The Sloane Ranger has a dilemma. Its natural habitat, the Victorian terraces of Fulham, southwest London, are in short supply. Only 35 were sold in SW6 in the three months to December last year, according to the Land Registry, compared with 198 in the three months to September 2006. Transactions have increased slightly to 57 sales in the three months to June this year, but it is still a low historical figure.

New-build could be an option for wannabe Fulhamites. Agents for The Gallery, a development of terraced houses on the site of the former Chelsea School of Art & Design, certainly hope so. This would represent a departure for the stereotypical conservative Fulham couple — he in the City (chinos and Barbour at weekends), she in PR (pashmina and pearls) — who until recently considered new-build to be the preserve of Barratt box-dwellers and the nouveaux riches.

That attitude has changed radically within the past five years, according to Lindsay Cuthill of Savills. “It now depends entirely on the product,” he says. “A lot of small rooms crammed into a small space is not going to be preferable to a Victorian terrace. But if it offers better space, then there’s a ready market for new properties.”

This trend has already been seen at Imperial Wharf on the border of Chelsea and Fulham, where 1,800 new flats are spread over 34 acres. Prices range from four-beds for £354,950 to river-view flats going for £5 million.

But Imperial Wharf is something of an anomaly, targeted more at the overseas and investment market than locals. By contrast, buyers at The Gallery, according to Tim Gawthorn of Jones Lang LaSalle, the selling agent, are more likely to be younger families who are moving up from a flat with plans to move out eventually to the country.

The Astral Homes development of red-brick and white-plaster houses is on Elbe Street in Sands End, near the new Imperial Wharf railway station, which opened on Tuesday.

All the four-bedroom houses have sold, but three three-bed houses, including the show house, are still available. They range in size from 1,244 to 1,300sq ft, and from £870,000 to £900,000.

Gawthorn claims that three and four-bedroom Victorian terraced houses in the area are worth £895,000 to £1.2 million, though this is really true only of the smarter parts of Fulham, not of the surrounding Sands End neighbourhood, where an unimproved three-bedroom terrace costs about £575,000.

Phil Tennant, director of Hamptons International’s Fulham office, says that you can even get a four-bed for that price — if you’re prepared to live on the busy Townmead Road.

The most expensive property on the market in Sands End is a four-bed house on Stephendale Road at £895,000. Tennant says that it has been “extended to the max”. Savills’ Fulham office recently sold a fully extended four-bedroom house on Hamble Street for £675,000.

So, buyers in Fulham will in fact have to pay a premium for new-build, but Gawthorn says that they will save on maintenance costs. Many agree; 50 per cent of the properties at The Gallery have sold in the year since its launch.

“These new houses might have a chance in their immediate environment,” says Cuthill. “Their stock might be better than the surrounding property. I’d say Sands End is 15 to 20 per cent cheaper than more prestigious areas of similar-sized properties within Fulham. People have been saying for ages that it’s the next boom area, but it’s never happened. However, the new station will definitely help.”

Cuthill has 2.7 buyers for each property in the area. “When we have more than two, prices are likely to increase,” he says.

However, a rise in prices is likely to entice sellers, increasing the stock available and lowering prices again. Whether new-build can retain its premium and popularity against a flood of period properties remains to be seen. LA

Jones Lang LaSalle: 020-7751 3322 thegallerysw6.com

Facts and figures

Southwest London has achieved supremacy. Once the residents of these respectable, leafy suburbs might have dreamt of having the means to achieve a status home in racy Chelsea, Belgravia or Mayfair. But homeowners in Chiswick, Wimbledon and Richmond have found their homes a more valuable commodity in this rather peculiar recession than those favoured by the international super-rich.

Savills last week reported that prices in southwest London were up 8.4 per cent in the three months to the end of September. Values — 2.5 per cent higher than a year ago — are shooting up at a rate comparable to the height of the market in early 2007. Fortunes are improving in prime Central London, too, but with demonstrably less gusto: prices are 4 per cent higher in the past quarter, but still 4.9 per cent lower than a year ago (and 20.2 per cent off their peak).

So why have London’s most covetable locations been trumped by once-grungy Clapham, where Savills discovered recovery came first? The estate agency says that southwest London attracts equity-rich professionals, such as lawyers and bankers, who are doing better than expected in this recession.

They are, by and large, local buyers and have compelling reasons to move — new relationships, old ones breaking up, school moves or simply spotting a home they can afford on a road on which they have always wanted to live.

And these buyers are being favoured by lenders, who are cherry-picking the most attractive potential clients and wooing them with rare, competitive rates.

This is fuelling bidding wars in areas that offer family-sized period homes, aspirational lifestyles, convenient locations and good schools. It is the undeniable wide appeal of these locations that prompted Gilly Hayden, 41, to invest in a home in a mansion block in Fulham, close to Putney Bridge Underground station. She paid £395,000, and is charging £350 a week, a yield of 4.6 per cent.

Hayden, who works for the estate agency W A Ellis as a lettings specialist, says: “It is what I like to call a dead-cert flat. It’s a comfortable area, with a good family atmosphere and a good community.”

Potential international buyers of super-prime homes in central locations are only now emerging from months spent nursing their losses on the stock market.

Such buyers rarely consider a postcode that starts with SW rather than W — and for the first time, it may be their loss. JH

Times recommends

• Second homes: credit crunch casualty or money-spinner?
• How I built my own sliding house
• Top 10 incentives for house buyers