It has been a bumper year for the select band of estate agents who work the
gilded streets of Mayfair and Belgravia. During the past few months, the few
square miles of the capital that are home to more billionaires than anywhere
else on the planet have seen records broken – and broken again.
A terraced house on Cadogan Square, on the market for £25m, sold for a record
£28m; a former office building on Upper Brook Street attracted 74 viewings
and 10 offers, eventually going for 20% more than its £15m guide price. Nor
is it only what is known in agent-speak as prime central London that is
booming. In Elephant and Castle – not one of the capital’s more salubrious
areas – Savills last week sold a three-bed penthouse for an astonishing £2m.
Thirty miles to the south, in Reigate, at the heart of the Surrey commuter
belt, Clare King, 38, an events director, has a different take on what’s
going on. Her two-bed flat has been on the market since January, but, while
she has been assured that the £269,950 price tag is reasonable, she has had
only a handful of viewings. “We keep reading that prices are going up, but
obviously they’re not,” she says.
Shift the scene to the Midlands and things are looking even slower, with
average prices falling. It is the same in parts of the northwest. Keep going
north, though, and the pulse starts to quicken again: prices in Scotland are
rising at an annual rate of 11.9%, and look likely to continue to do so.
The market in Northern Ireland has been even more buoyant, with prices in the
province rising by an average of 46% in the past year, according to a study
by the University of Ulster; the rise in East Antrim was a staggering 56%.
So, given all these contradictory signals, what is actually going on? Is one
of the most prolonged housing booms in recent history – which has seen
property prices in England and Wales almost triple in the past decade –
merely pausing for breath, or is it really over? And, if it is the end, will
it be a soft landing, or are we headed for a crash?
“It all depends on which part of the property market you are talking about:
it’s London and its hinterland against the rest of the country,” says
Yolande Barnes, head of residential research at Savills. Within the capital
– which has effectively turned into a city-state – the market has been
decoupled from incomes and is being driven by equity, she argues. The
effects of City bonuses, coupled with the seemingly bottomless pockets of
Russian oligarchs and other international high rollers, are trickling down
from the multimillion-pound mansions of Kensington and Belgravia to humbler
parts of town, from Chiswick to Stoke Newington – and, now, Elephant and
Castle.
Step away from the warm glow of the capital, however, and you enter a very
different place, one where the recent interest-rate rises – four since last
August, with the prospect of more to come – have combined with growing
problems of affordability to slow the market and, in some cases, drive it
into reverse.
But it is a tale of more than just two nations: an investigation by The Sunday
Times has revealed very different pictures across the 10 regions of England
and Wales, and in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Find out what's happening to the property market where you live by clicking on
the links below:
(Unless stated, prices are from the Land Registry)
London:
Average property price: £333,785. Annual increase: 15.6%
The
South East:
Average property price: £221,173. Annual increase: 9.6%
The
East:
Average property price: £188,077. Annual increase: 8.6%
The
Southwest: Average
property price: £190,710. Annual increase: 8.4%
The
West Midlands:
Average property price: £152,258. Annual change: 6.3%
The
East Midlands:
Average property price: £144,378. Annual increase: 6%
Wales:
Average
property price: £140,808. Annual rise: 8.2%
The
North West:
Average property price: £135,062. Annual change: 9.1%
Yorkshire
and the Humber: Average
property price: £142,591. Annual change: 7.2%
The
Northeast: Average
property price: £128,687. Annual increase: 6.4%
Northern
Ireland: Average
property price: £256,500. Annual increase: 46% (University of Ulster)
Scotland:
Average
property price: £138,655 (Bank of Scotland). Annual increase: 22.4% (Knight
Frank)
