And finally…condemned Peckham prefab sells for almost £1m

It is an area of London more closely associated with Del Boy than high-end property deals but a dilapidated prefab bungalow in Peckham has just sold at auction for nearly £1 million pounds.

The sale has been seen as yet more evidence of the ballooning property market in the capital that some analysts now believe is a bubble now waiting to pop.

The eventual fee paid of £920,000 far outstripped the already generous £590,000 guide price, despite the fact that the new owner will have to immediately demolish the structure that has been empty for 13 years on land that as yet has no permission to develop.

It was also almost double the £476,000 average price of homes on the street.

The south-east London property sparked a bidding war after it was advertised by Savills as being “close to the increasingly popular ‘village’ shopping amenities and cafes along Bellenden Road and Peckham Rye station”.

“There was quite a lot of interest in it and bidding started at £600,000, so people weren’t messing around,” said Chris Coleman-Smith, a director and auctioneer at Savills.

“It was a good result and there is certainly scope for the buyer to achieve a good return.”

He told the BBC: “Peckham has connotations of Only Fools and Horses and that can be one side, but the other side is traditional, old Victorian areas,” he said.

“Someone has bought it to develop it and that area is a hotspot. It is a really good location.”

The property was previously owned by Southwark Council and hasn’t been lived in since 2002. It also comes with 0.6 acres of land.

Councillor Richard Livingstone, cabinet member for housing at Southwark Council, said the money from the sale would be used to help create better homes for residents in the borough.

“We are investing hundreds of millions of pounds to not only improve our current housing stock - by making them warm, dry and safe and providing quality kitchens and bathrooms - but also to build 11,000 new council homes across the borough,” he told the Evening Standard.

“Although selling council homes is not something we would normally want to do, sometimes the costs for repairs and refurbishment to bring our older properties to a decent standard is simply too high.

“In these cases, we have the option to sell them when they become vacant and use the money to fund this housing investment programme.

“We are extremely pleased that once again we have managed to raise a significant amount of money from the sale of a property, that was far past its expected lifespan …”