Comment: ‘the brutal lessons from Balfron Tower’s unsold flats’
In an uncertain property market, the fact a developer has been unable to sell any flats (priced from £365,000 for a one-bed) in a Sixties tower block next to the A12 repeatedly voted Britain’s ugliest seems unsurprising. Especially since the concrete building’s construction made it tricky to secure a mortgage.
The £57m refurbishment for sale of the Brutalist Balfron Tower in Poplar was also not without its share of controversy.
Designed by architect Ernő Goldfinger, some of the building’s former council tenants had lived there since it was built and would tell tales about the time when “Mr Goldfinger” briefly lived on the top floor.
They were moved out in 2010 believing they would be returning to upgraded homes, which turned out not to be the case, causing widespread outrage.
Nonetheless, using high value assets to subsidise estate refurbishment and housebuilding is popular throughout London, a pragmatic option in the absence of a well-funded national building programme.
While I despair at the modern attitude that nice things should be available only to those who can afford to pay for them, equally it’s surely better to have a new home than a poorly maintained architectural fetish (if those are the only two options on offer).
Flats in Trellick Tower, Balfron Tower’s cross-town twin, have sold for as much as £1 million, so you can see why it might have seemed foolish to overlook the funding potential of 139 architecturally admired east London homes.
A year on from the sales launch with all flats still unsold, the cash is not flowing, with Novara Media reporting the building is slated for conversion to private rental.
The ongoing Balfron saga exposes the pitfalls of funding social housing via private sale – namely that you have to actually sell the homes to get the cash. And this takes more skill and expertise than people seem to think.
The developers have been blamed for diminishing the flats’ appeal to architecture buffs by retrofitting out desirable period features along with the asbestos.
But it is also suffering from the same turbulent economic woes as multiple similar schemes.
London could style it out in a rising market, in the current one we need a bigger, better plan.
