Securing a seat on the 8.19am train from Bushey to Euston requires some ruthless strategising. Commuters need to know the best spot to wait on the platform so as to start the race in pole position, and must not be above engaging in a polite shoving match to get aboard.
Fortunately, the journey time from this former agricultural village turned commuter dormitory is only 21 minutes, so the discomfort is not too great for those too slow or well-mannered to join the scrum.
Bushey, which sits snugly in the elbow formed by the M1 and the M25, is in the Hertfordshire borough of Hertsmere — a conglomeration of towns and villages with one big selling point: commutability. Ease of access to London has propelled property prices in Hertsmere upwards by more than 75 per cent in the past decade. This places it, and similarly fast-growing Cambridge, ahead in the top-performing region in England and Wales — the east of England.
House price forecasts published by Savills highlight the east as the only area where prices are consistently growing. Property values increased by 2.5 per cent during 2016 — a year in which half the regions experienced price drops and values in London flatlined.
Savills forecasts that between now and 2021 house prices will grow by 19 per cent in the east. The area is, of course, a diverse region, with average prices ranging from £150,000 in Great Yarmouth to more than £500,000 in St Albans, and research on its micro-markets shows that price growth is equally varied.
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In far-flung towns and cities such as Great Yarmouth and Peterborough, property prices have risen less than 20 per cent in the past decade. The top performers are those towns and villages that are in London’s orbit or, increasingly, those in thrall to Cambridge.
Lucian Cook, the director of residential research at Savills, says the findings prove the impact that city money has on regional price growth. In the locations close to London or Cambridge there has been price growth of 65 per cent in the past ten years, and Cook believes this trend will continue. “Emerging affordability constraints in Cambridge are likely to drive demand to commutable towns such as Ely and Newmarket in the next phase of the housing market cycle,” he says.
Mark Peck, a director of Cheffins estate agency in Ely, agrees that Cambridge’s ripple effect is driving local price growth. “It is much cheaper in Ely, and the train commute is only about 15 minutes.”
Peck estimates that a three-bedroom house in the centre of Ely costs between £300,000 and £400,000. “It could be as much as double that in Cambridge,” he says.
Other commuter towns Cook tips for growth include Bishop’s Stortford and Royston in Hertfordshire, Saffron Walden in Essex, and Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk.
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David Worrell, the owner of Park Lane Property Agents in Bishop’s Stortford, says another old favourite is helping to drive local price growth: education. “The schools are all very high up the league tables and . . . Bishop’s Stortford College [an independent school] draws a lot of people in,” he says. “We are 40 minutes by train to Liverpool Street, so we get a lot of people who work in the City.
“My wife was born in Stortford, and 40 years ago it was a small country town. I really started to notice the change in 2005, when people with two-bedroom inner-city flats started buying very nice houses here,” he adds.
Worrell estimates that 60 per cent of the homes for sale in the town are being bought by commuters, who occupy the more expensive end of the market. However, while growth in the past decade has been dominated by attractive market towns and villages, the areas that performed the most strongly in the past 12 months are different.
As prices rise in the traditionally desirable commuter belt, buyers have begun to investigate more affordable, if less scenic, options such as Brentwood and Thurrock. Property values in these less-pretty Essex towns soared by 19 per cent last year. In Luton in Bedfordshire, Basildon in Essex, and Broxbourne and Watford in Hertfordshire, house prices surged by 18 per cent.
James Thorpe, an associate director at the Keith Ashton estate agency in Brentwood, says that a lack of stock, plus a flow of buyers out of London, has driven price rises. Brentwood’s popularity has been boosted by its proximity to Shenfield, which by 2019 will be a terminal on the Elizabeth Line (formerly Crossrail).
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Thorpe says good schools attract families from other Essex towns.
He believes that the market in 2017 will be “steady, not crazy” as the realities of Brexit begin to take shape. “Buyers are very nervous, and the market is going to revolve around what is going on in the headlines and the news,” he says.