NEVER mind gentrification. For an area really to have arrived, it must now be super-gentrified.

To ensure that their surroundings achieve such status, wealthy City executives have been throwing money at already up-market properties to create a new movement within the housing market.

They have created an exclusive enclave that has undergone “social cleansing”, in which mixing across the wealth barriers is discouraged.

The only area in Britain where the process of super-gentrification has been identified so far is Barnsbury, within the London Borough of Islington.

As Tony and Cherie Blair moved out in 1997, the super-gentrifers were moving in, the Royal Geographical Society conference, in London, was told yesterday.

Super-gentrification began in the mid-1990s and the City workers responsible for it paid £700,000 on average for each terraced house or villa, at least £200,000 more than for comparable properties less than a mile away.

They were so wealthy that they either paid cash or took short-term mortgages, while spending as much as £500,000 on home improvements.

Despite the homes mostly being listed buildings, the new owners had little time for their properties’ history. Marble fireplaces and wood panelling were ripped out as they imposed their own ideas of comfort and beauty.

Loretta Lees, of King’s College London, said that whereas gentrification could take place in any urban area in need of a little reinvestment, super- gentrification was a rather more exclusive affair.

“A new group of super-wealthy professionals working in the City of London is slowly imposing its mark on this Inner London housing market in a way that differentiates it and them from traditional gentrifiers and from the traditional urban upper classes,” she said.

“Super-gentrification is quite different from the classical version of gentrification. It’s of a higher economic order. You need a much higher salary and bonuses to live in Barnsbury.

“These people send their children pretty much 100 per cent private. The earlier gentrification people were keen on sending them to state schools — they had a set of social values about urban living and mixing with other classes.

“The super-gentrifiers go against that. They have a different set of social and cultural values. They have so much money they can pretty much do as they want.

“They aren’t particularly interested in the history or being part of the community. They don’t particularly want to mix socially with the rest of the community. There is a whole set of Oxbridge connections and a lot of them went to university together.”

The super-gentrifiers are not quite so wealthy that they feel they can afford to live a life of leisure but they do have incomes of at least £150,000 a year and six-figure savings.

Dr Lees said that the research that she had carried out with Professor Tim Butler suggested that the super-gentrifiers had a strong work ethic. “Unlike the super-rich, these people work, and they work long hours,” she said.

“That’s part of the reason they’ve moved to Barnsbury — it’s close to the City and has the type of housing they want.”

She added: “I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing. It’s not displacing a population and the people they buy their houses from are usually happy to take the money, often being older people who want to downsize.

“Most of them share a new Labour idea of ‘communitarianism’. They see it as a socially mixed neighbourhood.

“It’s not gated. But when it comes down to it, they don’t want to mix.”

The only other location in the world where super-gentrification has been identified is Brooklyn Heights, in New York. The driving force behind the process in Britain, the society was told, is thought to be the globalisation of financial services, higher salaries and bonus schemes, and deregulation within the City.

WHAT YOU GET FOR YOUR MONEY

• Most properties are Georgian or early Victorian
  
  
• Houses sell for up to £3 million
  
  
• A five-floor, five-bedroom family home, with original fireplaces and cornicing, in Barnsbury Conservation Area is on sale for £1.35 million. It has three reception rooms, a garden and a basement flat that could be used by a nanny. Daryl Lenihan, of Carlton Estate Agents, said: “This area didn’t used to be a particularly desirable place to live but it is now incredibly popular”
  
  
• A seven-bedroom house is on sale for £1.75 million. “That’s an end-of-terrace property,” Mr Lenihan said. “If it was two doors farther down the road, it would probably be £2 million”

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