The lowdown from Josh Grinling, Director of Winkworth in Kensington.
What’s your patch like?
It’s very charming. It’s close to Kensington Palace and offers a delicious combination of Victorian and Edwardian architecture and it’s been very desirable ever since it was built. Now it’s home to lots of High Net Worth individuals but it retains an urban village feel – it’s a proper neighbourhood where people actually know each other, not like Knightsbridge and with its empty houses and mega basements. They do Halloween well here.
Why should people think about moving to Kensington?
Not only is it aesthetically pleasing but it’s a great location with good transport links as well as excellent shops and restaurants. There’s what I refer to as Kensington’s lungs – Kensington Gardens on one side and Holland Park on the other – they’re both lovely green spaces but very different from each other. It’s adjacent to Notting Hill with Portobello market and all the area’s facilities, while in W8 we’re also close to the motorways and so it’s very convenient for anybody heading out west.
What kind of housing stock is there?
Each street offers a different type of property, with high demand always for the large houses in Palace Gardens Terrace, Brunswick Gardens and the Phillimore Estate, Argyll Road, as well as around Victoria Road and Scarsdale Villas. Houses in the delightful Hillgate village sell like hot cakes. One of the area’s charms is that there are so many hidden gems, artists studios and so on, so many exceptional properties. It’s certainly not an average place to be an estate agent and I virtually never leave the Royal Borough. Except to go fly fishing.
How’s the local property market performing at the moment?
The houses we sell most of are the Hillgate village houses at £2-3 million, which are more spacious than they look, with three or four comfortable bedrooms. For a proper grown-up family house you need £10 million pounds here, especially including stamp duty. The end of the autumn market is always white hot and it peters down in December. People hear about their bonuses in January, so they often go shopping for new homes then. 2022 has been a great year for Winkworth W8.
What trends are you seeing among buyers and sellers?
There’s still an element of rabbit in the headlights post-Kwasi budget and mortgage rates are still very high and frightening for a lot of people. Luckily in Kensington people often chose to borrow because it was cheap, not because they needed to. Every time there’s a crisis we see a bit less demand that there was before – with Ukraine and Covid – but each time people carry on. The market has done very well despite all the crises and I expect we’ll have lift off again in January. Kensington is pretty resilient really because everywhere outside W8 is a step down. There’s nowhere really to go except the countryside.
What advice would you give to sellers?
The most important things are asking price and presentation. From tiny studio flats to enormous detached villas, there’s someone looking for everything. There’s always a shortage of houses in the £2-3 million price bracket, so they go quickly, as do two-bed conversions on the first floor. The thing that puts people off is mess. So my advice is to declutter - people don’t want to buy your objets d’art, so focus on having a few beautiful bits of art on display, not 500 copies of the Evening Standard piled up in the corner.
Any predictions for 2023?
Interest rates will go down. The current unease will work its way out of the system. Prices are going up dramatically still, but inflation will be shaken out of the system during the first quarter of next year. It would be good if 2023 didn’t have a crisis.
W8: current best buys
This house in Campden Hill Road has three bedrooms with a very nice layout and a pretty little rear garden. It’s priced at £2.15m with Winkworth Kensington 020 7727 1500.
Byam Shaw House used to be an art school, and this three bedroom apartment in the converted building is pretty, with large windows and lots of space; it’s priced at £2.2m with Winkworth Kensington 020 7727 1500.
