From first-timers to City types: the fast-changing Zone 1 hotspot home buyers of all budgets should consider

Shoppers have been beating a path to East Street Market since 1880 to stock up their larders and swap banter with stallholders. Nothing much changed for so long in cheap-and-cheerful Walworth. Today, however, with multibillion-pound regeneration projects going on all around it, Walworth is changing and home buyers are starting to take note.

“We are getting a real cross-section: young professionals looking for a good first investment; people who work in the City who are spending £1 million-plus on a house — and everyone in between,” says Justin Bhoday, sales manager at Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward.

“Walworth is a real mixed bag. There are new developments of stylish apartments, grotty ex-local authority flats and some really good Victorian to Forties period property.”

The good-value choice Walworth offers has encouraged price growth. In April 2013 the average property in the area cost just under £300,000. Today, according to the latest figures from Rightmove, that has risen to just over £421,000.

The two main factors drawing people to SE17 are at either end of Walworth Road: Elephant & Castle station, with its 10-minute links to the West End and City, and the green expanses of Burgess Park. And Walworth Road is an attraction in itself. “There is nothing you can’t get there,” says Bhoday. “It feels like ‘real’ London, not the faux-London of the Northcote Roads of this world.”

Both Charlie Chaplin and Sir Michael Caine called Walworth Road home. These days, amid the payday loan companies and phone unlocking services, you will find Lebanese street food at Bayroot, moreish pizzas at La Luna, and perhaps the ultimate ethnic mash-up of jerk chicken bagels at Bagel King.

This is Zone 1 territory, so buying into Walworth is no longer a steal, but it is still cheaper than neighbouring areas. A new-build two-bedroom flat would cost about £500,000 to £600,000, says Bhoday, while a similar property in Elephant & Castle would cost £700,000 to £750,000.

A two-bedroom Victorian conversion flat in Walworth would come in at about £550,000 to £650,000, up to 10 per cent cheaper than a similar property in Kennington, while you could pick up a two-bedroom cottage for £600,000 to £630,000.

One reason for this relative affordability is Walworth’s unpretty swathes of social housing. Chief among them is the Aylesbury Estate, built between 1967 and 1977. About 12 times the size of Trafalgar Square at 60 acres, it was famously singled out by Tony Blair, hours after his election as prime minister, as an example of what happens when social housing goes wrong.

More than two decades on from Blair’s 1997 visit — and against the wishes of a surprisingly large number of its residents — work is due to begin this year on the first phase of regeneration. Of 830 new homes, almost a third will be affordable and earmarked for renters who could otherwise not afford to live in the area. By 2036 housing association Notting Hill Genesis will have replaced the old estate with 3,500 new homes, up to half of which will be affordable, plus offices, shops and “extensive” open space.

The rebirth of the Aylesbury Estate is the largest example of investment coming into Walworth, but there are plenty of smaller-scale developments. The Walworth Collection, in Waleorde Road just off Walworth Road, has two-bedroom flats from £550,000 (visit kfh.co.uk), while the first batch of private homes at The Levers, a boutique development of 55 homes from housing association Peabody will be ready to move into at the end of this year. Prices start at £470,000 for a one-bedroom flat, and £595,000 for a two-bedroom home.

Housing associations are becoming increasingly big housebuilding players in London and nowhere is this clearer than in Walworth, where Notting Hill Genesis is also at work on Manor Place, site of a Grade II-listed Victorian public baths, wash house and former coroner’s court. The baths were once used as a boxing venue, with Sixties gangsters Ronnie and Reggie Kray both taking part. These heritage buildings are being turned into a mix of 270 private sale and affordable homes, plus shops within a line of Thameslink railway arches running through the site. Due for completion next year, these homes will soon be for sale.

The Royal Mail sorting office in Crampton Street could become a boutique development of 50 flats plus offices, if Southwark council planners give it the green light. Meanwhile, Grade II-listed Walworth Town Hall, plus the adjacent Newington Library, is another site ripe for redevelopment. Southwark council is touting for an investor to take on this multimillion-pound project that could become a real focal point for the Walworth of the future. Watch this space.