London Real Estate prices are leaping ahead and defying predictions somewhat like Toronto Real Estate. They rose 28.7 per cent in 2006 and now increased 18 percent in the first half of this year.
Some of the reasons prices are moving up include low mortgage rates, rich foreigners, bankers, Russian oil riches, and the wealth of Europes’s largest and dynamic centre of finance.
For the last ten years London home prices have been appreciating in value making it the most expensive city in the world for luxury homes, more expensive per square foot than New York, Hong Kong, Tokyo and even Monaco. Demand areas like Chelsea and Kensington sell for an average of US$5,000 a square foot. Monaco, the world’s second most expensive city sells for US$4,600 a square foot and New York in third place sells for US$3,400 a square foot.
Tony Blair bought his 5 storey Georgian town house on Connaught Square W2, City of Westminster in 2004 for US$7.8 million and it is now worth US10 million, a 29% increase.
Like our Toronto Real Estate bidding wars, buyers who dilly-dally risk getting gazumped, a British slang for what happens when someone arrives on the scene at the last minute and offers a higher price.
According to London based real estate broker Knight Frank LLP prime London houses cost about US$10-million and desirable apartments run about US$5-million.
Buyers here in Toronto can look at my Toronto Real Estate website with all the current prices of homes and condos offered for sale.
