2 Bedroom Flat, Hermitage Road, London, SE19

Ticking a lot of boxes for first-time buyers is this first-floor two-bedroom flat on Hermitage Road , which combines a beautiful newly refurbished interior (including a brand-new kitchen), bags of character, high ceilings, a share of freehold and no onward chain.

The reception room is the heart of the flat and has a lovely feel to it. At 15'0 x 12'2 it gives you proper space for both sitting and dining, while two tall original sash windows bring in a huge amount of light and look out into the greenery beyond. The windows throughout the flat are the original single-glazed sashes and have all recently been refurbished, so they provide a lot of character, there is also plenty of the original detailing still in place here, including the ceiling rose, cornicing and a particularly pretty fireplace with its tiled surround.

The kitchen sits separately just off the reception room and is completely new, with simple handleless cabinetry, stone-effect worktops, a Belfast-style sink and integrated oven and gas hob. It has been sensibly laid out to make good use of the space, with plenty of storage and preparation area, it also looks fantastic and being new will serve it’s new owners well for many years to come.

Both bedrooms sit further along the hallway. The main bedroom measures 11'4 x 10'0 and has built-in storage, while the second is 9'10 x 8'3 and is currently arranged as a really good home office/guest room. Because every principal window faces south-east, the bedrooms get the same bright outlook as the reception room, with mature trees rather than neighbouring windows filling much of the view.

The bathroom has a full-size bath with a shower over it, and the flat as a whole has been freshly decorated and recarpeted where appropriate. There are some nice reminders of the building's age outside the flat too, particularly the original stained-glass window on the staircase, and there is also a useful storage attic area above the kitchen which roughly measures the same dimensions as the kitchen and is accessed via a loft hatch with a ladder in the reception room.

The building itself is an attractive red-brick period property set well back from Hermitage Road, with a broad front garden and plenty of space around it. It is managed and maintained by the people who live there, which shows in the condition of the communal parts and the building generally.

Location-wise, Hermitage Road is one of those addresses that makes a lot of sense once you know SE19 properly. The Triangle is 0.9 miles away — around a 20-minute walk or a very easy cycle — close enough to use all the time, but far enough out that you tend to get considerably more flat for your money. Move the same space and character half a mile closer to the centre of Crystal Palace and the numbers rise quite quickly.

The Triangle has everything it has become known for — independent cafés that take their coffee seriously, restaurants worth booking ahead, some of the best pubs in south London, galleries, boutiques, an Everyman Cinema and a Sainsbury’s for the practical stuff. Crystal Palace Food Market, tucked just off the Triangle on Haynes Lane, runs every Saturday and is one of those local institutions that quickly becomes part of the weekend routine — small producers, proper food and a very good excuse to wander into Crystal Palace on a Saturday morning.

There is plenty of green space nearby too. Crystal Palace Park has 200 Grade II listed acres, alongside the National Sports Centre with gym, padel, squash, trampolining and beach volleyball; there is also a boating lake, urban farm and the Victorian dinosaur sculptures that have been keeping local children entertained since the 1850s. Upper Norwood Recreation Ground is much closer to home and gives you almost 20 acres of open space, free tennis courts and somewhere properly convenient for running, dog walking or simply getting outside without making an expedition of it.

Transport is good from here too. Gipsy Hill and Crystal Palace stations are both within easy reach, giving access towards London Bridge and Victoria, while Crystal Palace also has London Overground connections north through Shoreditch and beyond. Beulah Hill is close by for the Superloop and regular bus routes towards Tulse Hill, Brixton and central London, so the flat works particularly well for buyers who want Crystal Palace on the doorstep without needing to live right in the middle of the Triangle.

Tenure-wise, the flat has a share of freehold and an accompanying lease of approx. 996 years. The service charge is a sensible £1700 PA, which we don’t often see with share of freehold buildings like this, (they often have no service charge meaning issues are much bigger and more expensive to rectify as on-going proactive maintenance is neglected). This pro-active management is a much more sensible approach to running a grand old building such as this.