Estate agents report “meta-gentrification” as original gentrifiers are priced out by second wave
By Harper-Thames | Covering Shoreditch since it was merely very expensive rather than catastrophically so.
Sources: Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
The Snake Has Eaten Itself
Property analysts confirmed this week what residents have suspected for approximately three years: Shoreditch has completed the gentrification cycle and emerged into what experts are calling “post-gentrification,” a phase in which the people who gentrified the area are themselves being priced out by the people attracted by the gentrification they caused. This is either deeply ironic or simply Tuesday. Probably both.
The original wave — the artists, the graphic designers, the people who called everything “curated” — arrived in the early 2000s. They were followed by the tech workers. The tech workers were followed by the finance-adjacent tech workers. The finance-adjacent tech workers were followed by people with connections to sovereign wealth funds who describe themselves as “creative.” Each wave found the previous wave charmingly authentic and drove up the rent.
The Data
According to Rightmove, average rents in EC2 have increased by margins that I will not quote directly because the number makes me lie down. What I will say is that a one-bedroom flat on a street where I once paid human rent now costs the kind of monthly figure that would, ten years ago, have purchased the entire building.
And now OpenAI has arrived, which means the next wave is incoming: the AI researchers, the machine learning engineers, the people who have very strong opinions about model architecture and equally strong credit ratings. They will find the current residents charmingly authentic. The rents will reflect their arrival within approximately one quarter.
Where Does It End?
It ends, as all things British seem to end lately, with a politely worded report recommending further study. We study it. The rents rise. The artists go to Walthamstow. Walthamstow becomes Shoreditch. And somewhere, a property consultant updates a slide deck titled “Emerging Neighbourhoods 2027” and calls it a cycle. It is not a cycle. It is a one-way door. But the slide deck is very professional.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/managing-britains-decline/
Housing crisis comedy at The Daily Mash
