Some London houses 25% below peak as transactions plummet - new index

It’s a new index but it tells an old story - how prime central London prices have dropped significantly since their peaks some years ago.

The new measure comes from buying agency Property Vision and it differs from the slew of other London indices by looking at price per square foot on actual sale prices.

It also stretches back to a 20 year archive of data.

The first release of it shows that house prices are now off their peak in 2014/15 by nearly 25 per cent and flats by 21.7 per cent. This now takes at values back to those last seen in 2012 and houses back to their level in 2010.

PV says that in the past year flats have declined more in percentage terms than have houses - 8.4 per cent against 6.2 per cent.

But the multi-year drop in house prices is what worries PV most, and the agency describes the fall as “precipitous” and leading all those involved in the prime property market - “interior designers, removal companies and estate agents to name a few” - being depressed,

It says that compared with 2013 transactions of houses in the £5m to £10m bracket are 50 per cent down; in the over-£10m category, the transaction collapse has been 70 per cent. 

PV says some ill-advised buyers have snapped up “fancy looking flats bought off-plan when growth seemed limitless”, while more savvy international  buyers are waiting until now to act - taking advantage of Brexit torpor and reduced prices.

You can see two graphs from the new index below: the vertical axis in each is £psf.