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Back HomePrime London Home Prices Dip in Q4
According to international property adviser Savills, prime London house prices fell by an average of -0.8% in the final quarter of 2015 to leave them a marginal 0.5 per cent above the levels seen at the beginning of the year, while prime regional town and city markets averaged 4.4 per cent annual growth.
The marginally positive average annual house price growth across all prime London is attributable to the performance of property below £2 million, which recorded growth of 2.2 per cent over the course of the year. However, over the course of 2015 prices fell in all of the submarkets above this price level in the capital (see table below).
“This reflects a continued adjustment to a less hospitable tax regime and successive increases in stamp duty rates in particular,” says Lucian Cook, the firm’s head of UK residential research “This is particularly impacting the higher value markets of prime central London.
“Since the credit crunch, is has been common practice to index price growth in prime London to the previous peak of 2007/8. It is now clear that 2014 is the new ‘peak’ reference point for a market that has continued to adjust to higher taxation, introduced at a time when the market was already looking fully priced.
Values in the market between £2 million and £5 million are 3.3 per cent below their 2014 peak, while those over £5 million are down by 6.4 per cent.
As a result, price adjustments have been the greatest in the prime markets of central London where values are down 6.0 per cent since their 2014 peak, with the highest value submarkets of Knightsbridge, Belgravia and Mayfair down by 7.3 per cent.
© Jackson Lieblein, LLC 2015.
