Elephant Park, Elephant & Castle (Zone 1)

A stunning new development right in Zone 1 called Elephant Park.  The advertisement appeared in the Business Times this morning.  The website is very attractive.

Theme - Creating Central London's New Green Belt
I love the theme - Creating London's new green heart.  London is one of the greenest large metropolitan city in the world, definitely the greenest in Western Europe, with 39% of surface area made up of publicly accessible green space.   On this count, Singapore ranks first in the world, with 47% green spaces.  Way to go Singapore!!

Location of Elephant Park
It will be built on what was formerly the Heygate Estate. This estate, the long-drawn process of evicting the tenants, the sad stories of 80-something year olds forced to move.  All very sad.  I blog about this episode here in "Heygate London versus HDB Singapore".  We ought not to take our public housing for granted.

For now, let's focus on the upcoming Elephant Park.  Location?  Within an easy 5 minutes walk to Elephant and Castle Tube station, which is in Zone 1.  It is also near the Elephant and Castle rail station.

Looking at the Google Maps snapshot, I have circled the plot for this phase of Elephant Park - South Gardens.  You can see that it is just south of Heygate Street.

The Elephant Park project is huge, almost 3,000 homes, and likely to be sold over quite a number of different phases.  Lend Lease (the Developer) is now just launching the very first phase, which is South Gardens.

We can expect each phase to get more and more expensive.  I think all the different phases would be quite interesting.  From a location point of view, the South Gardens isn't the best phase.

There is substantial regeneration going on in the Elephant & Castle area, and this is certainly long overdue. Location-wise, you can't really beat a Zone 1 place.  But take note that even now, the Elephant & Castle area is still very run-down.  It has long been a neglected area, probably because there is so much social housing.

Evicting the tenants from the former Heygate estate took years.  But the Southwark Council is more determined than ever to re-generate the area.   Well, if you are pro-Labour, the regeneration would be most objectionable because all the poorer people have now been made to move out of Heygate and there is no way they can afford to stay in London.  What's going to happen to them?  I don't know.

Pricing 
For Zone 1, the pricing looks acceptable, though it is certainly on the higher side of what we had expected.   We heard that the early release units are all gone now and the developer will be releasing more units over the Singapore exhibition weekend. (12th and 13th April).

Update - Apparently the developer will not be releasing many units in Asia, because they are under tremendous pressure by the local council not to sell too many units to Asia.   Anyway, we don't intend to invest in this project for now.

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Check out this development video.  Many birds chirping!

Happy Investing!

Important Disclaimer - . The views contained in this blog and blog post are entirely mine. We cannot be made responsible for any investment decisions you may, or may not, take. Nothing in this blog can be construed as professional investment advice, as we are NOT professional investors and we are ill qualified to give you any advice.  Read the blog at YOUR own risk