Savills anticipates:
No change in Prime Central London values next year "with growth resuming in 2014";
Micro-locations like what it calls "prime south west London" relying increasingly on international money "coming out of PCL" - a tacit admission that even at the top-end, domestic sales are relatively low so foreign buyers provide a lot of business;
Mainstream house prices will rise 11.5 per cent in the next five years although after inflation that represents a real-term drop of three per cent.
The firm's most interesting predictions, perhaps, are about the rental market, although again attention is concentrated most of the top-end and London.
Average rents across the UK will rise 2.5 per cent next year and a total of 18.2 per cent by the end of 2017. The biggest rises will be in Greater London, where rents will grow 26.4 per cent in the next five years.
"In London the number of households in the private rented sector has risen 90 per cent over the past 10 years while the population of 20 to 34 year olds has grown by 18 per cent. At the same time, the average first time buyer deposit has risen from £12,000 to £58,000" says Savills' research head, Yolande Barnes.
