London property faces worst hit from trade war: Rightmove
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has said its gauge of buyer demand reached the lowest level since September 2023
[LONDON] London house prices will suffer the most from US President Donald Trump’s trade war, real estate agents warn, as a global demand slowdown risks hitting the city’s already struggling market.
Asking prices in London rose just 0.5 per cent on average in April to £699,200 (S$1.2 million), property website Rightmove said on Monday (Apr 14). The capital was the only UK region to record fewer buyer inquries than a year earlier.
London values, which have barely grown over the past year, are now exposed to the fallout from Trump’s sweeping tariff announcements since Apr 2. They tend to be more vulnerable to geopolitical tensions and market turbulence, with top locations such as Chelsea, Mayfair and Knightsbridge increasingly reliant on foreign buyers in recent years.
London “is likely to see greater knock-on effects from US tariffs than the rest of Great Britain”, said Colleen Babcock, property expert at Rightmove.
The prediction echoes separate warnings from estate agents that the UK housing market risks being “blown off course” by global trade disruptions. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has said its gauge of buyer demand reached the lowest level since September 2023.
Rightmove offers one of the first snapshots of UK housing demand since stamp duty, a property tax, went up on Apr 1. It suggests that a feared drop-off in transactions has so far not materialised, with most buyers who missed the tax deadline proceeding with their deals.
Asking prices nationally rose 1.4 per cent to a record £377,182 in April, a bigger-than-usual increase for the month despite the number of homes available for sale being at a decade-high. Agents are hoping cheaper borrowing costs will keep demand going as investors price in more aggressive interest-rate cuts from the Bank of England.
“Indications are that with an expected reduction in mortgage rates over the summer, we will see a stable market in the first half of the year,” said Phill Sandbach, director at John German in the Midlands. “We have not seen a downturn in our activity yet due to the tariff situation, but we do expect some economic headwinds as a result.” BLOOMBERG
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