With mounting geopolitical tensions and an unprecedented wave of international elections in the year ahead, there is a collective sense of anxiety about the global landscape and future. At the same moment, a gradual alignment of authoritarian powers and a wider tilt to nationalist and far right populists is challenging the world order, and presenting an existential threat to democratic life. Our sense of unease is perpetually heightened by negative algorithms, social media conspiracies and the relentless 24/7 polarised cycle of news.

Naturally many of our conversations with clients and their fellow advisors in recent weeks have focused on how and where to manoeuvre amid this global fragility. On the whole, our clients are very fortunate to have choice, and time and time again they choose London as a place to lay roots. We have talked so often about London’s fundamentals: stable government; the rule of law; a world-class education system; its middle-ground time zone;  an unrivalled cultural programme. But more than this (or perhaps because of this), its admirers draw on London’s resilience, a strength that holds the city steadfast in turbulent times like these.

“A good half of the art of living is resilience”

Alain de Botton

The history of this notion of resilience and the city’s ability to bounce back as a sociopolitical entity spans back to AD50 and across more than two millennia. It has dealt with invasion, the black death, the plague (killing one in six Londoners), a great fire that destroyed 85% of London, civil war, the Blitz, terrorist attacks, financial crises, recessions and much, much more. In the wake of World War II, it took decades for London to recover but over the last thirty years it has rightly reclaimed its position as one of only two Alpha ++ cities alongside New York, with the London 2012 Olympics perhaps its crowning moment.  

In more recent times, London has navigated Brexit and Covid, and in a play of confidence last year, saw record construction of new offices. It is an engine of social mobility, an example of a richly diverse city (with over 300 languages spoken and two fifths of Londoners having been born abroad), with a cohesive population demonstrating that migration itself is part of London’s immune system – the resilience gene embedded deep within the city’s DNA.

Market predictions

This plucky start has made it even harder to predict what will happen to London’s prime markets in 2024.  Whilst we still expect a slowdown of sorts as the election looms – not least because property, wealth and inequality will always be at the forefront of the political party campaigns – we now sense that transactional volumes may remain static year on year, and that values will remain broadly flat for the best properties.  We do expect to see more debt utilised in 2024 if, and as, interest rates soften. In fact, our first £10m+ deal of the year involved a more traditional mortgage (at a 70%+ LTV) – something we hadn’t seen in the whole of 2023, a year dominated by cash transactions. We foresee that deals will continue to be very challenging to conclude, both in terms of navigating a very stock constrained environment, and in agreeing commercial terms and transacting. This is a consistent view shared by the top selling agents and other key industry stakeholders: the era of easy-breezy deals has long since been consigned to history. 

Celebrating London’s resilience

With mounting geopolitical tensions and an unprecedented wave of international elections in the year ahead, there is a collective sense of anxiety about the global landscape and future. At the same moment, a gradual alignment of authoritarian powers and a wider tilt to nationalist and far right populists is challenging the world order, and presenting an existential threat to democratic life. Our sense of unease is perpetually heightened by negative algorithms, social media conspiracies and the relentless 24/7 polarised cycle of news.

Naturally many of our conversations with clients and their fellow advisors in recent weeks have focused on how and where to manoeuvre amid this global fragility. On the whole, our clients are very fortunate to have choice, and time and time again they choose London as a place to lay roots. We have talked so often about London’s fundamentals: stable government; the rule of law; a world-class education system; its middle-ground time zone;  an unrivalled cultural programme. But more than this (or perhaps because of this), its admirers draw on London’s resilience, a strength that holds the city steadfast in turbulent times like these.

“A good half of the art of living is resilience”

Alain de Botton

The history of this notion of resilience and the city’s ability to bounce back as a sociopolitical entity spans back to AD50 and across more than two millennia. It has dealt with invasion, the black death, the plague (killing one in six Londoners), a great fire that destroyed 85% of London, civil war, the Blitz, terrorist attacks, financial crises, recessions and much, much more. In the wake of World War II, it took decades for London to recover but over the last thirty years it has rightly reclaimed its position as one of only two Alpha ++ cities alongside New York, with the London 2012 Olympics perhaps its crowning moment.  

In more recent times, London has navigated Brexit and Covid, and in a play of confidence last year, saw record construction of new offices. It is an engine of social mobility, an example of a richly diverse city (with over 300 languages spoken and two fifths of Londoners having been born abroad), with a cohesive population demonstrating that migration itself is part of London’s immune system – the resilience gene embedded deep within the city’s DNA.