London's housing bubble has appeared unprickable, stabilised by influxes of offshore money from "investors" who saw property in the capital as a safe, easily liquidated bet even after the 2008 crisis when the rest of the UK saw housing prices tumble.
But Brexit seems to have finally starting the deflation going. House prices in the worst-hit neighbourhoods, in Wandsworth (including swathes of Clapham, Balham and Putney), are down 15%. Also hard-hit: Southwark and Islington.
The rest of the UK is upticking slightly, with prices rising in Manchester, Blackburn and Warrington.
The question now is whether the speculators who bought into London will sell up and move their money somewhere else, triggering a cascade of falling prices and panic-selling.
Wandsworth and Southwark are home to huge speculative property developments facing on to the River Thames – including the Battersea Power Station development – but the market for £1m-plus one-bed properties has shrivelled in recent years.Your Move said that across the capital average prices were down 2.6% over the year, and have now fallen for the last three months in a row. “This is the steepest annual rate of decline in London prices since August 2009, during the last housing slump, which was itself associated with the banking credit crisis of 2008-09,” it said.
London property prices fall as much as 15% as Brexit effect deepens
[Patrick Collinson/The Guardian]
(via Naked Capitalism)
