Champagne Fizz Goes Flat for London Homes: Real Estate

Twenty one cranes loom over the south bank of the River Thames from Battersea Power Station to the St. George Wharf tower. Here, in the biggest concentration of residential projects in London, developers are steaming ahead just as prices are starting to fall.

Homebuilding in central London doubled in two years as record-low interest rates and demand from overseas buyers drove up values at a pace not seen since 1987. Developers such as Chinas Dalian Wanda Group and U.K.-based Berkeley Group Holdings Plc were drawn to the Nine Elms district, where Malaysias Sime Darby Bhd. (SIME) is redeveloping the Battersea station as part of a plan to turn the neighborhood into a prime address.

As the apartment towers rise, the price increases that underpinned the construction boom have come to a halt. London home values fell month-on-month for the first time in two years in September, according to Hometrack, and developers such as Killian Hurley, chief executive officer of London-based Mount Anvil Group Ltd., dont see a return to red-hot growth soon.

Over the summer months, the champagne fizz went out of the market, said Hurley, whose company plans to develop London homes worth 1 billion pounds ($1.6 billion) by 2018. The madness has gone out of it, so its a lot more sustainable. People are becoming more discerning.

Expectations for home price growth in the capital are falling at the fastest pace since before the financial crisis, a survey by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors showed. Values rose in 1 percent of London postcodes in September, compared with 87 percent in February, Hometrack said Sept. 26. Further modest declines are likely, the research firm said.

Though prices climbed for most of this year, the pillars supporting the London market -- a cheap pound, record-low interest rates and the citys reputation as a haven for foreign buyers -- have been eroding for months.

U.K. financial officials damped domestic demand for homes by tightening affordability checks and restricting the number of high loan-to-income mortgages. Speculation about when the Bank of England will raise the benchmark interest rate from a record low of 0.5 percent is also causing uncertainty in the market. BOE policymakers, meeting this week, have been split over whether to keep the rate at that level.

Overseas buyers have seen prices rise because of a strengthening pound, as well as new levies such as a capital-gains tax on homes sold by people living abroad. Theyre also wary of the opposition Labour Partys plan to raise 1.2 billion pounds from a mansion tax if it gets into power after next years national election.

The Bloomberg U.K. Homebuilders Index is little changed this year, compared with a 37 percent gain in the same 10 months of 2013. Berkeley, which focuses on London and southeast England, was the worst performer in the 10-stock index, with a 15.7 percent decline. Sime Darby fell 4.6 percent this year in Kuala Lumpur, where its based.

Other homebuilders with projects in London include Taylor Wimpey Plc, which gained 3.7 percent this year. Barratt Developments Plc, the U.K.s second-largest homebuilder by market value, leads the homebuilders index with a 14 percent increase in 2014.

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Champagne Fizz Goes Flat for London Homes: Real Estate