The property market in Marylebone and Regent’s Park is holding up well, with transaction levels at least 25 per cent up on last year and prices remaining firm. The supply of good quality properties remains short, contrary to reports in the media of a flood of sales forcing prices down.
Prime central London is different from the rest of the UK property market because it attracts wealthy overseas property buyers and is also sustained by people working in the financial sector who are now seeing renewed growth and higher incomes. But it isn’t that different, so the disconnect between gloom in the media and the situation in the real market as we are experiencing it is striking.
One possibility is that the figures these reports are based on are flawed, which is entirely possible as the trends they claim to show are very small - fractions of a percentage point per month. These small trends are statistically suspect as they are based on the differences between very large numbers. They also ignore strong local variations.
The danger is that if we as a country read too much into the statistics we can talk ourselves into a property slump that would cause entirely avoidable distress for ordinary families everywhere.
