Ground floor only this time — the brief's private outdoor space taken as the starting filter rather than a hope. Tooting, Furzedown and the Heaver Estate edge. Checked 16 Aug 2026.
Streatham Hill cost £648 per square foot and gave you a shared garden. Tooting costs almost exactly the same — £647 at Bickersteth Road — and gives you a private one, share of freehold included. That is the single most useful thing on this page. The two areas sit a mile and a half apart and price identically, but only one of them actually meets the brief.
Ground-floor stock here is deep. Filtering to ground floor knocked out most of Streatham Hill and half of Herne Hill; in Tooting it still leaves nine serious candidates between £435,000 and £625,000, the majority of them Victorian conversions with their own garden. Share of freehold is common rather than exceptional — four of the nine below — which is the same structural advantage Sydenham had.
What you pay for is the Northern line. Tooting Broadway and Tooting Bec are zone 3 with a direct run to the City and the West End, and Tooting rail adds Thameslink. That puts Tooting's typical £650–£760 per square foot between Peckham and Herne Hill on your map — expensive, but not the top of it, and with better-quality ground-floor stock than either.
Tooting Broadway a short walk · quiet residential road · Marsh & Parsons Tooting
The only Tooting flat that competes with the outer-London lists on space, and it isn't close. 967 square feet at £517 per square foot beats Auckland Hill in West Norwood (£552) and lands nearer the Sydenham £400k band than anything else inside zone 3. Victorian conversion, kitchen and bathroom recently renovated, private garden with a patio, a large basement for storage and room for a side-return extension. Check what the 967 sq ft includes — if the basement is counted, the usable figure is smaller and the £/sq ft is flattering. Leasehold with no term published, which at this price is the first question to ask.
Tooting Broadway, Northern line · Winkworth Tooting
The best-structured buy on the page. Share of freehold, so no lease term to worry about and no landlord; a large private garden; and planning permission already in place to convert to three bedrooms and two bathrooms — which is a genuine option on future value that none of the other listings carry. Victorian conversion, open-plan reception and dining, separate kitchen, chain free. 693 sq ft at £685/sq ft is mid-market for Tooting, and the permission is effectively free upside.
Near Tooting Broadway · Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward Tooting
The cheapest way into Tooting that still meets the whole brief. Share of freehold and direct access to a private rear garden at £450,000 — the lowest price on this list that gets you both. 696 sq ft at £647/sq ft is the exact figure Streatham Hill charged for a shared garden, which is the comparison worth holding onto. Well presented, chain free, council tax band C. It's offers over and the price was reduced in June, so it has been sitting — worth asking why before assuming it's a bargain.
Salterford Road, Furzedown, SW17
Furzedown · Tooting Broadway for the Northern line · Dexters Tooting
Nothing on any of your eleven lists runs this cheaply. A 158-year lease with no service charge and no ground rent at all — against £1,740 a year on the Forest Hill flat that started this search, that difference alone is worth roughly £40,000 of purchase price over a decade. 807 sq ft at £619/sq ft, private garden, period detail, updated kitchen. The catch is that it's a maisonette, so you get the ground floor plus stairs rather than everything on one level, and Furzedown is a longer walk to the tube than the others here.
Tooting rail within walking distance · Tooting Broadway amenities · Winkworth Tooting
The best tenure position here — share of freehold with 174 years on the lease — and a south-facing garden, which matters more than the listings ever admit. Master bedroom with a bay window and plantation shutters, high ceilings, open-plan reception into the kitchen with a small study attached, chain free. What you're paying for is finish, not space: 658 sq ft at £760/sq ft is the second-dearest figure on the page. It was reduced in June, so there may be movement.
Tooting Broadway and Tooting Thameslink both in reach · Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward Tooting
Share of freehold with a nominal £25 ground rent, a landscaped rear garden, and the fullest period spec on the page — double-glazed sash windows, original wooden flooring, a bay-fronted kitchen/dining room and a separate reception with a fireplace. 697 sq ft at £717/sq ft is toward the top of the range, and "offers over" means it goes higher still. Note that a second ground-floor maisonette on Glasford Street is advertised at £475,000 for 688 sq ft through a different agent — ask KFH whether that's the same flat, because the two listings describe near-identical properties £25,000 apart.
Tooting · Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward Tooting
Recently refurbished ground-floor maisonette that keeps its period detail — fireplaces, Victorian cornicing, wooden floors and double-glazed sash windows — with a private landscaped garden in sandstone tiling to the rear. 730 sq ft is decent for the money and the 135-year lease is comfortable. Two things dampen it: £719/sq ft, and a £440 annual ground rent, the highest on the page and a figure worth checking the review clause on before you commit.
Garratt Lane (Bellamy House), SW17
Tooting Broadway · Winkworth Tooting
The cheapest thing in Tooting with a private garden attached, at 669 sq ft and £650/sq ft, with a bay-windowed reception, high ceilings, a brand new boiler and no chain. The lease is the problem: 88 years. That is the shortest on any of your twelve lists, and it is close enough to the eighty-year threshold — below which extension costs jump sharply — that you would want to extend soon after buying, at a cost that should come off the offer. Add £1,352 a year in service charge and the running costs are the worst here too.
Heaver Estate · Tooting Bec and Balham stations · Rampton Baseley
The premium end of the search: the Heaver Estate, a conservation area between Tooting Common and Balham High Road, with Tooting Bec and Balham both walkable. Bay-windowed reception with a feature fireplace, built-in shelving, private lawned garden with a shed. Two gaps make it hard to judge against the rest — no floor area is published, so it can't be placed on the £/sq ft table, and the lease is stated as 175 years in one place and 84 in another. Both need resolving with the agent before this is comparable, let alone viewable.
| Area | Typical £/sq ft | What £400k–£500k buys | Private garden at this price? |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Norwood SE25 | £383–£493 | 760–1,045 sq ft | Yes, routinely |
| Sydenham SE26 (£400k band) | £401–£607 | 790–936 sq ft | Yes |
| Forest Hill SE23 | £430–£620 | 605–872 sq ft | Sometimes |
| Catford SE6 | £461 | 760 sq ft | Yes, two of them |
| Crystal Palace SE19 | £495 | 778 sq ft | Yes |
| West Norwood SE27 | £510–£779 | 642–932 sq ft | Yes |
| Tooting SW17 — Selkirk Road | £517 | 967 sq ft | Yes |
| Peckham & Nunhead SE15 | £600–£724 | 518–667 sq ft | Small ones |
| The 1-bed that started this | £620 | 605 sq ft | Yes |
| Streatham Hill SW2/SW16 | £648 | 617 sq ft | No — shared only |
| Tooting SW17 — typical | £650–£760 | 658–807 sq ft | Yes, and usually share of freehold |
| Sydenham SE26 (£500k band) | £691–£767 | ~650–720 sq ft | Yes |
| Herne Hill SE24 | £717–£831 | 593–667 sq ft | Yes |
Streatham Hill is now redundant. It was ruled out because private gardens didn't exist there at £400,000. Tooting is the same money per square foot, a mile and a half away, on a better tube line, and the gardens are private and the freeholds are shared. There is no version of the brief where Streatham Hill beats Tooting — that page can be closed.
Selkirk Road is the genuine find. £517 per square foot inside zone 3 is not something the previous eleven searches produced; it is cheaper per foot than West Norwood and roughly two-thirds of Herne Hill, for 967 square feet and a garden. If the floor area survives scrutiny — and the basement question is the whole of that scrutiny — it belongs on the shortlist alongside Woodside Green rather than below it.
But the South Norwood comparison still holds. Woodside Green is 1,045 sq ft with a 60 ft garden and share of freehold at £400,000. Selkirk Road is 967 sq ft at £500,000 with the lease unpublished. You are paying £100,000 for the Northern line and a postcode people have heard of. That is the same trade this search has produced eleven times; Tooting just offers a better version of the expensive side of it than Herne Hill or Peckham did.
Ground floor as a filter worked. Applying it from the start rather than hoping for it produced nine viable candidates instead of the one or two that survived the same test on the earlier lists. Worth re-running on West Norwood at £425,000, which was the other strong page.
Two Glasford Street listings, £25,000 apart. A ground-floor maisonette at £500,000 for 697 sq ft through KFH, and one at £475,000 for 688 sq ft through a different agent. The descriptions are close enough that these may be the same property listed twice. Establish which before making an offer on either.
Drakefield Road's lease is stated two different ways — 175 years in one field, 84 in another. Those are not a rounding error apart; one is fine and one needs an extension costed in. No floor area is published either, which for a £625,000 asking price is a lot to leave unsaid.
Garratt Lane's 88 years is the shortest lease across all twelve searches. Extension gets materially more expensive below 80 years, so this needs pricing into the offer rather than treating as a later problem.
Two "ground floor" listings have no private garden at all. Jean House on Tooting Grove (£400,000, 599 sq ft, communal rear garden, 97-year lease, £1,155 service charge) and St. Georges Grove (£400,000, balcony plus communal gardens, 108-year lease, £275 ground rent). Both are the cheapest headline prices in Tooting and both fail the one requirement that started this search. And avoid Byton Road at £550,000 for 607 sq ft — £906 per square foot is the worst value found anywhere across the twelve lists.