You can sense the satisfaction at Winkworth HQ when they realised they could coin “The Queen’s Park gambit”, riffing on the classic chess move to describe how home buyers play the Londonproperty market.
The phrase describes the canny sideways move from one area to a similar, cheaper one nearby “saving” upsizers up to half a million pounds as they trade up the ladder, according to Winkworth CEO Dominic Agace.
In the case of Queen’s Park, growing families moving from Notting Hill with a budget of £1.5 million are the bulk of these canny movers. In W11 that budget will get you a (large) flat. In NW10 it could buy you a four-bedroom house, according to Stewart Boyd of the agent’s Queen’s Park and Kensal Rise office.
He continued: “We also see families from Notting Hill whose children may be about to leave the nest. They can buy a similar sized house in Queen’s Park for half the price, which enables them to release finance and reduce debt.”
Other similar plays, according to Winkworth’s Property Exchange podcast, include Dulwich to Crystal Palace, Islington to Highbury, and Hammersmith to Shepherd’s Bush.
Meanwhile, Winkworth’s estimates a move from Clapham or Balham to Tooting could save you £1 million on a double-fronted family house.
These are age-old moves for a certain type of (increasingly wealthy) Londoner as they spawn.
But as a property orthodoxy, it feels a little passé to think of the London market solely in these terms.
For starters, many people won’t be saving £500,000, it’s more likely to be close to their full budget (the average London house price is currently £537,250).
As a result, much bigger moves have become far more common, be it from west to east, or north to south London, in pursuit of the capital’s cheaper homes.
Moving out of London altogether is another newly popular option, with ex-Londoners doing everything from setting up adventure holiday businesses to founding smallholdings from Portsmouth to Portugal.
Home movers haven’t shaken off all their postcode prejudice but soaring house prices combined with wfh culture have opened minds to new frontiers.
The Queen’s (Park) Gambit might hold an enduring appeal, but other, less obvious moves are on the up too.
