31st March 2026
10mins
For the past decade prime property prices in Dubai have been on an upward trajectory, and its heady mix of year-round sunshine and rock bottom taxes have certainly stolen the hearts of a lot of buyers who might otherwise have invested in a home in Prime Central London.
The war has changed all that.
Over the past month expats have been scrambling to return to the safety of home. Real-estate transaction volumes in the UAE plunged 37% year-on-year in the first 12 days of March according to Goldman Sachs analysts, and local estate agents are already reporting distressed sales.
“The instant impact in London has been on the rental market,” said Camilla Dell, managing partner of Black Brick. “Those that have sold their homes, or rented them out, urgently need somewhere to live, and the short let market will certainly see a jump as a result.”
The impact on the sales market is harder to predict. Some agents are reporting an increase in enquiries from buyers looking to get out of Dubai for good, although others will be adopting a more wait-and-see strategy.
Dell suspects that once the dust has settled many buyers will want to entirely rethink their property portfolios. Dubai’s reputation for safety and price growth is of course now in tatters. And the conflict has also given an unsavoury peep behind the veil of the, by British standards, repressive regime which has been playing hardball with anyone daring to comment negatively about the situation on social media.
“What it will make people focus on is the importance of diversification and not having all your eggs in one basket,” said Dell. “There are people who sold all their properties to move to Dubai and are now regretting it.”
London, with its rule of law, stable political system, and free speech, will clearly appeal to many of those who face building new post-Dubai lives, and Dell stresses that rumours of spiralling crime rates in the British capital are wildly overblown.
Despite reports by no lesser authorities than Reform pundits and Donald Trump himself, the Metropolitan Police reports that the murder rate in the city is at its lowest level for a decade. Robbery figures have been stable for more than a decade, and the number of people requiring hospital treatment for knife attacks is down over the past ten years. This is not to say that the capital is crime free – phone snatches and shoplifting are both rising – but London’s safety record is currently better than most other European capitals.
The latest Prime Central London data makes depressing reading, with prices suffering their steepest annual price decline since the financial crash according to house price analyst LonRes.
The number of deals has fallen almost a third in the past year, while average sale prices are down ten per cent.
LonRes does see a tiny glimmer of hope on the horizon – the number of homes which were under offer across prime London in February was 8.1 per cent higher than in February 2025, and a solid 29 per cent more than the pre-pandemic average.
And there is another market metric which is positively flourishing – estate agents report that the number of enquiries from buying agents, working on behalf of clients, has picked up after a two year slowdown. The current 12-month average of enquiries is more than two and a half times the levels seen in 2017-2019
As former president Barack Obama once said, “Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something.” And it has never been harder to really know the London market, with the number of homes being sold off market by a positive smorgasbord of agents on the rise.
“As the market in London has slowed, more and more sellers have decided not to list their properties on the property portals,” explained Dell. “They prefer to try and sell off market instead – 73 per cent of our deals above £3m last year were on off market properties.
“And while in the past the big two agents – Knight Frank and Savills – really had a strong hold over the PCL market, that just isn’t true anymore. They now have much more competition, because there has been an explosion of small brokerages and one man bands.
“The result is that if you are a buyer trying to find a property you can no longer do it by looking at the portals and registering with one or two agents. More and more buyers are realising that and are taking another route.”
The other reason why buyers are increasingly open to the idea of hiring a professional to guide and support them through the process is the grim reality that London property ownership is no longer the licence to print money that it was in the early 2010s.
“The mentality a few years ago was that if you are buying in a rising market you can’t really make a mistake,” said Tom Kain, a partner at Black Brick. “Now there is a more mixed picture, and prices in a lot of areas are not going up, people feel more cautious about taking the plunge and want more advice.”
That sense of caution is only going to increase with the Middle East war ongoing, not least because mortgage interest rates, which had been relaxing, are now creeping upward once more making borrowing more expensive at the same time that surging oil and gas prices will begin to put increasing pressure on the cost of living.
It is far from London’s most glamorous, fashionable, or convenient neighbourhood, but homes on an elite corner of this leafy postcode, on the border of Hampstead and Hampstead Garden Suburb, have emerged as the most expensive in Great Britain.
N2’s premiere street, Winnington Road, tops the annual league table produced by property portal Rightmove, with an average sale price of a hefty £12,538,095.
The Bishop’s Avenue, which runs parallel to Winnington Road and is famous as London’s first-ever millionaires row, also makes the grade with an average sale price of £8,930,650.
Like all data this research has its drawbacks, of course. For a start it only includes streets which have achieved a certain number of sales during the year, and with transaction numbers down to a trickle in PCL many valuable streets have not been included because not enough has been sold to generate a reliable average price figure.
And the research looks at overall sale price, not at price per sq ft – in reality many homes in PCL are significantly more expensive per foot than the behemoth mansions of Winnington Road and the spacious new luxury apartments of The Bishop’s Avenue which tend to trade for up to £1,000 per sq ft.
Given the statistical shortcomings, it is still true to say that for specific buyers leafy N2, which sits just north of Hampstead Heath, is a unique proposition. It is close to great schools and open space, many of its houses come with staff accommodation and enormous (by London standards) gardens, and private security is much in evidence.
It also offers a surprising variety of property types. Most of Winnington Road’s original family still stand, but in recent years many of The Bishop’s Avenue’s Arts & Crafts houses and modern trophy mansions have been bulldozed and replaced with highly serviced luxury apartment buildings.
“They appeal to downsizers, and older buyers, who want to stay in this part of north London, and they have made The Bishop’s Avenue relatively accessible in price terms too,” said Dell.
Our clients, a family from Singapore, were relocating to London for work, and were looking for a family home. A complicating factor was that they had not yet decided on schools for their children, and so Black Brick’s first step was to introduce them to an independent schools’ advisor to help them make this crucial choice.
Their choice of school focussed their search for a home in Battersea and Clapham, and Black Brick embarked on an extensive preview of more than 70 different potential properties on their behalf. Their favourite was a five bedroom Victorian end-of-terrace on the doorstep of Battersea Park. To make sure that the home was perfect for their needs, our buying agency team even travelled the client’s commuting route during rush hour, in order to be able to report back on timing and conditions.
The 2,470 sq ft house was listed for £2.4m, but Black Brick was able to negotiate a price of £2.25m for our client – a saving of £150,000 or just over six per cent – which worked out at £910 per sq ft.
To help them manage the deal from overseas in a market where one in three agreed sales collapse, Black Brick also helped them find a trusted mortgage advisor and solicitor, as well as an interior designer to help them put their own stamp on the house once it was theirs.
Our clients were looking for a second home in London, close to where their three children are studying, and wanted a traditional Prime Central London address in one of the neighbourhoods encircling Hyde Park.
We found them a charming, but dated, four-bedroom mews house, which was on the market for £3.1m.
They loved the property so we introduced them to a contractor who was able to calculate how much the house would cost to upgrade, and we then used this figure in our negotiations with the vendor. They ended up agreeing to sell it for £2.8m, a discount of £300,000 or more than ten per cent.
This deal is a great example of just how convoluted buying real estate in a historic city can be. The house backs on to the Victoria & Albert Museum, and according to an ancient legal covenant any building work had to be approved not only by the museum but also by Lisa Nandy, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Luckily the solicitor we had recommended to our clients was on top of the situation, and the sale and permission for building work went through without a hitch.
Our clients had this to say about working with us:
“We engaged Black Brick as our buying agents and had the pleasure of working with Dominic and Tom. Following an initial set of viewings over the summer, Black Brick helped us refine the search parameters based on the initial set of viewings and navigate the real estate landscape. Their inputs and advice proved to be both prescient and on-point; ultimately prompting us to reconsider our own initial requirements for a move-in towards renovating an existing property. Throughout the whole process, Dom and Tom have been patient, insightful, delivering service to an exceptional standard and ultimately securing for our family an exceptional deal in an excellent location. Moreover, the transaction had several complications, which Dom and Tom managed with great aplomb and tact. We would – without hesitation – recommend Black Brick to potential buyers.”
Mr and Mrs O.
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