London's Former Love Lane Tops U.K. Priciest Address List as Values Climb
London’s Former Love Lane Tops U.K.’s Priciest Addresses
Simon Dawson/Bloomberg
Home prices on London's Victoria Road, once known as Love Lane, surged 28 percent over the past year.
Home prices on London's Victoria Road, once known as Love Lane, surged 28 percent over the past year. Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg
Feb. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Richard Barber, an estate agent at W.A. Ellis LLP, talks with Bloomberg's Nejra Cehic about Victoria Road in London’s Kensington district which took the top spot in an annual list of the most expensive U.K. addresses. Home prices on the street, close to Princess Diana's former residence, surged 28 percent over the past year to an average 6.4 million pounds ($10.3 million), London-based property researcher Mouseprice said in a report today. (Source: Bloomberg)
London’s Former Love Lane Tops U.K.’s Priciest Addresses
Simon Dawson/Bloomberg
A worker walks into a house on Victoria Road in London.
A worker walks into a house on Victoria Road in London. Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg
Victoria Road in London’s Kensington district took the top spot in an annual list of the most expensive U.K. addresses as the nation’s priciest streets gained in value, Mouseprice said.
Home prices on the street close to Hyde Park once known as Love Lane and now the address of the Vietnamese embassy surged 28 percent over the past year. The average value there is now 6.4 million pounds ($10.3 million) after an “extremely high” 11 million-pound transaction in 2010, the London-based property researcher said in a report today.
Luxury-home prices have rebounded faster than the rest of the housing market due to a lack of properties and the weaker pound luring overseas buyers. While Knight Frank LLP says values of “super-prime” properties in the capital costing more than 10 million pounds will climb as much as 10 percent this year, the Centre for Economics and Business Research this month predicted overall U.K. house prices will drop 1.7 percent.
“Prime central London has always been a good safe haven for large chunks of money, if that’s where you want to put it, plus it’s a good place to live and enjoy,” Mark Redfern, head of Knight Frank’s Kensington branch, said in a telephone interview. “Demand so far has been outstripping supply, in some cases by fivefold for the best properties.”
A particular attraction of Victoria Road is “its proximity to good local schools,” Redfern said. The north end of the street was once an ancient track called Love Lane before being redeveloped in the early 19th Century on land known as the Vallotton estate after purchases by a family of the same name.
Art Tutor
Edward Henry Corbould, art tutor to the children of Queen Victoria, lived at No. 52, according to a plaque at the address.
Knight Frank lists an eight-bedroom property for sale on Victoria Road for 13 million pounds, with eight bathrooms, four reception rooms, a library, a garden and private parking.
“As in previous years, a number of distinct patterns exist in the rankings, with clusters of expensive streets gathered in small areas,” Mouseprice, owned by Calnea Analytics, which calculates the U.K. Land Registry’s house price index, said in today’s report. “The largest cluster can be found in Kensington and Chelsea, close to Fulham Road and the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.”
Out of the nation’s 20 priciest streets, 14 are in Kensington and Chelsea. The pound, which has dropped 23 percent on a trade-weighted basis since 2007, has helped attract overseas buyers to the U.K.’s prime real-estate market.
Lifestyle Choice
“Kensington and Chelsea offer the lifestyle that the international market would come to expect and enjoy,” Redfern said. Knight Frank’s Kensington office has as many as 40 people registered looking for a property valued at more than 10 million pounds, he said.
North London’s Barnet area holds the second-highest number of streets on the list, with four appearing in the rankings. Ingram Avenue, Britain’s second most expensive street, posted gains from a year earlier, according to Mouseprice. The street is next to Hampstead Golf Club, with homes also averaging 6.4 million pounds, up 5.5 percent from 2010.
Chester Square in the U.K. capital’s Belgravia area, close to Victoria Station, fell from the No. 1 spot in last year’s rankings after two properties changed hands at less than the “extremely high sales prices” seen in previous years, Mouseprice said.
Of the 11 streets that retained a presence in this year’s top 20, all but Chester Square showed gains in the average price of a property. Mouseprice uses Land Registry data back to 1995 to calculate the rankings and excludes addresses with insufficient property transactions.
To contact the reporter on this story: Scott Hamilton in London at shamilton8@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Craig Stirling at cstirling1@bloomberg.net
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