Home buyers are snapping up the houses of wealthy Londoners at cut prices, according to a report by real estate agent Hamptons International.
Hamptons sells homes in the United Kingdom capital priced at 3 million pounds ($4.8 million) or more. The number of London houses that agents at Hamptons sold in May surged 50 percent from April, while prices fell as much as 10 percent, Hamptons said.
In London districts such as Kensington and Chelsea, favored by bankers and movie stars, house prices soared about 60 percent in three years before peaking in 2001. Values slipped in the past two years as bankers lost jobs and had bonuses cut.
A penthouse on Kings Road in Chelsea with four bedrooms and four bathrooms has an asking price of 3.6 million pounds, according to Hamptons’s Web site.
The housing slump in Europe’s biggest financial center may now be ending as confidence picks up following the end of the war against Iraq, Hamptons said. The number of people viewing homes in London rose 40 percent in the past year, it said.
Sellers of London homes are plowing the money into million-pound country homes, the agent said.
As many as 70 percent of country homebuyers come from outside the area, it said.
