London property market in graphs: Where is the easiest place to sell a house?
We all know London house prices have been skyrocketing, and a 20 per cent rise in the last 12 months shows a market where demand is high and supply is low.
But where is the easiest place in London to sell a house?
Data from property website Rightmove shows how long a house stays on the website before it is marked as sold. Comparing April to June this year to the corresponding period in 2013 shows that it's getting quicker to offload a home in almost every borough.
Only in Kensington and Chelsea have waiting times increased (by four per cent) while in some areas the time a house in on sale has decreased by over 40 per cent.
Where are London properties selling fastest? The darker the colour, the longer the wait:
To scroll down on mobile, please swipe to the right of the map.
The darker the colour in the map, the longer the wait and, if you've got the money, the longer you have to think over the decision. Time to sale ranges from 29 days in Lewisham and Sutton to 82 in Chelsea and Kensington.
Last week we published an article showing in which London boroughs buyers pay the most per square metre and this data is useful context for the selling times we're looking at here.
These are the ten boroughs where houses are sold the quickest:
Lewisham and Sutton are the two boroughs where houses seem to be selling the fastest – a home is on the market for an average of 29 days – but they are mid-table in terms of prices, and so aren't ranking highly for value or desirability.
Lewisham is the borough with the 18th-highest prices (out of 33, there is no data for the City of London) but seems to be an easy place to sell.
Longest times to sale
The list of the ten boroughs where houses took the longest to sell has a mixture of cheaper and expensive average prices per square metre. Kensington and Chelsea is by far the most expensive per square metre at £10,854, and so it is little surprise that it takes an average of 82 days to sell a house there.
On the other hand, Newham is relatively cheap at £2,857 per square metre but it still takes 49 days to sell a house there, over a week more than the average London wait of 41 days.
Biggest changes
Despite an above-average waiting time, a house in Newham is still selling far quicker than it was last year. Below is a chart of the areas with the biggest percentage drops in selling time when compared to April-June last year.
The largest drops of all are in Haringey where houses are selling only 49 per cent faster in the three months to June this year than they were in the same period last year.
London as an outlier
When we compare the London average of 41 to other regions we can see how desirable property is in the capital. On average it takes 10 fewer days to sell a home in London than elsewhere in the UK.
It seems that at the moment London is the exception just about any way you want to look at UK property prices.