Depressing million-dollar London homes

Here’s an Oobject gallery of “Depressing million-dollar London property” — houses and flats for sale at or above the million dollar (£650K) range. It’s true that London’s residential property hasn’t fallen as precipitously as the US equivalent, but commercial property is sure down a big notch; today I’m signing the lease on a new office in the same building as the London Hackspace, next to a train station and a public bicycle lockup, with a loading bay, lift, balcony, sink, etc, that’s twice the size of my old office in a shitty Clerkenwell building — and paying the same as I’ve been paying to date for all those extras (added bonus: it’s only 10 minutes’ walk from the (grotesquely overvalued) flat!).

Shown here: “Near the Arsenal football club, this utilitarian looking squat box was originally designed for blue collar workers, now it probably contains a lawyer.”

Its October 2010 and Chinese property booms while most of the Western world’s houses have shrunk to more realistic levels. In the US, homes have ceased to be ATMs to buy oriental barbecues, but in Britain, a crowded island with a cultural attachment to carving out a personal defensible space Englishmen’s homes are still castles, with prices to match.

As US housing prices adjusted, UK ones, faltered then regained their losses smack in the middle of the recession. This time things look different, with last month seeing the largest dip in housing prices in history. Perhaps prices in Britain will go up forever, or perhaps Britain will be like Japan, another crowded island which had the same phenomenon and where eventual capitulation resulted in a crash where property is worth less than a decade ago?

One way to judge judge this is to look at what a million dollars gets you in London and its hinterland – a place where an apartment recently sold for a quarter of a billion dollars during the biggest downturn since the Great Depression. Click through each item to read the justification for inclusion.

depressing million dollar london property

(via Cribcandy)