City Guide: crawley

Crawley is one of the property hot spots of a South East of England. It is located two unknowing miles south of Gatwick airport and you south of London connected by a the M23 motorway and the London to Brighton railway. Crawley is a new town, built to cope well with the ever-increasing expansion of London's suburbs and to relieve the South East's housing shortage. Established during the 1950s, Crawley is now a modern busy town with a large number of the population commuting into London on a daily basis or working in or around the airport.

The town of Crawley consists of a number of areas such as Maidenbower, Tollgate, Tilgate and Crawley Down. There are currently a large number of property redevelopments and new house builds in the area. In particular, one and two-bed roomed flats are being built near the train stations of Three Bridges and Crawley station. This is to cater for the large number of young professionals and mobile workers coming in to Crawley on a regular basis. Indeed, the demographics of Crawley are fairly mixed between all the major ethnic backgrounds found in the United Kingdom today.

Property prices have risen dramatically over the last 15 years as the demand through population growth has increased in line with the rest of the UK. Other factors include the future building of a southern university in Crawley, the potential expansion of a second runway at Gatwick Airport and an economic boom in the area due to industrial and it retail expansion in the area.

In addition, Crawley remains a popular hot spot for rental accommodation because of its geographic proximity to London, Gatwick and Brighton and West Sussex areas like Haywards Heath and Redhill. As well as being a convenient modern place to live with a modern shopping centre and chain high-street chain shops in the centre, there are also a number of local traditional tourist attractions nearby. These include Tullys farm, Brighton sea life center, the South Downs, and a large number of very old traditional English pubs such as The Crown. In addition, the leisure facilities are excellent including a Esporta, Cannons gym, Virgin gym and many more. There is an out of town retail park with restaurants, bars and night life. There is a lovely Zoo near Tollgate Park with a traditional open-air farm where families can bring the kids to sample Country Life, with a tea room and pleasant gardens to walk round. This is free and is managed by the council.

Most of the letting agents and estate agents are located on Crawley High Street near the new Asda and cover the area of Crawley. Typical rental values for a two-bedroom apartment are approximately £750 per month in 2006. The average two-bed roomed house his approximately £180,000. There have been at discussions and speculation as to whether or not Crawley and Burgess Hill would ever join together has expansion has continued at an inevitable pace. This now seems to have been dismissed. Villages like Worth have seen large property price increases as redevelopment has continued to merge Crawley and Worth together.

We've increases in population; the local transport infrastructure has struggled to cope. In particular, the M23 has become busier with commuters and its slip roads at junction’s 9, 10 and 11 are usually clogged up in the mornings during rush hour. There has been a consistently high demand for rail travel from Three Bridges up through East Croydon into London Bridge. At that new Fastway bus service has recently been created to improve public transport in and around the Crawley this has been achieved by building new bus lanes and has received mixed reaction from locals complaining about increases in traffic congestion while there bus service itself has been under utilised.

There is not a huge amount of traditional architecture in Crawley as most of the town is post war or modern redevelopment properties. However, some have survived including the there are George pub on there high-street still boasting its original timbers and well worth a visit.

On this page you will find details of property for sale, rental accommodation, shared housing in crawley.