Property News · September 5, 2016

London housing: why Hong Kong cash in Colindale is not all bad


Some may be alarmed that foreign investors are now buying new housing in the suburbs as well as the centre, but opposition to them is simplisticLondoners, Labour politicians and left-leaning journalists often blame rich foreigners for high housing prices in the capital. This has provided opportunities for people like Boris Johnson to teasingly suggest that they are being xenophobic and, more importantly, has demonstrated a regrettable readiness to seek easy culprits for complicated problems. A BBC TV report on the combined effects of Brexit and changes in property tax on London’s housing market may give this tendency fresh impetus. But it has also underlined its flaws. In the report, investors from Hong Kong are shown purchasing homes that are still under construction in Zone 4 Colindale. The fall in the value of the pound since the EU referendum has given wealthy global shoppers like them a further incentive to buy future London bricks and mortar “off-plan”, and changes in stamp duty and levies on second homes have made purchasing handfuls of units of half-built suburban housing more profitable than buying fewer of them in Kensington. Continue reading…

Source : theguardian.com
Read more…London housing: why Hong Kong cash in Colindale is not all bad

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