In news that will have Mayfair's private bankers reaching for a very expensive handkerchief, Coutts has found that eight out of 10 properties in London's most exclusive neighbourhoods - Mayfair, Belgravia, Knightsbridge, the usual suspects - now sell below asking price. Yes, even the super-rich are discovering that the market doesn't care how many zeroes are in your postcode.

Prime central London prices dropped 5% in the third quarter of 2026, as the UK property slowdown finally got around to hitting the people who can afford to wait it out. Properties are selling at an average 10% discount to asking price, which means some affluent folk are facing hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of pounds in losses on their homes. Tragic, really, if you're the sort of person who measures tragedy in seven figures.

Prices at the top end are now 14% below their 2014 peak, having been pummelled by Brexit, the Covid pandemic, higher property taxes and a surge in borrowing costs. Buying and selling agents have also reported a slowdown in interest from foreign-born buyers after the abolition of the non-dom tax regime - which is a polite way of saying the international jet set has found somewhere else to park its money.

Coutts says Knightsbridge and Belgravia have been hit hardest, with prices 30.8% below their peaks, while South Kensington is down 26.9%. Alex Webster, head of lending at the bank, noted that buyers and sellers at the top end were taking a more cautious approach even before the chancellor John Healey's first budget this week. Sellers will now be watching to see if the budget "encourages some of that delayed activity to return", she said. "But financing conditions and the wider economic environment will continue to influence the market." In other words: don't hold your breath.

The Bank of England base rate has been unchanged since last December, but bond market volatility has pushed up swap rates that influence fixed-rate mortgage pricing. The Bank has kept its key rate on hold at 3.75%, though expectations are growing that next week its monetary policy committee will vote to increase it for the first time in three years, to 4%. Because nothing says "property recovery" like a rate hike.

Meanwhile, sellers in prime central London are increasingly shying away: new listings are down 14% compared with the previous quarter, and available stock is down 6% year-on-year. Transactions were 9.1% lower in the third quarter, with the biggest slowdown in the £2m-£5m band, where transactions dropped 22.3%.

But hold the violins. Separate research from Savills found that buyers at the very top end are driving activity, with 26 transactions above £10m in the third quarter, taking the total to 127 over the past year. Together, those sales were worth £2.88bn. So the ultrarich are still buying - just not the merely rich, who are apparently left to contemplate their discounted Belgravia townhouses and the cruel indifference of the market.