Rich Americans luxuriate in luxury London properties as they flee US crime, political woes: ‘They don’t want to go back’

It is London that is calling for these cutthroat Americans.

Expats with money are increasingly investing in London’s luxury real estate market, with sales doubling in just six months, according to a new report from Bloomberg.

A strong dollar plus various social and political problems plaguing the United States have our citizens looking to the British capital to grab the city’s finest properties.

“Americans are much more determined to buy, partly because they don’t want to come back to the US because of issues such as gun crime,” Jo Eccles, managing director of London-based property search service Eccord told the newspaper.

“With exchange rates in their favor, Americans have already crunched their numbers and are armed with their bid, aware of tax considerations before they arrive,” the expert added. “This is a stark contrast to three years ago, when our American customers typically rented before buying, taking longer to establish roots in London.”

Eccles recently represented an American buyer who purchased a $42 million home in the luxury area of ​​Notting Hill, a transaction that would once have been conspicuous but is now more normal than not.

The trend is particularly striking at a time when the London market is facing a deficit of local or UK buyers as a result of tougher taxes on the wealthy.

Indeed, multiple luxury brokers are reporting that Americans are their top buyers in the current market, Bloomberg reported based on a survey by researcher LonRes.

In the last nine months alone, the amount of Americans buying in London went from 3.3% in the second half of 2023 to 6.1% in the first half of 2024.

However, there is historical precedent for the model.

“Whenever there has been a financial or political upheaval over the last 50 years, the rich bees have always flown into the London honeypot,” managing director of luxury real estate firm Glentree, Trevor Abrahmsohn, explained to the media. “We are nursing three investigations at the moment, up to [over $131 million]where clients are looking for trophy properties in London to house their families in their new British guise.”