A respected London agent made a clean call last week. Writing in PrimeResi, the UK’s luxury property trade publication, Charles Curran of Maskells, a boutique London agency, said that with the midterms behind us and Trump losing influence at home, American demand for UK property will slip, and London’s top neighborhoods, what the trade calls Prime Central London, won’t recover for the time being.
I understand the logic. I think it’s wrong.
The trade that isn’t a trade
The argument treats American buyers as if they’re running a political trade: buy London when Washington feels unsettled, sell when it calms down. A few were. The ones I’m talking to aren’t.
When I wrote about the Trump Refugee in September, the point was never that Americans were fleeing one president. It was that a generation of wealthy Americans had decided, many for the first time, that they want a second base outside the United States. It’s a hedge against everything they can’t control at home: politics, yes, but also taxes, schools, safety, and the plain fact that their children may end up living abroad anyway.
You don’t unwind that decision because of one election. It took most of these families years to make it. It will take more than a news cycle to reverse it.
I traded mortgage-backed securities before I ever sold a house. A trade has an exit. A family base doesn’t.
What I’m actually seeing
Three things from the last few weeks. None of them look like demand slipping.
Solicitors are answering. In early November I mailed letters to ten Mayfair solicitors (the lawyers who handle UK property purchases) introducing myself as the American bridge into Sotheby’s UK. Five wrote back within two days. Solicitors don’t answer letters for fun. They answer when their clients are asking questions they can’t fully answer.
Families have already decided. A London advisory firm that works with American families, many relocating with children, approached me to build a two-way referral partnership. Their clients aren’t asking whether. They’re asking where, and how.
Companies are still moving people. Corporate relocation to London is opening up. Executives being posted here still need somewhere to live, and the companies sending them aren’t checking midterm results first.
Not one of these people mentioned the election.
The numbers agree
The data is quieter than the headlines, but it points the same way. Knight Frank reports prime central London sales in the three months to August ran 6% ahead of last year. Benham and Reeves found Mayfair’s available stock fell 13.3% in the third quarter alone. Less on the market, more getting done.
The Budget helped by doing nothing. Chancellor John Healey’s first Budget left stamp duty alone. I’ll own it: I expected bigger reform this year, and I was wrong. The stability matters more than the tax. The one new cost to watch is the annual surcharge on English homes worth £2 million or more, starting April 2028. American buyers should price it in with their own advisers. It isn’t a reason to stay home.
Where he’s right
Prime Central London isn’t roaring back. In nominal terms, prices sit roughly where they were more than a decade ago.
That’s exactly why the American buyer matters more now, not less. A buyer with a long horizon is the best thing that can happen to a flat market. They don’t need a rebound. They need a house they love at a price that makes sense, and London is offering both.
See you in December
I return to my office in Mayfair December 3–10, meeting solicitors, family offices and the Sotheby’s UK team. If you’re a London adviser with American clients, or an American thinking about a second base in the UK, I’d like to buy you a coffee.
You can reach me at jbe@sothebysrealty.co.uk · +44 7782 969271 · US/WhatsApp +1 202 607 4000.
Jim Bell Sotheby’s International Realty · Washington, DC and London