London continues to appeal to global investors

Citywealth reported this week on London’s continuing appeal to overseas investors. Rather than seeing the challenging market conditions of “Brexit uncertainty, concern over a Corbyn government and future wealth taxes, geo-political factors in international buyers’ home markets and stamp duty land tax” as a reason to stay away, many investors with a medium to long-term outlook are seeing this as the right time to buy prime central London property. Investing at this time gives them two bites of the cherry. London’s strengths are well described in this article, including language, time-zone, rule of law, economic stability, safety, employment, culture and good-looking historic housing stock.

Deciding to invest in London can be a relative decision. Knight Frank's August market commentary reported that “London is showing the largest relative price discount for buyers purchasing in US dollars or currencies pegged to the dollar compared to other major global cities such as New York, Singapore, Vancouver and Sydney. Compared to five years ago London prices are on average nearly 30% lower for UK Dollar buyers”.

We are seeing this borne out in recent and scheduled meetings with clients from the Far East, Middle East, Europe and America who, for the various reasons described in this article, think that this is the right time to invest in prime central London.