The number of new homes sold in London dropped significantly during 2016 – to below the number sold during 2013.
The industry’s consensus view seems to be: Developments eligible for Help to Buy are selling extremely well, but anything priced over the incentive’s £600,000 upper limit is proving hard to shift. As one person put it to us recently, ‘without Help to Buy we’d be back in 2008!’.
Construction
- 24,500 units started construction during 2016.
- This is 9,500 fewer than in 2015.
- Meanwhile 25,000 units completed in 2016 and 60,000 are under construction at the end of the year.
Sales
- 20,700 units sold during 2016.
- This is 5,800 fewer than in 2015.
- The total number of units to be sold has risen from 22,500 at the end of 2015 to 26,200 at the end of 2016.
Permissions
- 162,000 units were permitted but not yet started at the end of 2016.
- It would take eight years to sell this number of units based on the 2016 sales rate.
PRS
- 2,900 PRS units started construction during 2016.
- This is 12% of all private starts.
- A fifth of all private sales in 2016 were to PRS.
Pricing
- The average asking price for new homes in London is £883 psf.
- This has risen by 65% since 2009.
- Almost two thirds of sales in 2016 were priced between £600 psf and £999 psf
