Balham has emerged from the shadows to be the area of choice for professional homes

Setting a New Trend

Balham has emerged from the shadows to be the area of choice for professional homes, says David Spittles.

Balham is the rising residential star of south-west London. The area has languished in the shadow of neighbouring Clapham and Wandsworth, but bankers and lawyers are moving in, Victorian terraces are smartening up and the place is growing increasingly trendy.

Young metropolitan types fill newly opened bars and restaurants on lively Balham High Road. But where do they live? Certainly not in the sort of apartment schemes that have sprouted up close to other Northern Line stations such as London Bridge, King’s Cross or Angel.

In Balham, there are no such developments – a gap in the market that Angel Property is trying to plug with Blueprint, a snazzy scheme of 50 flats designed by award-winning architectural firm Munkenbeck and Marshall.

“We scouted the area and quickly spotted that the new developments under construction there had extremely unimaginative designs,” says Kurt Little, Angel’s managing director. “Buyers are crying out for homes with a bit of flair and excitement, so we came up with a design that is markedly different from anything else in Balham.”

Angel has made a name for itself with the Jam Factory in Bermondsey, raising the stakes in the area by building high specification lofts. Blueprint is an altogether more contemporary building on the site of an old printing works, where the hit reality television show The Salon was filmed – hair today, gone tomorrow.

The new low-rise building is clad in cedar and pre-patinated copper, and has two external glass-fronted feature lifts. Open-plan apartments have underfloor heating and limestone, glass and walnut finishes. Decked terraces are screened by metal planters rather than railings, a deft design touch enhanced by good-quality communal landscaping.

Prices range from £235,000 for a one-bedroom apartment to £295,000 for a two-bedroom apartment. Secure covered parking costs £15,000. Completion is due in early 2005. Call 020 8772 8000.

Values are about £20 a square foot more than other schemes have sold for; but the homes have “touched a nerve”, says Peter Davis of estate agency Foxtons, whose glass shop front on Balham High Road is another tell-tale sign of the area’s arrival. “Balham has taken over from Clapham as the place for young professionals to put down roots.”

More than half the flats have sold, mostly to singles and couples who commute to Central London.

Blueprint is a five-minute walk to the Tube station and on the edge of the sought-after Nightingale Triangle, a leafy enclave of Victorian housing.