Leamington Close, near Romford in Havering, has an average house price of £97,800. It is one of only two streets in the capital where prices remain under £100,000; the other is Willow Tree Walk, off the A222 in Bromley. Bearing in mind that the average house price in London is in excess of £300,000, they seem like a bargain. So what's the catch?

Kirsty Allsop hasn't made it out there yet, but the area around Leamington Close is made up of Fifties red-brick blocks on the Harold Hill estate. It is described sniffily by a spokesperson for Mouseprice, who organised the survey, as having "relatively high unemployment" that attracts "first-time buyers who can afford nothing else".

However, a far more dependable opinion comes courtesy of Eileen Langley-Fogg, 84, a resident in Leamington Close for fifteen years, who extols the area's charms:

We don't have CCTV, we have a communal washing line. You wouldn't get many estates in London where you could hang up your clothes and they wouldn't go missing."

Communal washing lines? We're sold - anything that means we get to avoid the screwface scenes at the local laundrette has to be a good thing.

Image of Romford station courtesy of OwenBlacker's Flickrstream