Prime London Property, the waiting game.

Activity has certainly slowed down in prime central London over the last 3 months.

Buyers are cautious and finance is expensive.

One of the largest London agents was quoted as saying: "I could get the best house on the market and will struggle to get 2 viewings in a week."

Its the waiting game; buyers have suffered through the last frenzy and, now , not only will they not pay top money they feel that waiting will only work in their favour. Its fair to say that asking prices are 10% down, the question is will they go down another 10% by autumn?

This is not to say that deals are not happening, they are. Fewer but the values are larger.

Recent press article reported that an owner of a Kensington Palace Gardens property refused £170m. Another prime and uniue property of 4000 sq feet came on the market in Knightsbridge for £25m, a sale was agreed at asking price and the buyer was gazumped when another purchaser offered a same day exchange paying in the region of £3m in excess of the asking price. This is all in a softening market place!

There is also talk of the non domociles moving away from the UK over the next 18 to 24 months , this should result in more prime properties coming on the market and with the increase supply privces will have to be competative.

The point is if you are a seller the chances are you have done well. Specially if you bought your property more than 2 years ago. There may not be 40-50% gains to be had but the gains are still enough to make a seller happy and keep London property investment a viable proposition.

The question is how long will the blues last? Will all purchasers get tired of playing the waiting game at the same time and cause another buying frenzy in Autumn? Will the summer bring oil rich buyers back into town keeping the prices up? Or will we all be suprised by increased investment by the newly rich coming from an emerging market on another continet?

What keeps us all interested in this facinating market place is that things can change so fast that no one can predict what will happen in 6 months time.

Newspapers all say its doom and gloom and prices are dropping and will continue to drop, judging by history and how wrong press reports have been about prime London property, one cant believe what one reads!