London house prices: why homeowners in these boroughs are seeing the biggest price rises in the capital

South West London may scooped the top spot in 2017, but east London still dominates the top five list of areas with the fastest rising house prices.
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Lizzie Rivera21 February 2018

Homeowners in Merton have seen the biggest house price growth in London over the past year, according to the the first full look at how much homes sold for in 2017.

Prices in the south-west London borough, home to Mitcham, Morden and Wimbledon, rose 9.8 per cent from an average of £486,000 in December 2016 to £534,000 the following December, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Significant transport upgrades were announced in the borough of Merton in 2017.

Transport for London committed £70 million to an extension of the Croydon tram network in September, with the new branch due to run from South Wimbledon, through Morden to Sutton.

Plans for new homes in an over-the-station development at Morden were also announced.

Merton was also one of only four London boroughs where the number of homes sold in 2017 was higher than the number sold the previous year. Transaction numbers rose by a moderate five per cent.

This is significant growth compared to the rest of the capital, with house sales falling by more than 30 per cent in a third of boroughs.

The largest drop was in the north-west London borough of Brent, where there were 62 per cent fewer homes sold last year than in 2016.

LONDON'S TOP PERFORMING BOROUGHS

London borough Dec 2017 Dec 2016 Difference
Merton £533,871 £486,293 9.8%
Tower Hamlets £503,771 £460,400 9.4%
Greenwich £401,688 £374,293 7.3%
Bromley £453,689 £429,187 5.7%
Redbridge £425,061 £402,169 5.7%

Areas in east London dominate the list of boroughs with the highest house price rises, with Tower Hamlets, Greenwich, and Redbridge all in the top five.

Billions of pounds are being invested in Tower Hamlets, with 14,000 homes under construction and 12,100 more in the planning pipeline, from Canary Wharf to Blackwall Reach and Poplar. House prices in the borough rose by an average of £44,000 to £504,000 during 2017.

Homeowners in Greenwich, in the south-east of the capital, sold their homes for £28,000 more on average in December 2017 than the same month in 2016.

Prices now average £402,000, in no small part due to a continued boost from the redevelopment of Woolwich and Abbey Wood, which are both on the high-speed Elizabeth Line due to be opened at the end of this year.

Similarly, Redbridge saw prices increase from £402,000 to £425,000 thanks to connections from four stations on the east-west Crossrail route — Ilford, Seven Kings, Goodmayes, and Chadwell Heath.

Bromley in outer south London is the capital's largest borough, with good train links and both an urban and rural lifestyle for London homebuyers looking to move up the ladder. House prices there now average £454,000, compared to £429,000 in 2016.

LONDON'S RIPPLE EFFECT ON HOUSE PRICES IN THE SOUTH EAST

The most expensive borough to buy in was Kensington and Chelsea, where prices averaged £1.2 million, despite a 10.7 per cent price drop.

The cheapest borough to purchase a property was east London’s Barking and Dagenham, where an average home cost £297,000.

Overall, house prices in the capital rose by an average of 2.5 per cent to £484,000, more than double the UK's average house price of £227,000.

This high average meant that house prices rose at half the rate of the country as a whole. Other, more expensive regions also saw more moderate price rises, with

“This effect appears to be spreading to the next most expensive regions, the South-East and the East, where prices have been flat since July,” says Richard Snook, senior economist at PwC.

“It also shows that house price growth has outpaced average earnings growth for the fifth consecutive year, further ratcheting up the affordability challenge.”

Russell Quirk, founder of Emoov, said the figures “highlight the severe shortage of stock to satisfy even the most paltry of buyer interest, as prices remain stimulated by the imbalance of supply and demand levels in the market”.

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