LONDON—In August 2014, when the housing market here was on a tear, a two-bedroom condominium in one of the most expensive neighborhoods went up for sale at £3.25 million ($4.64 million), a 67% premium to its purchase price six months earlier.
The redbrick home on Cadogan Gardens in Knightsbridge is still unsold, and expectations have been revised. The price has been cut three times, the latest at the start of this year, to £2.5 million.
“It’s a great property,” said Sam Spring, a sales broker at the Chelsea office of estate agency Faron Sutaria, of the 1,250-square-foot home with dark walnut floors and high-end appliances. “It’s just a very price-sensitive market these days.”
Wealthy investors, most prominently from Russia, China and the Mideast, swooped in on cities like London, New York and Vancouver to buy high-end homes in the years following the 2008 financial crisis. Real estate appeared to be a safe investment. Returns looked robust against ultralow interest rates.
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Now, demand is slowing not just in London, but in prime housing markets around the world.
Average prices of luxury homes in 10 global cities analyzed by real-estate broker Knight Frank LLP are expected to rise 1.7% this year, down from 3% growth in 2015.
Foreign investors that helped drive the boom have had to contend with weakened currencies, stock-market shocks and the collapse in oil prices. Meanwhile, a major overhaul of a U.K. transaction tax known as stamp duty increased the charge on high-price sales, and new taxes on second homes and rental properties will take effect this spring.
In New York, demand for high-end homes cooled last year, brokers said. In Miami, South American and European buyers could pull back this year due to a stronger dollar, and prices are expected to fall in Hong Kong, Singapore and Paris, Knight Frank said. Swiss lender UBS Group AG said in October that housing markets in Sydney, Vancouver, San Francisco and Amsterdam appear “significantly overvalued.”
Luxury housing in London became one of the world’s hottest assets. But “the frenzy is gone completely,” said Manish Chande, senior partner at U.K. real-estate firm Clearbell Capital LLC. About 18 months ago “everything was going like hot cakes. Today it’s the total opposite,” Mr. Chande said.
Prices in prime central London, which includes high-end properties in posh districts like Mayfair and Chelsea, fell 1.4% during 2015, according to data-provider Lonres. Some neighborhoods fared worse. In Knightsbridge, prices dropped 5.6% in November compared with the year earlier, according to broker Knight Frank.
Those slides may understate what is going on: Data on high-end homes are hard to compare, because there are few of them and sellers may have the wherewithal to simply hold off rather than accept a lowered price. Transaction volumes at the top end of the London market were as much as 40% lower in December from a year earlier, according to U.K. buying agent Property Vision, and inventories of prime properties are mounting.
The standoff between buyers and sellers resulted in 2,712 homes over £1 million for sale in prime central London at the end of November, 81% more than in January 2014, according to buying adviser Huntly Hooper Ltd.
Even so, in a sign of the liquidity crunch, the gap between asking prices and sales prices is widening.
The difference between initial asking prices and average sales prices in prime central London was at a record 19% in the three months to November, Huntly Hooper data show. The disparity was 9% in the same period last year.
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