Don’t get too excited. The national newspaper’s praise for the south London town is, at best, grudging. By special correspondent, PHIL SPACE
Croydon is one of the top 20 places in the country to live if you’re under 35.
Churnalism: the clickbait listicle is poorly researched, but is sure to please estate agent advertisers
That’s official.
Well, official if you believe everything you read in the Murdoch-owned Sunday Times.
Once a bastion of hard-hitting Sunday journalism under campaigning editor Harry Evans (Murdoch would eventually get rid of Evans), these days they appear capable of publishing any old tosh.
The Hitler Diaries were probably based on more verified facts than have been included in this lightweight, post-Christmas, thrown-together space filler.
Most likely, the newspaper’s ad department has been on the case of the features desk, demanding some soft-focus feature to help their estate agent clients.
And so we have this load of hackneyed piffle, where the great Thatcherite fantasy of “getting on the property ladder” is trotted out in the opening paragraph, while there’s absolutely no consideration given to the real meaning of “affordable” housing.
“You just need to know where to look and be prepared to consider somewhere new,” says this execrable piece, which claims to have been the work of five separate journalists, though probably was cut-and-pasted together in half an hour using Google and a bit of AI.
This Top 20 (such “listicles” are a curse of modern churnalism) claims Leeds city centre (average house price: £187,000) is the top location for those looking to set up home for the first time in their “post-uni, pre-kid years”.
They say of Leeds: “This Yorkshire powerhouse is a rare location where it is possible to afford a home within walking distance of all the transport, shopping, entertainment, food and drink you could wish for before celebrating the big 3-0.” We did say it was execrable.
Croydon comes in at No18, behind the likes of Liverpool and Sheffield, Dundee and Cardiff, but reassuringly (if you crave reassurance that much) ahead of Walthamstow and Leith (Edinburgh), as well as the countless places that didn’t manage to make it on to this somewhat arbitrary and random selection of estate agent hot-spots.
The Croydon listing is just as superficial as you might expect. According to this, the town’s biggest plus point is residents’ ability to get away from it very easily. The “excellent transport links” schtick has been a fixture in estate agents’ sales pitches for Croydon properties for at least 20 years. It is as if the salespeople can’t understand that anyone who lives here would ever dream of spending time here…
Trams, Westfield and Boozepark: the best thing about Croydon, according to the Sunset Times, is getting away from Croydon
It is vacuous and really badly informed. They even mention the prospect of Westfield.
Croydon’s second biggest plus point is, according to the Sunset Times’s top team of property click-bait writers, Boozepark. Yep. And according to them, that’s just about all Croydon has to offer.
“Croydon is worth checking out,” the article implores, as the writers struggle to overcome their shock that they even managed to include the place on this list.
“It’s hard to find a better-connected base, with its fast transport links to London, Gatwick airport and Brighton.” See what we mean?
The praise is very grudging. These are no fans of brutalism. They probably haven’t even heard of the word. “Croydon isn’t pretty,” they say, bluntly.
“You can blame the planners who decided 60 years ago that it would be rebuilt as a dystopian version of Manhattan. But there’s a surprisingly broad range of property on offer, from period conversions near East Croydon railway station for about £200,000 to new-build two-bedroom flats for £250,000.”
You can tell this is for the benefit of estate agents, since it focuses on property values, rather than the essential need for everyone to have a decent home: “Regeneration is keeping values moving in the right direction, and if the long-delayed ‘mini Westfield’ is finished in five years, it should give Croydon its biggest boost since the opening of Boxpark, the shipping container shops and street food hub.”
There you go. Westfield won’t be complete, in “mini” form or otherwise, for at least another 12 years. And that is according to Westfield.
To round-off, they then cite an average house price (assuming everyone wants to buy) in Croydon of £444,000.
If the Sunday Times team can find anyone who is under 35 and has £45,000 tucked away for a mandatory 10% deposit, and who is also able to then pay as much as £2,000 per month in mortgage repayments, we’d be really interested to meet them.
Meanwhile, Steve Reed, the MP for Streatham (and Croydon North if he can be bothered), is still banging on about “Build, baby! Build!”, and allowing property developers to concrete over the Green Belt for maximum profit, rather than delivering what is desperately needed, which is social housing available at social rents.
Read more: The Fold folds: Hundreds of tenants given six months to leave
Read more: Croydon shamed over ‘dangerous squalor’ in council flats
Read more: Another Croydon scandal: the £3k per month high-rise slums
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