ viewings when they go on sale. New-builds here are rare, but Chiswick Green, by Great Marlborough Estates, includes four townhouses (along with 137 apartments) costing from £1.625m through JLL and Knight Frank, whose calculations for price rises in Chiswick are a more modest 4.3 per cent over the past year, yet still outstrip prime outer London growth (3.5 per cent). Off-market sales have become big business this year too. Almost a quarter of deals
