148 Gipsy Road, London, SE27

A smart two-bedroom ground-floor garden flat (private and with direct access) in a handsome Victorian terrace on Gipsy Road, presented in excellent condition. Offered to the market with a long lease with 150 years remaining, and no service charge or ground rent.

This well-presented ground-floor offers excellent value, given it’s got direct access to a private garden, a long lease and two bedrooms! The layout makes good sense for a flat this size, with the principal bedroom at the front, it’s nicely set apart from the living space, while the reception opens through a glazed door onto the garden, so on a warm day the inside and the outside read as one. The kitchen sits right alongside, linked to the reception by an arched opening that already lets the two rooms talk to one another. The second bedroom and the shower room complete things.

The reception is an easy, comfortable room: space for a pair of sofas and a media wall, the garden door pulling in light at one end, and the arched hatch through to the kitchen keeping the whole thing sociable rather than shut off. Marble-effect tiling runs underfoot here and through much of the flat. Next door, the kitchen is a well-kept, sociable space, with room for a dining table that seats four. There are white high-gloss units, black sparkle worktops, an integrated oven and hob, a stainless chimney extractor and a high level of fit and finish. There’s a large window keeping the space bright, which will also be useful when having BBQ’s and you need to pass things into the garden!

The shower room is a genuine feature. It's tiled floor to ceiling in a warm stone-effect, with a walk-in rainfall shower behind a glass screen, a sculptural stone basin and a WC. It's a shower room rather than a bathroom — there's no tub — but it's been done with real confidence and feels a cut above the usual.

The principal bedroom is a lovely room; it has high ceilings and a square bay window dressed with wooden shutters. There’s coving overhead lending character, and there’s room for freestanding wardrobes and a dressing table, as the current owners have it. The second bedroom is the smaller of the two and the more flexible: it's set up as a music room right now, decks and a wall of vinyl, but it works just as readily as a guest room, study or nursery, with a window to the rear and the same flooring underfoot.

Outside is where the flat earns its keep. The garden is private and well established, framed by mature planting, hedging and trees that give it real screening — and, with the palms, a faintly tropical feel. There's a decked dining terrace with table and chairs, a lounge area for the warmer months, and a side return down the flank of the building, decked and home to the BBQ and a hanging chair, which adds properly usable space rather than just being somewhere to walk through. It's the kind of green space that takes years to settle in, and this one clearly has.

Location-wise, this stretch of Gipsy Road puts you within easy reach of Crystal Palace, West Norwood, Gipsy Hill and West Dulwich — a real breadth of options for a day or an evening out. Your go-to will likely be the Crystal Palace Triangle, with its gastropubs, cafés, restaurants and vibrant mix of independent shops: brunch at Bloom Café, a film at the Everyman, a class at The Yoga Edge, and the local furniture shops and markets to browse for mid-century classics. The food market is Crystal Palace's answer to Borough Market — it brings together local producers and small sustainable farmers every Saturday, and on a Sunday, you can wander over to Crystal Palace Park for the outdoor food market and coffee and breakfast at the family-friendly Brown & Green. West Norwood holds its own, too, with some excellent brunch spots, gastropubs and a Picturehouse cinema of its own.

Transport is strong here, Gipsy Hill station — with links to London Bridge, Victoria and Clapham Junction — is 0.6 miles away, roughly a 14-minute walk (and do say hello to Fanny, the resident station cat and something of a local celebrity). West Norwood station is the same distance in the other direction, with four trains an hour to both Victoria and London Bridge. Spoilt for choice, in other words.