Ah yes, Hackney, “where more shootings take place than anywhere else in Britain”, according to the Standard in 1996. The borough has been the major house price success story of the past three decades, with prices rising 738 per cent to £619,400. At first people may have been buying there out of necessity, priced out of neighbouring Islington, but over the years it has become aspirational in its own right, with hordes of non-residents joining the locals to see and be seen on Broadway Market or in the bars of Hackney Wick. Waltham Forest, also in east London, has been the other resounding boom borough, with 30-year house price growth of 725 per cent to £532,200.