It’s London calling for these minted Americans.
Cashed-up expats are increasingly investing in London’s luxury real estate market, according to a new report from Bloomberg, with sales doubling in just six months.
A strong dollar plus various social and political problems plaguing the United States have our citizens scouring the British capital to snap up the city’s plushest properties.
“Americans are being much more decisive with purchases, partly because they don’t want to return to the US due to issues such as gun crime,” Jo Eccles, the managing director of London property search service Eccord told the outlet.
“With exchange rates in their favor, Americans have already done their number crunching and are armed with their offer, aware of the tax considerations before they arrive,” the expert added. “This is a stark contrast to three years ago, when our American clients would typically rent before buying, taking longer to put down roots in London.”
Recently, Eccles represented an American buyer who purchased a $42 million home in the posh Notting Hill area, a transaction that would’ve once been notable but is now more normal than not.
The trend especially stands out at a time when London’s market is facing a deficit of local or UK buyers as a result of stricter taxes on the wealthy.
Indeed, numerous luxury brokers are reporting that Americans are their main buyers in the current market, Bloomberg reported based on a survey by the researcher LonRes.
In the last nine months alone, the amount of Americans buying in London went from 3.3% in the second half of 2023 to 6.1% in the first half of 2024.
There is historical precedence for the pattern, however.
“Whenever there has been a financial or political upheaval over the last 50 years, the rich bees have always flown to the honey pot of London,” luxury real estate firm Glentree’s managing director, Trevor Abrahmsohn, explained to the outlet. “We’re nursing three inquiries at the moment, up to [over $131 million], where clients are looking for trophy properties in London to house their families in their new British guise.”