Gen Z, look away now! How London has changed in three decades of Homes & Property

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The average property cost £84,600, mortgages were £410 a month and no one bought in Hackney unless they could help it... Prudence Ivey looks back to 1996, when this section of the…

The average property cost £84,600, mortgages were £410 a month and no one bought in Hackney unless they could help it... Prudence Ivey looks back to 1996, when this section of the Standard was born

For the past 30 years, Homes & Property has been your guide through the turbulent waters of London’s housing market. Together we’ve navigated financial crashes, uncovered new neighbourhoods, ridden a buy-to-let boom, and flirted with shabby chic and mid-century modern.

London was anointed the coolest city in the world by Newsweek the same month H&P launched, a place “bubbling over with creativity and verve,” according to Stryker McGuire, then UK editor of the magazine. The capital’s clubbing, fashion, art, architecture and lifestyle reigned supreme, the Oxo Tower restaurant was the hottest table in town and the capital’s new luxury flats were attracting international money, then largely from Eastern Europe and Hong Kong on the eve of handover, according to Ed Lewis, director of super prime residential sales at Savills.

But how much have London’s property and interiors scenes really changed since the first edition of Homes & Property was printed back in 1996? Quite a lot it turns out.

Back in 1996, London was leading the rest of the country out of a housing slump, with prices “catapulting back to their 1992 levels” according to an Evening Standard splash in July 1996. The average property in the capital cost £84,600, according to Savills, which puts today’s average at £554,400. That’s a more than 500 per cent increase. Wages, meanwhile, have not kept pace. Figures from 1995 show the average London salary was £19,000, with people spending about 4.4 times their income to buy a home. Now the ratio is closer to 10.3 times as reported by Lloyds, with Londoners earning an average of £51,800.

Indeed one colleague who bought at the time “because others in my office were and I thought I might as well” managed to secure a new mortgage product that offered a 95 per cent home loan with…

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