London house prices begin their slide

George Osborne’s recent policy moves suggest he’s keen to see that slide continue, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

Looking to buy a house in London but find that you are coming up a few million short? Things might be going your way at last. Recent news suggests that London house prices are already dropping at the top end of the market: data provider LonRes suggests that prices fell 0.9% to the year ending in June, says the FT. Other sources suggest rather faster falls in some areas.

Douglas & Gordon (D&G) notes that in the likes of Battersea and Battersea Park, "compounded by stamp duty issues and mortgage market concerns", prices were down as much as 10% over the year. It is, says D&G executive director Ed Mead, "hardly the definition of a bull market".

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.