Bloomberg Gets To The Crux Of Things: Wealthy UK Riverside Property Owners' Home Values DROP!
Homeowners in some of Britain’s wealthiest districts face a drop in property values and the prospect their homes may be uninsurable as record floods blight towns along the River Thames.
About 5,800 homes have been flooded in towns including Chertsey, Egham and Datchet after England endured its wettest January since 1766. Almost 55,000 homes with a combined value of about 21 billion pounds ($35 billion) are in areas that have been subject to severe flood warnings, according to real estate broker Savills Plc. (SVS)
“The repercussions for property asset values are absolutely huge,” said Hugh Fell, managing partner at property broker George F White LLP and a former member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors valuation board. Some homes have lost more than half of their value, making them “virtually unsellable,” he said.
While the floods haven’t posed a serious threat to London’s real estate market, where home prices have gained 40 percent since April 2009, the hardest-hit areas have been commuter towns along the Thames that have benefited the most from the housing boom, a string of historic villages along the Thames in the counties of Berkshire, Hampshire and Surrey.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-19/flood-soaked-u-k-homeowners-face-decline-in-values-mortgages.html