Good times for first-time buyers.. sort of.
Houses prices in London are widely considered ‘fucking bonkers’ – but there are signs the market is cooling off a bit.
Analysis from property website Rightmove showed that the average selling price for an Inner London home dropped by a whopping £42,303 between September and August, while prices in Outer London barely budged. That’s even though there’s ‘usually a bounce in the price of property coming to market at the beginning of the autumn’, according to Rightmove.
Sure, the average asking price is still £752,000 – but have hope! Extrapolate out from this month’s trend, and in less than two years, houses will literally be free. Personally, I can’t wait.
But there’s another wrinkle to this welcomed plunge – sorry, homeowners! – as declines are mostly concentrated in London’s most wildly unaffordable boroughs. Prices in Kensington & Chelsea crashed by 14% last month, for example, while Camden saw a 7% drop. On the other hand, prices in places like Hackney, Southwark and Ealing actually all increased by 5%, 9% and 4% respectively. As Rightmove put it: ‘The most expensive seven boroughs are all down year-on-year, while the cheapest 12 are all up.’ Oh.