London now most likely place to see homes sell at a loss in UK: report
Pricier ground leases, expensive service charges and tougher regulation for buy-to-let investors have weighed on the values of the UK capital’s apartments
[LONDON] A home seller in London now is more likely to make a loss than any other place in the United Kingdom for the first time in at least a decade.
About 15 per cent of Londoners last year sold their home for less than they bought, according to a report from Hamptons. That was the highest proportion in England and Wales and well above the national average of 8.7 per cent, the broker’s data dating back to 2015 showed.
“In London, upward house price growth is no longer the one-way bet it once seemed,” said Aneisha Beveridge, head of research at Hamptons. “Owners who bought a decade ago still face getting back less than they paid, something that would have been almost unthinkable in the heady days of 2015.”
The slump in the London market, driven partly by stamp duty hikes and the coming so-called mansion tax on homes valued at more than £2 million (S$3.5 million), has prompted some desperate vendors to offer discounts of as much as 50 per cent over the past year.
UK homes worth more than £2 million, most of which are in London, could drop an additional 5 per cent in value in 2026 as the market adjusts to the mansion tax, according to forecasts published last month by Hamptons.
In London, flat sellers were more than six times likely to make a loss than house vendors in 2025, a gap that has gradually widened over the past decade. Pricier ground leases, expensive service charges and tougher regulation for buy-to-let investors have weighed on the values of the UK capital’s apartments.
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To be sure, the average London seller in 2025 achieved a price of 45 per cent above what they originally paid. Still, most of that uplift stemmed from historic house price growth, Hamptons said.
In nine of the past 10 years, the North East of England was more likely to make a loss than anywhere else in England and Wales, according to Hamptons. But recent stronger price growth in northern regions has boosted returns. In 2019, 30 per cent of North East vendors sold for less than they paid compared with 9.2 per cent in London, underscoring the reversal in fortunes between northern and southern England.
“Over the next few years, more sellers are likely to have missed out on London’s 2012 to 2016 house price boom, having bought instead at what turned out to be the top of the market,” Hamptons’ Beveridge added. “The recent slowdown in house price growth nationally is likely to reduce the uplift homeowners achieve when they come to sell in the coming years.” BLOOMBERG
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