This insightful article on the prime central London market was written by Yolande Barnes in 1992, at a time when, technically speaking, the country was coming out of the recession of the early 90’s, but was still feeling the effects of high unemployment and very low market confidence.

After experiencing 13 consecutive quarters of negative growth, the prime central London market turned positive in 1993, as confidently predicted in the article!

Interview with Katy Warrick

Key facts:

Job title: Associate Director

Specialisation: London Residential Development

Years at Savills: 3

About Katy: I started as a Market Analyst at East Thames Group in Stratford – an exciting place to work when it was announced London was hosting the 2012 Olympics! I joined Savills in 2011, where I lead our London Residential Development Research team.

Q How does our recent slump compare to previous downturns?

A Out of the seven downturns identified since 1989, only three resulted in prices falling on an annual basis: The early 90s downturn, US Recession of 2002, the Great Recession, post credit crunch.

Q How does London lead the recovery?

A London sees more international demand than the rest of the country and its economy is more resilient. However, the ripple effect out of London has begun. Over the first quarter of 2014 the prime London suburbs saw slightly stronger growth than in prime London and annual growth has been witnessed in all prime regional markets.

Q What is Prime Central London doing now?

A Prime Central London saw the strongest recovery since the downturn and currently values are almost 40% above their 2007 peak. However, more recently growth in PCL has slowed, with the strongest price growth seen in the less central locations favoured by domestic family buyers. The market does face some short term challenges which means that growth is expected to slow over the next 18 months.

Click the below image to enlarge

Taken from
25 Years of Savills Residential Research (1989 - 2014)