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Boom in £5m plus home sales in London


01-11-2014


 

£5m: Sheldon Avenue, Hampstead 4,000 sq ft with five bedrooms and garden overlooking Hampstead golf course. Planning permission to extend to 6,000 sq ft

Jonathan Prynn, Consumer Business Editor


The number of London homes selling for more than £5 million soared by a quarter to a record last year. 
 

More than 500 changed hands in the £5 million-plus bracket, worth a collective £5.2 billion, according to figures from agents Savills. Of those, 160 were valued at more than £10 million.

The most expensive sale lodged with the Land Registry in London last year was a £29.35 million apartment at the One Hyde Park development in Knightsbridge.

However, there were almost certainly many higher value transactions completed through off-shore companies which do not have to be made public.

The record figures suggest that the top end of the London market has not yet been badly damaged by the higher seven and 15 per cent stamp duty rates on more expensive homes, the introduction of capital gains tax for foreign sellers and the threat of mansion taxes from Labour and the Liberal Democrats.

However, prices in the most exclusive areas are growing more slowly — just 1.8 per cent last year in Knightsbridge — than the 7.9 per cent for prime central London as a whole and 10 per cent plus for hotspots such as Fulham and Clapham just outside the centre.

Lucian Cook, head of UK residential research at Savills, said the higher and new taxes on expensive properties “have taken some of the heat out, for sure, but have not resulted in wholesale erosion of the attraction of London. Tax is just one of the attributes that makes London what it is as an investment proposition”.

He said prime central London prices were forecast to rise a further 23 per cent over the next five years, unless there were major tax rises.

The SW1 postcode covering Knightsbridge, Belgravia and St James’s accounted for 23 per cent of the £5 million-plus sales, followed by Kensington W8 with 14 per cent, Chelsea SW3 with 13 per cent and South Kensington SW7 with a further 10 per cent. However, there are increasing numbers of properties for sale in the £5 million -£10 million range in areas such as Wimbledon and Hampstead.

As recently as 2010 there were only 280 sales in the £5 million bracket and fewer than 100 at more than £10 million, said Savills. Separate research showed that more £1 million homes were sold in Fulham last year than in any other area with 335 at an average price of  £1.78 million. That put it ahead of  Belgravia on 287 and Mayfair on 223.

Fionnuala Earley, research director at Hamptons International, said: “Some new hotspots have emerged in this market sector since 2007. Battersea and St John’s Wood now feature in the top 10.”

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