We have taken a look at how the price point of prime property across the country has changed over the last decade. For each of the main towns in England and Wales, we have looked at how the top 5% and the top 1% have changed and ranked each by the average.

The best performing area is Mayfair in London, where the price point of premium properties rose by 376% between 2007 and 2017. In other words, the price point which defines the start of the premium market increased almost by fourfold over the decade.

Mayfair is followed by two other areas of central London, namely Kensington and Whitechapel (E1 to be precise), both of which grew by about 140%. The first non-London areas are the great university cities of Oxford and Cambridge which both saw the price point increase by over 80%.

In the top 20, there are only two places outside of the south and east of England, which are Bristol, and more surprisingly North Shields. Bristol has seen something of a boom over the course of the last market cycle, as more people take advantage of the M4 to regularly work from home, commuting into London only when necessary. North Shields is something of an outlier, and it is likely that the rise of 44% is more to do with rising off a low base than anything more profound. Indeed, the entry point to the top 1% of all homes by price is £565,200.

Looking to the present, the somewhat lethargic performance of the prime housing markets across the country of late is down to sentiment. The economic and political backdrop and the prospect of future interest rate rises have conspired to keep positive sentiment somewhat caged. The burden of higher stamp duty and the weak prime London housing market has also contributed to relatively muted price growth. Indeed, London has seen far more price adjustments than the regional markets.

However, well-priced properties continue to sell, and precision pricing continues to attract competitive bidding. We are at the trough of the housing market cycle, but the pillars on which the market sits are still fundamentally stable. We expect that more positive sentiment will be released into the market if a Brexit deal is completed in October and afterwards the market will gather pace, as dictated by interest rate rises and economic growth.

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