October delivered an unmistakable sign of recovery for prime central London’s property sector, a long-floundering market that has had to grapple with the one-two-punch of a drawn-out Brexit followed almost immediately by the coronavirus pandemic. Across the city’s upscale neighborhoods last month, prices grew at their fastest pace in more than six years, according to a report Friday from Knight Frank.
The 1.2% annual gains, though “a fairly unremarkable statistic on the surface,” are the highest recorded since September 2015, long before the Brexit referendum in the summer of 2016, the report said. Over the past six years, London has seen a “succession of uncertainties” that “has kept downward pressure on prices since they peaked in summer 2015.”
“We are not on the verge of the sort of dramatic double-digit bounce-back in prices seen after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008,” Tom Bill, head of U.K. residential research at Knight Frank, said in the report. “But the prime London property market is resuming an overdue recovery that was interrupted by the pandemic.”
Further highlighting the returning vigor of the market is the strength of demand among future and potential buyers. The number of new prospective buyers registering in London in October was 56% higher than the same period last year, and the number of offers accepted was up 57%. The rest of the U.K. hasn’t faced the same trouble as London. Nationwide, home prices in October jumped 8.1% from the same time last year, according to a separate report from bank and mortgage provider Halifax. The jump pushed up the average price of a home in the country to a record £270,027 (US$364,348). While London’s by far the weakest-performing area of the U.K., it stands as the most expensive by far with an average property price of £514,907, Halifax said.
