Wednesday, Aug 18, 2010
"Reflecting the view that prime property is a safe haven"
Evening Standard (London): Super-rich boost property market with swoop on London's £5m homes
"Trophy" homes are selling at a near-record rate, heralding a wider recovery in London's property market, estate agents claimed today. The total value of £5 million-plus houses sold in the capital between April and June this year was the second-highest quarterly figure ever recorded. Savills said the top-end London market had been the first to show price growth after the downturn of 2008: “In central London, prime property prices have increased by 17.5% since the bottom of the market, with transaction levels rebounding much more strongly than in the mainstream. That has reflected both a rebuilding of wealth among overseas buyers and the view that prime property is a safe haven among affluent domestic buyers.”
Posted by drewster @ 05:09 PM (601 views) Add Comment
4 Comments
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1. stillthinking said...
Maybe they were worth 10 million originally... and its a firesale. Who can tell?
"Rebuilding of wealth among overseas buyers" !? Kind of implies that their wealth was just a bit disorganised, so they built it up again. Or maybe the super rich decided to get out of pesky risky investments in the real economy to park their cash in something unlikely to go bust.
I do sometimes wonder whether high end properties in London with a fairly safe government and property rights mightily disposed to maintaining property assets, are kind of being monetised in a way. You can own a single home tax free after all. "Super rich swoop on new-builds in Leeds" would have been much punchier.
Smells like an attempt at wealth preservation...
2. clockslinger said...
If you trash your currency by 50% or so aainst, say, the Yen...well, a 5 million property in the UK unsurprisingly looks a lot like quite a reasonable buy to Mr and Mrs Ishikawa, particularly as their jobs are not about to go because of some lunatic ideological agenda being persued by their government "to cut the defecit".
3. tyrellcorporation said...
Clockslinger. Is that the same ideological agenda that will probably prevent interest rates going through the roof if the deficit isn't addressed? Also, who trashed sterling? And, was quoted as saying a weak currency is a sign of weak government... The list of gaffes is endless, I still can't quite understand why you think labour governments are a good idea. Please enlighten me?
4. nickb said...
Tyrell,
Did not the deficit jump because of the need to bail out the banks?
The UK national debt (cf deficit) is not at all unmanageable by historical standards. UK debt is also longer to maturity that that of other nations and we are still the sovereign and monopoly issuer of sterling. We can always produce more pounds to pay debts denominated in pounds, and we are nowhere near demand led inflation problems. 'Cutting the deficit' on the other hand, will impact (and is impacting) severely on incomes, and won't, it seems to me, impact on resource cost-push inflation (oil and food prices). So it seems to me that cockslinger is entirely correct in his judgement.
Nick