Now could be the perfect time for Londoners to sell up

If you fancy trading your poky terrace for a country manor, do it now before the property price-gap narrows.

Quit while you're ahead'. That was the headline on an article about London house prices in the Sunday Times last month. It suggested as we often have here that those who have made vast gains in the London market take advantage by selling up and moving out.

Why now? Because the gap between London property and non-London property is the widest it has ever been. It makes sense to think it will start to close again. Perhaps London prices will fall (however unlikely that might look today) or perhaps the gap will simply narrow back to historical norms as house prices elsewhere rise.

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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.