A £185,000 discount on a £600,000 home? The new opportunists betting on London property

Buying in prime central London has long been stereotyped as being reserved for those named in the Panama Papers. Yet a market slowdown over the past 10 years has changed the narrative and make-up of those buying here. Opportunists are now finding deals they could not have dreamt of in Zones 1 and 2 since before the late 1990s. ‘Transactions have really picked up in the past six months,’ confirms Richard Gutteridge, head of prime central London at Savills. ‘All the agents I know had a really busy summer.’

Who is buying the dip? The Renters’ Rights Act, which came into force earlier this year, did away with Section 21 and imposed a limit on annual rent increases, has spooked the investor market. Today’s buyers are not empire-builders in the classical sense. ‘My brother and I bought a three-bedroom flat in Shepherd’s Bush, of more than 1,000sq ft, from a 92-year-old lady who had retired to a convent, saving £185,000 on the initial market price and eventually getting the flat for £415,000,’ says Arnaud Plantenga, 29, who works in tech sales. As with many first-time buyers, Plantenga took out a mortgage to pay for the flat. Others in his position will often rent out a spare room to help pay this off. The process took two years.

For today’s young professionals, properties that haven’t changed hands in a while (‘my place hadn’t been touched since the 1980s,’ Plantenga notes) are the golden ticket. There are many such homes in prime central London — where sellers largely form part of an ageing population — which often are in need of upgrades, giving buyers more bargaining power. These aren’t fixer-uppers per se, but slightly tired properties that the modern yuppy is happy to do up slowly. Using the sluggishness of the market and snail-like speed of conveyancing to their advantage, the current class of buyers is made up not so much of sharks as serpents, unafraid to bide their time as they keep an eye on the prize.

‘The market is weighed down by inefficient conveyancing,’ says Rupert des Forges, a proprietary partner at Knight Frank, ‘and the high-street mortgage industry has got slower since covid. Time is a deal-killer.’ To some, however, it is a strategic advantage. Buyers are finding sellers more willing to accept low-ball offers. ‘I managed to shave £45,000 off the asking price of a two-bedroom flat with a garden in Islington,’ reports corporate lawyer Chris Selwyn, 28. ‘I saw it online mere minutes after it had gone up, visited it within the week and made an offer that was almost immediately accepted.’ Desperate times for sellers prove propitious.

A former insurance broker tells of a 1,400sq ft maisonette he bought a few years ago in Chelsea that went on the market for £2.1 million, but eventually sold for £450,000 less. How did he do it? ‘I found the previous owners’ names through the Land Registry and then learnt via social media that they were going through a divorce,’ he says, on condition of anonymity.

Unsurprisingly in a sluggish market, many sellers choose to list their homes off-market, eager to avoid any price reduction from being made public. ‘Two-thirds of deals on properties worth £3 million to £15 million are happening off-market,’ says buying agent Lucie Hirst. ‘We live in a culture of uncertainty,’ agrees Frances McDonald, associate director of residential research at Savills. Until the market reclaims ‘more confidence’, many are set to benefit from the downturn.

When might things turn around? Most of the agents spoken to said the catalyst would be the elimination of stamp duty. ‘When you add this to all the legal fees, conveyancing fees and cost of removal, it usually comes up to 20% of the total purchasing cost, which is why so many rent instead,’ says des Forges. Another one to note is the introduction of mansion tax in April 2028, targeting homes valued at £2 million and above. ‘It won’t do much,’ des Forges says of the policy. Labour hopes it will raise a mere £400 million, which is the cost of running the National Health Service for all of 17 hours.

It is this very uncertainty, however, that is making some people more bullish. Many are banking on a change of government, in 2029 or earlier, to do away with mansion tax — something the two biggest opposition parties are against — as with other Labour measures such as the land value tax, which Andy Burnham has refused to rule out. (The latter is a levy on the value of the home, designed to replace stamp duty.)

There is a reason those shorting the market are doing so mostly in prime central London: an area that would be most severely affected by the very policies some bet won’t come into being. A few of Labour’s promises, instead, are welcome. ‘One reason my brother and I managed to get our flat for so little is because we bought it on a very short lease,’ says Plantenga, ‘because Labour said it would overhaul leaseholds and move flats into commonhold ownership.’ It’s a case of rolling the dice and seeing where it lands.

This feature originally appeared in the November 4, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

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