In terms of land area, London is the third largest city on Earth, and has a population of 14 million.
And now it has topped a new table.
Despite the economic downturn, it has topped a global survey of cities.
In recent years, London has taken over New York as the world's financial powerhouse and, despite Europhiles declaring that the introduction of the Euro will see Frankfurt and Paris overtaking London, the opposite has happened, with London pulling even further ahead of those two cities.
It also has the largest economy of any city in Europe. At $US669 billion, only four cities in the world - Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago - have a larger economy and, indeed, its economy is larger than many national economies (Sweden's economy is $342 billion and New Zealand's is $116 billion).
London has over 480 overseas banks, more than any other city in the world. London handled 31% of global currency transactions in 2005 — an average daily turnover of US$753 billion — with more US dollars traded in London than New York, and more euros traded than in every other city in Europe COMBINED. 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies are headquartered in central London.
Tourists love the city. A study carried out by Euromonitor in October 2007 places London at first place out of 150 of the world's most popular cities, attracting 15.6 million international tourists in 2006. This puts London far ahead of 2nd place Bangkok (10.35 million) and 3rd place Paris (just 9.7 million). London attracts 27 million overnight-stay visitors every year.
London has more billionaires than any city on the planet except New York.
And the downturn has not affected those foreigners who want to live and work in London. 55 per cent of them plan to "increase their exposure to residential property" over the next two years.
Leafy streets, period architecture, gracious parks (for a city of its huge size, it has tremendous amounts of green space such as Richmond Park, which is three times as large as New York's Central Park, and is famous for its 650 wild deer), vibrant theatreland and good schools all work in London's favour.
All this comes at a time when the IMF has praised Britain over its aggressiveness in tackling the recession.
London still on top of the world
The British capital has shrugged off the economic downturn to top a new global survey of cities.
By Caroline McGhie
21 May 2009
The Telegraph
London comes out top in Knight Frank's latest report.
In the new world order, where fiscal packages come in billions and multi home-ownership is something you keep quiet about, where does London now stand in the popularity charts? Has the economic downturn rubbed some of the shine from a city which has been a world favourite for the last decade, a place where millionaires, international businessmen and globetrotters flocked to buy their trophy homes?
"The assumption has been that London is dropping down the league, but it isn't really," says Liam Bailey, head of residential research at Knight Frank. "Even in a downturn, London is not a busted flush. It has all the media, creative industries, non-governmental organisations, think tanks, top restaurants, world-class headquarters, design and marketing, leading lawyers and medics here. London's strength comes from much more than the City."
His conclusion is based on Knight Frank's first World Cities Survey, pulling together statistics and opinions from all over the world on how different aspects of London perform. It emerges at a pivotal time in the economic turmoil, during which we have seen prime property prices drop by 23.6 per cent in a year, the wealth of the super-rich shrink by 20 per cent to 40 per cent, and cities in the East prepare themselves to overtake the Western front-runners. So far, the international crowd has not only hung on to their London homes, but 55 per cent of them plan to "increase their exposure to residential property" over the next two years.
"The gulf between the top tier of cities and the next tier down is still so large that we can assume it will take London a long time to be relegated to the second league," says Bailey. "For the last decade it has been vying with New York as world leader. After the introduction of the euro, London saw off Frankfurt and Paris to become the European super-centre."
While pundits predict that the Asian cities will eventually rule the world, London's tolerance may keep it centre stage. "Transparency, culture, openness, all matter," says Bailey. "These are things which emerging cities in the East can't easily replicate."
After Gordon Brown's doom-laden Budget and the introduction of the 50 per cent top-rate tax band, surely the global rich will go elsewhere? "The Budget didn't help," admits Bailey. "The mobile elite tend to earn quite a lot of money so the new supertax may be off-putting. We won't know for two or three years whether it will make an impact." At the moment, top agents and buyers' agents report that foreign buyers are extremely active. The 20 per cent to 30 per cent price drops, added to the 20 per cent decline in sterling, effectively offer international buyers property at half price.
Leafy streets, period architecture, gracious parks, vibrant theatreland and good schools all work in London's favour, as does the presence of a stabilising middle class, which colonises areas like Wimbledon and revives those like Clerkenwell. Of the top-end purchasers through Knight Frank, 50 per cent are high-earning professionals providing ballast between rich and poor. In spite of price drops, Zoopla.co.uk reports that more than 1,000 streets in the capital still have an average home value of more than £1 million.
The signs are that the price drops are now steadying. The April figures for London's most exclusive postcodes show that prices have risen, albeit by only 0.4 per cent, for the first time since March 2008, and by 1.6 per cent in properties less than £1 million. Viewings are up by 45 per cent and applicants have increased by 32 per cent. "Price falls are almost at an end for the central London market," says Bailey.
Renting has got a whole lot easier, too. Douglas & Gordon says rents have dropped by 15 per cent in the last year, and the price of renting a family house has fallen by 27 per cent.
Deer bathing in the Thames. Not in the countryside, but in Richmond Park in central London
"Clients wielding anything from £1 million to £100 million want to take advantage of the best buying conditions in a decade," says Roarie Scarisbrick of Property Vision. Whether it takes three or five years for the market to recover, it doesn't matter to them.
The most expensive place to buy in the world is still Monaco at £4,490 per sq ft, with London second at £2,520, followed by a group of high rollers at between £1,000 and £1,500 per sq ft in Manhattan, Moscow, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Rome and Singapore, with Sydney at £990.
But because of their key role in the creation of the property bubble they have seen prices fall hardest, as have holiday areas such as Marbella, Barbados and Chianti.
Meanwhile, the rich districts of the emerging economies continued to grow during 2008 – Moscow by 13 per cent, Jakarta by 18 per cent and Bangkok by 23 per cent.
Even Dubai continued to climb, by 11 per cent, but has since had massive price falls. So is anywhere recession-proof? "Different parts of the world are at different stages of the global downturn but nowhere will be immune from a significant fall," says Liam Bailey of Knight Frank.
Perhaps a tiger economy is the place to put your money? "It remains to be seen whether Hong Kong or Shanghai will be the leading city for the Asian centre," he says. "Beijing is one to watch because China's sovereign wealth fund is buying up assets round the world. They will develop huge influence and will be the only economy to rival the US in the future. But it isn't necessarily a place where the international elite will want
to settle." (Source: Zoopla.co.uk )
telegraph.co.uk
And now it has topped a new table.
Despite the economic downturn, it has topped a global survey of cities.
In recent years, London has taken over New York as the world's financial powerhouse and, despite Europhiles declaring that the introduction of the Euro will see Frankfurt and Paris overtaking London, the opposite has happened, with London pulling even further ahead of those two cities.
It also has the largest economy of any city in Europe. At $US669 billion, only four cities in the world - Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago - have a larger economy and, indeed, its economy is larger than many national economies (Sweden's economy is $342 billion and New Zealand's is $116 billion).
London has over 480 overseas banks, more than any other city in the world. London handled 31% of global currency transactions in 2005 — an average daily turnover of US$753 billion — with more US dollars traded in London than New York, and more euros traded than in every other city in Europe COMBINED. 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies are headquartered in central London.
Tourists love the city. A study carried out by Euromonitor in October 2007 places London at first place out of 150 of the world's most popular cities, attracting 15.6 million international tourists in 2006. This puts London far ahead of 2nd place Bangkok (10.35 million) and 3rd place Paris (just 9.7 million). London attracts 27 million overnight-stay visitors every year.
London has more billionaires than any city on the planet except New York.
And the downturn has not affected those foreigners who want to live and work in London. 55 per cent of them plan to "increase their exposure to residential property" over the next two years.
Leafy streets, period architecture, gracious parks (for a city of its huge size, it has tremendous amounts of green space such as Richmond Park, which is three times as large as New York's Central Park, and is famous for its 650 wild deer), vibrant theatreland and good schools all work in London's favour.
All this comes at a time when the IMF has praised Britain over its aggressiveness in tackling the recession.
London still on top of the world
The British capital has shrugged off the economic downturn to top a new global survey of cities.
By Caroline McGhie
21 May 2009
The Telegraph
London comes out top in Knight Frank's latest report.
In the new world order, where fiscal packages come in billions and multi home-ownership is something you keep quiet about, where does London now stand in the popularity charts? Has the economic downturn rubbed some of the shine from a city which has been a world favourite for the last decade, a place where millionaires, international businessmen and globetrotters flocked to buy their trophy homes?
"The assumption has been that London is dropping down the league, but it isn't really," says Liam Bailey, head of residential research at Knight Frank. "Even in a downturn, London is not a busted flush. It has all the media, creative industries, non-governmental organisations, think tanks, top restaurants, world-class headquarters, design and marketing, leading lawyers and medics here. London's strength comes from much more than the City."
His conclusion is based on Knight Frank's first World Cities Survey, pulling together statistics and opinions from all over the world on how different aspects of London perform. It emerges at a pivotal time in the economic turmoil, during which we have seen prime property prices drop by 23.6 per cent in a year, the wealth of the super-rich shrink by 20 per cent to 40 per cent, and cities in the East prepare themselves to overtake the Western front-runners. So far, the international crowd has not only hung on to their London homes, but 55 per cent of them plan to "increase their exposure to residential property" over the next two years.
"The gulf between the top tier of cities and the next tier down is still so large that we can assume it will take London a long time to be relegated to the second league," says Bailey. "For the last decade it has been vying with New York as world leader. After the introduction of the euro, London saw off Frankfurt and Paris to become the European super-centre."
While pundits predict that the Asian cities will eventually rule the world, London's tolerance may keep it centre stage. "Transparency, culture, openness, all matter," says Bailey. "These are things which emerging cities in the East can't easily replicate."
After Gordon Brown's doom-laden Budget and the introduction of the 50 per cent top-rate tax band, surely the global rich will go elsewhere? "The Budget didn't help," admits Bailey. "The mobile elite tend to earn quite a lot of money so the new supertax may be off-putting. We won't know for two or three years whether it will make an impact." At the moment, top agents and buyers' agents report that foreign buyers are extremely active. The 20 per cent to 30 per cent price drops, added to the 20 per cent decline in sterling, effectively offer international buyers property at half price.
Leafy streets, period architecture, gracious parks, vibrant theatreland and good schools all work in London's favour, as does the presence of a stabilising middle class, which colonises areas like Wimbledon and revives those like Clerkenwell. Of the top-end purchasers through Knight Frank, 50 per cent are high-earning professionals providing ballast between rich and poor. In spite of price drops, Zoopla.co.uk reports that more than 1,000 streets in the capital still have an average home value of more than £1 million.
The signs are that the price drops are now steadying. The April figures for London's most exclusive postcodes show that prices have risen, albeit by only 0.4 per cent, for the first time since March 2008, and by 1.6 per cent in properties less than £1 million. Viewings are up by 45 per cent and applicants have increased by 32 per cent. "Price falls are almost at an end for the central London market," says Bailey.
Renting has got a whole lot easier, too. Douglas & Gordon says rents have dropped by 15 per cent in the last year, and the price of renting a family house has fallen by 27 per cent.
Deer bathing in the Thames. Not in the countryside, but in Richmond Park in central London
"Clients wielding anything from £1 million to £100 million want to take advantage of the best buying conditions in a decade," says Roarie Scarisbrick of Property Vision. Whether it takes three or five years for the market to recover, it doesn't matter to them.
The most expensive place to buy in the world is still Monaco at £4,490 per sq ft, with London second at £2,520, followed by a group of high rollers at between £1,000 and £1,500 per sq ft in Manhattan, Moscow, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Rome and Singapore, with Sydney at £990.
But because of their key role in the creation of the property bubble they have seen prices fall hardest, as have holiday areas such as Marbella, Barbados and Chianti.
Meanwhile, the rich districts of the emerging economies continued to grow during 2008 – Moscow by 13 per cent, Jakarta by 18 per cent and Bangkok by 23 per cent.
Even Dubai continued to climb, by 11 per cent, but has since had massive price falls. So is anywhere recession-proof? "Different parts of the world are at different stages of the global downturn but nowhere will be immune from a significant fall," says Liam Bailey of Knight Frank.
Perhaps a tiger economy is the place to put your money? "It remains to be seen whether Hong Kong or Shanghai will be the leading city for the Asian centre," he says. "Beijing is one to watch because China's sovereign wealth fund is buying up assets round the world. They will develop huge influence and will be the only economy to rival the US in the future. But it isn't necessarily a place where the international elite will want
to settle." (Source: Zoopla.co.uk )
telegraph.co.uk
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