London lost £20bn in home sales during Covid-19, but these boroughs bucked the trend
The value of home sales across London in the first 14 months of the Covid-19 pandemic dropped £20bn, but some capital boroughs did better than others.
Between February 2020 and April 2021 the total value of London property changing hands was £56.2bn, but that’s down from £76.5bn for the same period a year prior, according to data crunched by property experts Astons.
Analysis of sold price records by Astons has found that 85,304 residential transactions have taken place across the capital since the start of the pandemic to the end of April, despite the hit to incomes and lockdown restrictions impeding open homes, visiting estate agents and viewings
And, although much was written about home owners and renters opting for the suburbs and beyond, central London boroughs managed to keep seven of the top ten spots on London’s ranking of the most valuable areas.
The City of Westminster tooks the top spot with £3.74bn worth of property sold despite the pandemic putting an end to open homes for months.
Wandsworth and Kensington and Chelsea (£3.57bn) also sit in the top three most valuable boroughs in the London rankings.
Other central boroughs still racked up large total sales for the period, with Barnet (£2.6bn), Lambeth (£2.4bn), Camden (£2.1bn) and Hammersmith and Fulham (£2m) all within the top 10.
However, there was also increased appetite from remote workers to focus more on space than connectivity, with three peripheral boroughs also seeing some of the highest value of homes sold.
Bromley has seen the fifth-highest sum of property sold of all London boroughs at £2.5bn, with Richmond (£2.4bn) and Croydon (£1.9bn) also making the list.
The leafy postcodes of Bromley, which borders Kent, also had the highest number of property transactions for the period, at 4,821.
At the bottom of the ranking for the number of property transactions completed was the City of London.
Although never a residential sales powerhouse, the Square Mile managed only 149 transactions in the first 14 months of the Covid-19 pandemic.
| Location | Total value £ | Transactions |
| CITY OF WESTMINSTER | £3,740,641,264 | 2,181 |
| WANDSWORTH | £3,574,974,572 | 4,349 |
| KENSINGTON & CHELSEA | £3,574,034,650 | 1,604 |
| BARNET | £2,593,801,611 | 3,614 |
| BROMLEY | £2,546,517,460 | 4,821 |
| LAMBETH | £2,443,002,247 | 3,477 |
| RICHMOND UPON THAMES | £2,398,204,094 | 2,703 |
| CAMDEN | £2,130,463,481 | 1,888 |
| HAMMERSMITH & FULHAM | £2,066,604,239 | 2,057 |
| CROYDON | £1,886,525,951 | 4,259 |