The buyers who aren't waiting

I was recently introduced to a young family, British, but they had been living in Los Angeles for many years and their money was in dollars. They wanted to come home, to be near friends and family, to educate their children here, and they had a budget of around £10 million. But they were hesitant. London property felt unfamiliar after years away, and the press had not been encouraging. They asked whether I could help them find a rental whilst they found their feet.

I said I thought we should look at the numbers first.

A £10 million house in the part of London they had in mind would have cost closer to £13 million at the market peak in 2014.

The more striking figure was the currency calculation. In 2014, a dollar buyer converting into sterling was working with an exchange rate of around $1.70 to the pound. Today that rate sits closer to $1.35. Which means that the same £10 million costs an American buyer approximately $13.5 million today, compared to roughly $22 million for the equivalent property at peak pricing and peak exchange rates ten years ago. The combined saving, in dollar terms, approaches $8.5 million.

They were not expecting that number.

We talked about their ten-year and longer-term plans. About the fact that they wanted to renovate lightly, to make the house their own in a way no rental would allow. About the freedom that comes with owning the place your children grow up in. About the fact that whilst property is not going to generate the same capital growth it might have 20 years ago, they were not primarily buying an asset. They were creating a home. And at these prices, in these conditions, the cost of doing so was considerably less alarming than the headlines had led them to believe.

They bought, instead of renting.

These are not distressed assets in a failing city. They are some of the most sought-after addresses in the world, available at prices not seen in over a decade.

The currency advantage is not limited to American buyers. Consider a European or domestic buyer purchasing a £3 million property in prime London today. Compared to the equivalent purchase at the 2014 peak, price falls alone represent a saving of somewhere in the region of £700,000 — before any currency movement is factored in.

The government has not made it easy. The 2% non-resident surcharge introduced in April 2021 applies to all overseas buyers on top of standard stamp duty rates, and since October 2024 anyone purchasing an additional property faces a further 5% surcharge, up from 3%. On a purchase of this size those costs are real. Set against the combined effect of a decade of price falls and a currency shift of that magnitude, the additional surcharges are relative. Buyers who are actually transacting in today's market know this — which is why, even as wider buyer confidence has faltered, overseas transactions continue to account for over half of sales in the most sought-after central London and Cotswold postcodes.

I work with buyers who know London very well. Who have thought about a purchase for a long time and who understand this market. And I watch some of them wait. Political and economic uncertainty paralyses buyers, especially discretionary ones, even when the numbers make sense.

The anxiety is understandable. Labour's first two years have brought repeated shocks to the tax environment for high-value property. Discounting is at its highest level in seven years. The average discount in Q1 2026 reached 11.9%, with over half of all listings having seen at least one asking price reduction.

The conditions that buyers spent years hoping for — less competition, and sellers beginning to be willing to talk — are here.

For both domestic and overseas buyers, that represents something that does not come around often. Overseas buyers have the currency and price advantage working together. Domestic buyers have something equally valuable right now: negotiating power, and a market where well-priced property is moving and motivated sellers are having to be realistic. The irony is that the same uncertainty creating those conditions is also the reason some buyers are still on the sidelines.

What makes this moment harder to read than the headline numbers suggest is that London has rarely been more complex to navigate. Many of the sellers in prime areas carry little or no borrowing. They are not under pressure. They will wait for the right buyer at the right price, and they are entirely comfortable doing so. The market that looks like it should favour buyers is, in reality, far more nuanced than that. Opportunity exists, but it is not evenly distributed and it is not always visible. The best properties at the sharpest prices are not being offered to buyers who appear to be fishing rather than committed to moving. Relationships, timing, and credibility matter in ways they simply did not when the market was more straightforward.

This is precisely why independent advice has never been more valuable. Not just to hold a buyer's hand, but to give them an accurate picture of what is actually available, what is realistically achievable, and where the genuine value lies. A buyer going it alone in this market is working with a fraction of the information and none of the access.

The overseas buyers coming to London right now are a varied group. Some are escaping the political turbulence of the United States. Some are relocating from parts of the world where conflict has forced them to leave. And then there are the ones I find most interesting: buyers who left London for other European cities, drawn by lifestyle or tax efficiency, and who are now reconsidering. The schools, it turns out, don't compare. The culture doesn't quite replicate. London, for all its complexity, is hard to beat. The domestic buyers who can see past the noise, and who take the time to understand the market properly before moving, are arriving at the same conclusion.

The question is not whether London is good value. It demonstrably is. The question is whether the people who should be acting will keep finding reasons not to.

The family from LA completed last month and are now undergoing renovations ahead of their move in the summer.