London’s £5m-plus homes market is the most active it’s been since 2021, well above pre-pandemic levels and could still be growing, latest research from LonRes reveals.
In March there were 15.4% more £5 million plus transactions than the same month in 2023 and 8.4% more than the 2017-2019 (pre-pandemic) March average.
MORE VENDORS
Higher demand has drawn more vendors to the market with the first quarter of this year seeing the highest ever volume of new £5 million plus listings on LonRes.
New instructions were 20% higher in March than a year ago and 86.2% higher than the 2017-2019 (pre-pandemic) March average.
But despite the top end of the market for property in the centre of the capital booming activity was slower across the wider prime London market with 19.3% fewer sales than last March, 10.0% below the 2017-2019 (pre-pandemic) March average.
Rental growth and activity remained unchanged in a calmer lettings market with March marking four consecutive months with annual growth of between 3% and 4% – it was 3.8% in March.
ACTIVE MONTH
Nick Gregori, LonRes Head of Research, says: “March is typically a more active month for the prime London sales market and, while sales picked up slightly compared to February, they were down relative to both the same month last year and the average pre-pandemic (2017-19) March, by 19.3% and 10.0% respectively.
“This was not helped by the early Easter break. Average achieved values for homes also picked up on a monthly basis, with the rate of annual falls decreasing to -3.8% in March.”
And he says: “Some buyers appear to be happy to just ‘wait and see’, hoping for or expecting further price falls and lower interest rates. Existing vendors that don’t need to sell also seem to be content playing a similar waiting game, leading to something of a stand-off and fewer transactions overall.”
But he adds: “While agreed sales of £5 million plus properties are relatively much higher than in the wider market, there were some signs in March that demand has been weakening.
“The second half of March saw lower numbers of under offers and exchanges. While unlikely to be solely due to the changes to ‘non-dom’ tax rules – which only affect a small proportion of the capital’s residents – negative sentiment around London as a global city is unhelpful to the market.”
