For two years, prime central London has been the market everyone explained and nobody bought. That changed in the second quarter. Transactions above £5m rose 18% year on year across Mayfair, Knightsbridge, Belgravia and Chelsea, the strongest quarter since 2022, and the buyer register has shifted decisively international: dollar- and dirham-denominated purchasers accounted for a little over half of super-prime exchanges, against a third a year earlier.
The arithmetic is straightforward. Sterling remains roughly 12% below its ten-year average against the dollar, and prime values sit around 17% below their 2014 peak in nominal terms — far more in real terms. For a dollar buyer, prime London is trading at a discount approaching a third against the last cycle's top. Two rate cuts from the Bank of England have done the rest, thawing a mortgage market that matters less at £5m than sentiment does.
"The super-prime segment is behaving like a currency trade — buyers are pricing in sterling, not square footage."
Agents report the return of a buyer type largely absent since 2016: the portfolio purchaser acquiring two or three units in a single quarter. Stock, not demand, is now the constraint — new instructions in the core postcodes fell 9% over the same period, and the best houses are increasingly trading off-market.
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