The collapse of the prime central London has continued, according to the latest Land Registry data.
In the 12 months to the end of quarter three, transactions fell 24%.
However, that figure hides far more dramatic year-on-year falls of 58% and 50% in, respectively, quarters two and three.
In quarter one, there was a rise of 29% in sales, with a rush to buy ahead of the introduction on April 1 of the 3% Stamp Duty surcharge on the purchase of additional properties.
In total, for the 12 months to the end of quarter three, there were 3,696 transactions in central London – one of the lowest figures for a 12-month period that the Land Registry has ever recorded, and 42% lower than two years ago.
Then Chancellor George Osborne introduced graduated Stamp Duty at the end of 2014, making it far more expensive to buy properties from around £1m upwards.
There have been three successive Stamp Duty increases since 2012, resulting in a rise from 5% to 15% on some purchases.
Peter Wetherell, of the Mayfair agency that bears his name, diagnosed ‘Osbornitis’.
He said this was a debilitating illness spread by the ex-Chancellor through tax changes. As a result, in Mayfair, there were fewer sales than in the crisis of 2008.
Naomi Heaton, CEO of property investment firm London Central Portfolio, said: “Following an influx of discretionary capital in Q1 as buyers sought to beat the additional Stamp Duty deadline, a notable price correction has taken place for the top end of the market.
“Unlike the lower end, this sector has been hard hit by the succession of new taxes.
“Historically, it witnesses far more volatility in periods of political and economic turmoil.
“While the long-term outlook remains compelling as a global destination with exclusive and limited stock, it may take some years to correct, with prices re-basing themselves to take account of the additional buying costs.”
Comments (8)
Thanks all for that…….variation between regions, but not huge. Everybody down on average at leas 25% I would think. Interesting!
Islington has so many sales i had to break it down to, Freeholds down 34% and Leaseholds down 11%, which i thought was quite interesting. It certainly hints at where we should direct our attention!
Abergavenny, Monmouthshire equates to an 18% reduction, but we’re up 21. Happy with that!
Hampshire down 27% yoy
Just done your exercise and in my area (Surrey) 265 properties sold this year and 373 last year so down 29%
Here is an interesting exercise to try that takes literally a couple of minutes;
Go on the ‘House prices’ tab on rightmove and put in the first part of the main postcode you sell in e.g M12.
change the ‘sold in’ to the ‘last 2 years’ and note the figure
then change it to the ‘last 1 year’ and note the figure.
Obviously by taking the second figure off the first you have the number of recorded sales in the year before last. Then divide the ‘last 1 year’ figure by this figure and times by 100 to get a percentage. What result do you get? For our main postcode in the Birmingham MIdlands area it was 77%…..showing that land registry recorded completions have dropped by 23% in our area compared to the previous year.
If you give it a go, post a comment in this thread (together with an indication of the general area it is from) on the figure you get……why not get a feel for the area specific results throughout the country if we can.
In my area that works out at 366 for the last year and 868 for the last two years, giving 502 transactions in 2015.
That works out as a reduction of 27%.
BUT…
You need to be careful with that way of measuring as the freely available public data from the Land Registry is always a little out of date and solicitors have 30 days to register the sale too – this from http://www.gov.uk:
The amount of time between the sale of a property and the registration of this information with Land Registry varies. It typically ranges between 2 weeks and 2 months. Data for the two most recent months is therefore incomplete and does not give an indication of final monthly volumes. Occasionally the interval between sale and registration is longer than two months. The small number of sales affected cannot be updated for publication until the sales are lodged for registration.
You can get sales for your area direct from the Land Registry here: http://landregistry.data.gov.uk/app/ppd
In fact LR figures show 509 transactions for 2014, 496 for 2015 (2.6% down YoY) and 381 so far for 2016 (23.2% down YoY so far).
For my area it is showing a 2.6% increase October 2015 – September 2016 compared to the same period twelve months before and a 5.0% reduction compared to the twelve months before that.
The next update will show up either at the end of this week or between Christmas and New Year and will include completions for September (a couple of late stragglers perhaps), for October (the major bulk), and perhaps a ten in November (if the solicitors were quick to register).
Given the Sale Agreed stats from Rightmove Intel I cannot see my area completing on another 115 units before the end of the year.
Anonymous Coward,
Thanks for your reply. I understand your comment about the land registry data being behind, but the house price listings on Rightmove are up to 31st October…… so hopefully the one year and two year results should be like for like, updated on a rolling monthly basis. I say hopefully…..