These luxury flats—most with a starting price of £1 million ($1.4 million)—are simply failing to sell. According to property agent Henry Pryor, they were pitched as “gambling chips for rich overseas investors,” a traditionally lucrative demographic that has since turned its back on the UK’s Brexit-roiled market.
Out of the 1,900 units built in 2017, only 900 were sold, with the total number of empty luxury apartments across London now sitting at a record 3,000. [...]
At its current rate, the existing glut of London properties will take three years to sell. Despite this sluggishness, developers actually have plans to build over 400 brand-new residential towers (each at least 20 stories high), and the city’s councils recently approved another 18,712 total units costing over £1m.
All of this is when the capital is facing a growing crisis in the availability of affordable housing, causing many to accuse the city’s leaders of prioritizing the needs of the super-rich from overseas over those of middle-class Londoners.
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