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Values across prime London remain largely in line with their early 2014 level according to Lonres’ latest monthly briefing. While November’s achieved sold prices recorded a small fall of 4.1% on the same time last year, they remain 1.6% higher than five years ago and 4.1% higher than 10 years ago. And as pointed out by Knight Frank’s Head of Residential Research, Tom Bill, it’s not often you can say the property market was stronger in November than in September, but it was this year. The reason is simple; the economic outlook has improved over the last three months. Inflation has fallen to less than 5%, the best five-year fixed-rate mortgage is now under 4.5% and speculation around the bank rate increasingly relates to the timing of the next cut rather than the size of the next rise. Buyer sentiment has been lifted and produced a very belated autumn market.
Transactions were down 32.1% in November compared to November last year – but 2023 sales look likely to end the year only slightly below their long-term average. Looking at Strutt and Parker’s November figures, PCL offices enjoyed a “significant” 14% jump in new buyer applicants from October to November, with 84% more offers accepted in the month, and 9% more new instructions. This combination of recent supply and demand activity means that there was 5.9% more stock on the market across prime London at the end of November than a year ago.
The Lonres listings data is not showing it yet but there are signs that buyer sentiment in the prime London sales market is improving. One measure of demand we look at is the number of enquiries from buying agents. This has been increasing steadily over the past four to five years and the 12-month average of enquiries is currently more than triple the levels seen in 2017 to 2019.
In the £5 million plus market new instructions rose slightly compared to a year earlier, by 1.4%. And while sales were lower on the same basis (by 28.1%), the number of properties going under offer increased by 16.1% over the same period. As a smaller market – £5m+ sales only made up around 8% of all prime London transactions in 2023 so far – metrics based on monthly data can be volatile. Looking at the average over three months provides a more robust view of this market’s performance. Even over what has been a relatively quiet period, these figures show how much more active this market is now compared to the years preceding the pandemic (2017 to 2019).
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