Daily Mail - Expert comment needed on the London property market

We cover the whole of the UK so have clients in every area, the biggest trend we have seen is actually people moving away from London. Whilst many have battled with the prices for years, the change of working landscape has allowed more and more people to now work from home. Meaning they aren’t tied to the city and their expensive price tags for property. With many families now looking at places like York, with still fantastic travel links to London (when the strikes aren’t on!). We’ve seen many go from living in a flat in London, to a 3 bed semi up North as the trade off in area has allowed a better property budget. I think affordability issues has affected the more expensive areas, as people become more aware of where every penny is going.

With the rise in interest rates, budgets seem to have decreased; hence the cheaper areas have some of the biggest rises. For this exact reason, we've seen buyers change their locations to the cheaper parts of East London. They want to start climbing the housing ladder now, but they seemingly have to wait an additional few years in their desired locations.

Normally, where there is a dip in price growth, Prime Central London usually sees this first. In the long term, it will undoubtedly increase. We have seen an increase in people who were holding off until the New Year and are now offering properties above £2m.

London as a region compared to the rest of the UK normally gets impacted first by house price growth. Whether that's a slight dip as is the case now or the best growth when the prices are increasing astronomically.

The housing market as we knew it no longer exists. It is a fragmented, fractionalised figment of our collective imagination.
Location, property type, social demographic, tenure, proximity, employment opportunities, and education quality have a huge impact on the price of properties whatever or wherever they are.
To group property types to asses a pattern of prices s highly unlikely to result in an upward or downward trend. Some strands of the market will see price rises such as quality private market rentals and some will see a dramatic dip such as poor quality privately owned housing in undesirable locations.
Pockets of London are seeing huge rises in housing values such as the borough of Sutton which boasts great schools and green spaces, as well as great travel links and strong employment opportunities.

We've seen reasonable growth in the London property market, in particular Prime Central London property. Mortgage applications have grown in both volume and size and have been consistently rising year on year. We consider the London market to be one of the most important areas to focus on in 2023 due to a significant increase in applications for properties worth more than £10M compared to the previous 2 years. In addition, rental rates are also increasing. Although Q4 of 2022 was quieter, and this may have stumped some of the growth in the region, we don't believe this to be a continuing theme as our sense is that it is a symptom of the fallout of the Mini Budget. As confidence grows in 2023 our expectation is that the London market will follow suit.