Scratch a little further and you’ll find that outer London prices are actually UP 1.7% annually, but inner London prices are DOWN 4.2%. That figure of a 4.2% decrease as more or less exactly how it feels to us here on the shop floor, as it were.
Now, there’s no need to panic. Prices do go down as well as up, but in fact they always only ever go up, over time. What we’re witnessing here is an adjustment.
Particularly for E14 and Canary Wharf property what we’ve witnessed is an unprecedented build programme of high-end stock, all completing within just a few months of each. What you’re witnessing now is just a simple reaction to a simple economic phenomenon. When supply is high and demand the same, prices fall.
The good news, if you’re a property owner at least, is that the shop floor tells us that we’ve reached the bottom of this mini slump. Will prices now shoot through the roof now? No probably not, because the other thing which is now absolutely beginning to affect the London property market is affordability. There are only so many people who can afford to buy a property, particularly when a one bedroom apartment in Canary Wharf’s most exclusive developments will set you back £600,000 or more.
