PROPERTY
Property News PRIME RESI provides us with a comprehensive monthly round-up of key news about the local luxury property market
Journey to the Top Kensington and Chelsea house prices have risen by over 170% in the last ten years: The centre cannot hold, notes CBRE in its annual Hot 100 report, as a widening price gyre spreads from central London to the greater capital. A decade of stellar performance in the central and golden postcodes seems to have passed peak, with outer boroughs outperforming most prime heartlands over the last year. RBKC sits in Image courtesy of/ CBRE third place for house price growth among London’s boroughs both over the last 12 months and over the last ten years. A 20.7% increase through 2014 – behind Lambeth’s 40.1% and Wandsworth’s 22.2% – takes ten-year growth to 170.5%. Only the City of London (194.1%) and Westminster (183.5%) have seen prices rise further since 2005.
The Harrods Effect Is a shop the heart of Knightsbridge? Harrods has made play to position itself at the epicentre of London’s high net worth neighbourhood, mapping some “huge jumps in property value the closer a resident lives to the store” and setting out a “discernible catchment area for Harrods Estates” around the Knightsbridge shop. Luxury developments within promenading distance of the 110-year-old department store include Finchatton’s The Lansbury, Candy & Candy’s One Hyde Park, Knightsbridge Developments’ 199 The Knightsbridge, Berkeley’s Number One Hans Crescent and Crown Dilmun’s 17-22 Trevor Square (the Harrods Depository building). Now the estate agency is arguing that these schemes have been built in concentric circles around Harrods; ‘The Harrods Effect’. An apartment sold within a five minute walk of Harrods attracts a 14% per square foot price premium over those 5–10 minutes away, and a 60% price premium over those 15–20 minutes away. The average home within a five minute (360 metres) walk of Harrods costs £2.4m, and the average value for all residential properties sold between 2011 and 2014 was £2,149 per sq ft.
Image courtesy of/ Harrods Estates and Dataloft
Market Comment Guessing Game Elena Dimova, managing director of CENTURY 21 Sophia Elena, looks in the property market’s crystal ball
Are ‘year ahead’ market analysts’ predictions usually accurate? Perhaps this is a question you should ask your banker or stockbroker. Some are; many are not. Do we know what will happen in our lives in the next 12 months? We may know ourselves well, yet life brings surprises, twists and turns, challenges and opportunities. For market experts to predict what will happen, they take what is known, make assumptions about certain eventualities, analyse past trends and make future forecasts; but they cannot predict the surprises, and there will be many. This is why, typically, over a year the market behaves differently to what the consensus view is at the onset; things happen along the way that were not a given in January.
There will always be a buyer willing to pay the right price What we know is that the Stamp Duty regime has changed, Capital Gains Tax (CGT) for overseas people is coming into play from April 2015 and Thursday 7 May is General Election day. These are the points made when painting a picture of a jittery market in the months to come. Interestingly, we are hearing these arguments from buyers with live offers on the table. Surely, the fact that they are buying speaks for itself. Smart sellers who need to sell are listing earlier in the year to beat those who will follow the conventional wisdom to list in spring and would have to compete with more supply closer to the CGT April date. Where the market goes in the next few months is anybody’s guess. What we should not forget is the compelling long-term demographic story for property ownership in London; both a local and an overseas one. There is a great amount of new wealth being created in regions such as the Far East, where people are looking for a home in London, as a means of diversification and asset protection. For the right property in the right location, there will always be a buyer willing to pay the right price. CENTURY 21 Sophia Elena, 10 Clarendon Road, W11 3AA 020 7229 1414; century21uk.com