Revealed - London’s busiest housing markets

An estate agency has revealed which London boroughs have been the busiest in terms of the number of homes sold as a percentage of all private dwellings within each borough. 

In the past 12 months, there have been 94,483 residential sales across London according to Benham and Reeves.

Measured against a total private dwelling stock of 2.8m homes that’s 3.3 per cent of all London homes changing ownership in the past year. 

On a borough-by-borough level, the busiest housing market in London is Havering: it has a total private dwelling stock of 88,998 and has generated 4,150 sales in the past year. This means that 4,663 in every 100,000 homes, or 4.7 per cent of the entire stock has been sold. 

In a close second place, Bromley has seen a transaction rate of 4,484 in every 100,000 homes, meaning 4.5 per cent of the stock has been sold in the past 12 months. This is followed by Wandsworth (4.3 per cent) Richmond-upon-Thames (4.2 per cent) and Lambeth (4.1 per cent).

In contrast, the quietest housing market in London is found in The City of London. Just 1.9 per cent of the borough’s homes have changed ownership this year.

Westminster and Brent have also had very quiet housing markets. In both instances, just 2.1 per cent of the dwelling stock has been sold in the last year, followed closely by Newham (2.3 per cent) and Kensington & Chelsea (2.4 per cent).

Director of Benham and Reeves, Marc von Grundherr, comments: “It’s clear from our research that despite many homebuyers now heading back to the capital, it’s the peripheral boroughs offering larger homes that continue to be the most popular. 

“It’s also interesting to see areas to the south of the river performing well and it seems that the lack of decent public transport links, often cited as a reason homebuyers want to stay north, is no longer the deterrent it once was. 

“Although again, this is certainly another result of the government’s work from home guidance and we expect the traditionally popular central areas of London to start gaining momentum as normality returns.”