London homebuyers benefit from Brexit turmoil

Uncertainty over Brexit is helping turn some of London’s prime neighborhoods into true buyers’ markets. Home prices in some of the city’s most sought-after districts fell by the most in a decade during the first quarter as worried sellers cut prices in order to find buyers. That led to a sharp rise in transactions as buyers flooded the market looking for deals. With British politicians unable to agree on a way to formally exit the European Union, almost half of sellers of homes under 2 million pounds ($2.6 million) were cutting their asking prices before finding buyers. They got an average 13.4 percent discount on properties in the area known as prime central London, the data showed. Properties over 5 million pounds saw prices decrease 6.6 percent and sales rise 3 percent in the first quarter year on year, the first gain in more than a year, the data show. The situation in London is just one of the wide-ranging effects of the Brexit turmoil on real estate in Europe.