First-time buyer homes in Walton-on-Thames: shared-ownership houses from £175k in market town with a country feel

For country life less than 20 miles from the centre of London, the lovely market town of Walton-on-Thames — nestled on the riverbank in the Surrey borders — is widely considered one of the nicest places to live in the South-East.

Walton offers a lifestyle of weekends at the golf club and days at the races, with Sandown Park and Kempton Park both just up the road.

Then there are the Sunday morning rowing sessions — several local clubs are already in preparation for the next annual Walton Reach Regatta — followed by lunch in an idyllic riverside pub.

The schools are high quality and though the march of the chain stores has turned the handsome High Street into a bit of a clone town there are also some very good cafés and restaurants, plus an Everyman cinema.

Fast trains to London take from just 26 minutes and an annual season ticket costs £3,300.

Of course, this kind of convenience doesn’t come cheap. The average price of a home in the KT12 postcode is £632,000 according the latest data from Rightmove, up some £55,000 in the past year.

This should be a hopeless hunting ground for first-time buyers. And yet there is now a chance to buy a house — yes, a house — in Walton at a fraction of these prices because housing association PA Housing has just launched a selection of two-bedroom houses, priced from £175,000 for a 35 per cent share.

Monthly costs will come in at about £1,650 all in, including rent of £744, a service charge of about £70, and mortgage repayments of a likely £830.

On offer are traditional-style houses just north east of the town centre. It’s about a 20-minute walk or a couple of miles from the station, which is south of town. But there are local buses if you don’t want to walk, drive, or cycle and the setting is agreeably leafy and quiet.

The houses are at the Walton Park scheme by Bellway Homes, and the river is a 15-minute walk away.

Nearby schools include Grovelands Primary School and Three Rivers Academy, for seniors, which are both rated “good” by Ofsted.

The area is generally very family friendly, with a good leisure centre, cricket and football clubs, and the Molesey Reservoirs Nature Reserve close by.

There is also The Comedy Works comedy club at Walton Playhouse and there are lots of restaurants to try — the steamed dumplings at Sushi Wakyo are very well worth sampling, as is the gastropub food and water view at The Anglers.