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North Lastest figures reveal winners and losers in property stakes by Mira Bar-Hillel

The Evening Standard - 8th February 2005

The winners and losers in London's house price lottery are revealed today.

The headline figure, however, disguises wide variations between boroughs.  Camden was the outright winner.  Prices in the North London Borough grew by almost 23 per cent over the course of the year.  Islington was the runner-up with a rise of almost 18 per cent.  The figures also show that traditionally strong west London failed to keep up.  The best performer was hillingdon, followed by hounslow, up by just under eight per cent.  At the bottom of the table, a string of boroughs struggled to achieve price rises that kept pace with inflation.  The worst performing borough was Barnet, where prices grew by less than one per cent.  Harrow, Hackney, Kingston and Lambeth also underperformed.  Housing eceonomist John Wrigglesworth said: "We predicted London p[rices would go up by five per cent in 2004, and we were not far wrong."  The figures also show that:

London's cheapest borough is Barking and Dagenham, Where the everage home costs just over £170,000.  But over the year it saw prices rise by 12 per cent, twice the London average.

Kensington and Chelsea is the most expensive borough.  The average home costs more than £717,000.  But the borough could only manage a price rise of 3.95 per cent.  As well as gauging house prices, the land registry figures look at general housing trends too: 

The number of homes sold for more than £1 Million, which was running at almost 50 a week between January and July last year; fell back to about 35 a week between October and December.

The number of properties sold in London for £2 Million or almost fell, from 10 a week to about 7.5 a week.

The number of homes sold for more than £1 Million in Kensington and Chelsea in the last three months of 2004 was 127, and 31 of them fetched £2 Million-plus.

There were 61 £1 Million- plus sales in westminster, 46 in Camden, 32 in Richmond, 24 in Wandsworth and 21 in Hammersmith and Fulham.