No worries, you do not need to read whole article to know where. It’s London. A city which a lot of international buyers love including Malaysians. Current average price in London is now £473,893 (RM2.4 million) and this has shown a huge gap versus UK average property prices which are at £185,496. In fact this gap is widest within the past two decades. According to Acadata and LSL Property Services, that’s the biggest gap since Acadata records began in 1995. One major reason was because of the property recovery in London market since last year. Nationally, prices went up half the rate of London. Besides this, the report also showed that the housing market may be cooling as potential buyers started to resist ever higher prices.
In June, Bank of England announced that for new home loans, banks should ensure that its total of such loans not exceed 15 % of loan to income multiples of 4.5 and above. In brief, ensuring risky borrowers are at a maximum of 15% of all the new home loans. It also instructed banks to assess if borrowers are able to pay repayments if interest rates rise from the present lows by 0.5% to 3.5% over the next five years. The balance is always tough to do, control too much and the action stops. Once it stops, to get it moving is hard. Yet, without control, it may spiral to an unhealthy level.
Sometimes you may wonder why on and off I update everyone about London. I consider London as a good barometer to the property market for the world. In fact many Malaysians who have studied there regarded it as their second home. Parents continue to regards it as a top education destination. Ask any parents and even university students and I think every one would know Oxford and Cambridge. Thus London as such an international property market would be a great early warning system for the property market, in my personal view.
written on 14 Sept 2014
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