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London housing market shows rising bubble risk as Asians pile in

Feb. 3, 2014 - 19:38 By Korea Herald
Automobiles sit parked in front of residential properties on Cadagon Square in London. (Bloomberg)
London’s housing market is beginning to show “bubble-like conditions” as overseas investors bid up prices and buyers take on more debt to purchase properties, according to a report Monday by the EY Item Club.

Homeowners are now borrowing the same multiples of income to purchase real estate in the U.K. capital as they were before the financial crisis, the London-based group sponsored by EY, formerly Ernst & Young, said in the report. The average London home will cost about 600,000 pounds ($990,000) by 2018, it estimates. It’s around 404,000 pounds now, according to the Land Registry.

Prices across most of the U.K. “remain well below their pre-crisis peaks and there seems little danger of a bubble,” Andrew Goodwin, senior economic adviser to the EY Item Club, said in the report. “But London, which is suffering from a combination of strong demand and a lack of supply, is increasingly giving us cause for concern.”

Surging London home prices, buoyed by demand from overseas investors and government initiatives to aid buyers, have prompted economists, analysts and politicians to warn of unsustainable gains. Asia has been a particularly strong source of demand for the best London properties, EY Item Club said, citing brokers. Investors from countries such as China and Singapore are taking advantage of the pound’s depreciation since the financial crisis to buy London homes. (Bloomberg)