Property Prices on one recently built development under the flight path in Greenwich have crashed whilst those less than a few minutes walk away, but not under the flight path, nor in the noise contour, are flourishing. So it seems that the current general credit crunch effects cannot be applied.A campaigner recently had their home valued and was told that their property value had decreased by £57,000 in 3 years. And this is just the tip of the iceberg other residents in the same development have lost over £100,000.
It's a tale of two developments - with exactly the same problems - but the only difference being that one is beneath the flight path.
London City Airport recently asked their friends to prove that airport expansion doesn't effect property prices. Interestingly their friends were not brave enough to use the area around London City Airport as an example. Instead they used Farnborough and Heathrow. Once again, it was a clear case of skirting around the real issue, something that LCA is so good at.
Something which is more valuable, and not tinged by the aviation industry is a study by Stop Stanstead Expansion group who were lucky enough to have a specialist to look at the effects of expansion on property values around Stanstead Airport. They estimated, after having looked at property data from over a period of years that: there had been a loss of £800 million on the value of local properties around the Stanstead areas.
What is more, Newham was also plummetting behind on the property front some time ago according to the Newham Recorder, well behind property trends elsewhere.
So how are the Government, house builders and land owners in the areas affected going to convince eager home owners to buy in the Thames Gateway which is overflown by LCA flights at low level? They say there is shortage of homes, but the Thames Gateway already has an image problem without Public Safety Zones and excrutiating noise levels of up to the mid - late 80dbs.
Developments such as Silvertown Quays, Tamesis Point and many others are going to have their work cut out. We'd like to see the developers be more vocal about the effects of expansion on the properties they are building- as the cat is definately out of the bag based on all the current evidence whether they like it or not. Why else wouldn't property agents be telling prospective buyers about the airport expansion plans and the associated noise, whilst others only like to show buyers around at the no flight time - Saturday afternoons.
All in all it's just another way in which residents are paying for the operation of London City Airport and the airlines, along with the £7million pound annual security that London taxpayers pay (which Richard Gooding has no intention of paying - see Wanstead and Woodford Guardian Q & A session with Richard Gooding) , the tax breaks, the pollution and effects on residents health. All picked up by...you, the taxpayer and local resident.
