By prior arrangement, Toks lets me into a selection of the apartments - all very agreeable, light-filled spaces. The rear windows reveal ultra-thick, highly-insulated walls. One apartment - a little top-floor one-bed flat - is almost unbearably hot on this late summer day, despite its colourful metal wind-cowl on the roof swinging merrily in the breeze to ventilate the space (the idea being not to waste energy in colder weather by opening windows). Toks is not fazed: he explains that the owner has gone out without closing the double-glazed internal doors to the integral sunspace. Which is arranged as a little dining-room.

Another much cooler 3-bed maisonette on two levels, owned by an architect, is on the market at £270,000. It's a nice "upside down" home, with the living spaces on the first floor and bedrooms below. 14 of the 100 homes at BedZed are owned by architects, proof perhaps of the profession practising what it preaches. But there are others - nine galleried one-bed apartments, originally intended to be live-work units, now being sold directly by Peabody at £175,000. Toks shows me one. "Good value," he remarks. And they are - huge ground-level spaces with a generous mezzanine balcony, with bedroom and shower room, overlooking them. The only catch is that they are all on the shady, north-facing side of the street. Which may explain why they have not been snapped up yet.