If you have £459,000 ($773,000) to spare or a healthy appetite for debt, property in London is for you. That’s the current average price for a home in the British capital, according to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics. That’s an increase of 17% over the past year, or £61,000 in absolute terms, versus 5% and £9,000 in the rest of the country.
Bank of England governor Mark Carney has labeled the frothy property market the “biggest risk to financial stability” in the country. Lenders must now follow stricter checks on borrowers, according to new rules introduced last month. Lloyds Banking Group has voluntarily introduced a new policy capping the price-to-income level it will use to approve its biggest mortgages. The bank described it as “a targeted response to an issue largely in the upper tiers of the London housing market.”
We have tried to put London’s gravity-defying property market in context before. Here is another attempt. This is what you could buy for just the change in the average London property price over various time periods, from one month to 10 years:
- One month: £1,000 = a round the world plane ticket via London, Moscow, Hong Kong, Phuket, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Los Angeles, and Boston
- Three months: £10,000 = Fees for two children at a London nursery for eight months
- Six months: £26,000 = A three-year undergraduate degree at a top English university for a local student
- One year: £61,000 = A Jaguar F-Type S Coupé
- Five years: £175,000 = A 72-foot schooner (seats 30)
- 10 years: £217,000 = The average price of a house in the UK excluding London