The 'Four Bed' Terrace

Fulham from the air looks like a tightly arranged residential utopia with spatterings of green spaces breaking up the otherwise uniform terraces. The river, the good schools, the open spaces and the large amount of freehold family houses is the draw, but with so many on offer where do you look first and what’s the difference between them?

Talking to estate agents can sometimes be equally confusing, they’ll use the lingo and jargon of the profession realing off road names as if they were sweets in a shop. Reading between the lines you’ll quickly realise that although the majority of Fulham houses are built in roughly the same layout, certainly they were all built between 1890 and 1910 (the olden day equivalent of whacking up almose an entire town of ‘new developments’) they vary from road to road. These minor alterations are to be kept in mind, especially when choosing between houses, but the main differentiator is of course location. As such each road carries a price tag, the closer you get to Parsons Green (the popular triangle of turf in central SW6) the more it is inevitably going to cost you.

You must move quickly to avoid being scuppered by another buyer who shares your good taste

A good way of looking at it is to to see every road in Fulham as being on a leaderboard. The primary focus is buying on the best road you can afford - aiming as high up the list as you can reach, so to speak. For example, a Gowan Aevnue is marginally better than a Wardo Avenue but collectively they’d be seen as almost equal in the grander scheme of things. On a secondary level is the quality of the house inside, this you can change but your house is not moving anywhere soon.

The Essentials
Price: £1.1m - £1.8m
Price per square foot: £650 - £1000
Size: 1,300sq ft (120 sq m) - 2,100 sq ft (195 sq m)
Availability: Good, although they go fast in good locations close to Parsons Green.

The majority of four bed houses (at time of press) fall between £1.2m and £1.8m. Over this price and you’ll be looking at either more bedrooms or a super high spec house that has been restructured to reduce the number of bedrooms and increase space. You’ll certainly be able to grab one for under a million if you’re prepared to buy away from the underground in areas such as Sands End or in the roads further north at the top of Munster Road. Unfortunatley even the un-modernised houses coming to the market are now achieving healthy prices on good roads. Years ago these properties were the staple diet of the developer machine and margins of up to 20% were achievable but nowadays the standard way of pricing them is to substract the potential building works from the fully extended price, virtually removing the profit margin. Owner occupiers are more than happy to pay a fair price for a house that they can modernise to their tastes and developers are more than happy to do the work on their behalf.

As well as deciding which roads to go for, consider where on ther road you’d like ot be. For example on Winchendon Road, the houses at the extreme northern end are wider, while on Felden Street they’re bigger on the east side but have smaller gardens. The best houses tend to be the ones in the middle of a well kept terrace, with a South or West facing garden. Try to avoid buying close to or opposite council blocks, and if your road meets one of the busier roads such as Fulham Road, the houses further from the traffic are the ones that will sell faster. Roads with fewer flats are also more in demand, being easier for parking and generally quiter. On some roads there are the odd one or two which are slightly larger or have bigger gardens, but these are usually an anomoly and you can spot them as they sometimes have a different fascia, an added bonus.

Years ago these properties were the staple diet of the developer machine and margins of up to 20% were achievable

So what do you get for your money? Most four bed houses in Fulham are between 1,300 sq ft (120 sq m) and 2,100 sq ft (195 sq m) and you can roughly divide them into two categories by size. Larger houses (such as on Clonmel Road) being between 1,600 sq ft (148 sq m) un-extended to over 2,100 sq ft (195 sq m) fully extended, and the smaller terraces (such as on Cristowe Road) between 1,300 sq ft (120 sq m) unextended and 1,700 sq ft (157 sq m) extended. Expect to pay between £650 per sqaure foot for a house requiring a lot of work all the way up to £1000 a square foot for a fully modernised and kitted-out house close to Parsons Green on a good road.

In this market there are always fewer houses available than buyers, so you must be able to move quickly to avoid being scuppered by another buyer who shares your good taste. Our advice is to know where you’re buying, specifically which roads you’d like to buy on, know the roads and know them well. Talk to estate agents, listen to their opinions and ensure they understand how serious you are. This way, when something comes up you’ll know the prices intimately and you’ll probably know the layout before you even walk through the door. If you’re buying with the help of a mortgage try to make sure it’s all in place before you put your offer in. This will reduce the time it takes you to exchange and ensure you get the property off the open market - and one step closer to making it yours - sooner rather than later.