£140m frenzy as 200 f lats are sold in just FIVE hours
Half snapped up by foreign buyers... but they won’t be built till 2019!
BUYERS snapped up £140million worth of luxury London flats in just five hours yesterday – with half going to wealthy foreigners.
In a stark example of how Britons are being locked out of the booming housing market, 50 of the flats were bought by Chinese investors at an exclusive sale in Hong Kong.
Even in London – where 150 people queued for the launch event, some for 36 hours – the signs were written in Chinese in a direct appeal to overseas investors.
The 41- storey Maine Tower, near Canary Wharf, will contain 297 high-end apartments, costing from £655,000 – but it will not even be finished until 2019.
A total of 208 of the properties sold yesterday, with half the buyers coming from overseas – including investors from Greece, India and the Middle East – developers Galliard Homes said.
Some were looking for a flat for their children studying at UK universities, but many others were simply desperate to invest in the London property boom.
The rush to snap up flats in the luxury development will fuel fears that British families and first-time buyers are being locked out of the housing market.
Major British developers, including Barratt Homes and Berkeley Group, have already opened offices in Beijing and Shanghai, and the Bank of China is offering mortgages in sterling to Chinese investors. Foreigners keen to make a profit from the UK property market have in recent years snapped up starter homes across the country, driving up prices for ordinary Britons and forcing many to keep renting.
A spokesman for Galliard Homes said the company had not seen such a demand for luxury property since before the financial crisis.
Sales director David Galman added: ‘It’s not every day in London that a residential skyscraper virtually sells out during a launch. ‘The volume and speed of sales at the Maine Tower launch was incredible and shows the confi- dence that buyers from both the UK and overseas currently have in the London property market.’ Nearly 90 flats in the 41-storey skyscraper are still available, with prices at up to £1.34million for a three-bedroom property with a 24hour concierge service and a private cinema room.
Canary Wharf, where many of London’s biggest banks have their headquarters, is expected to grow in popularity as a residential area over the next few years thanks to the construction of Crossrail.
Maine Tower, part of the Harbour Central development, will boast a ‘residents’ club’ with a library, gym, spa, business suites and cinema.
The latest property grab comes after George Osborne axed generous buy-to-let tax breaks for landlords in the summer Budget.
The reforms, to start from April next year, are intended to temper the boom in overseas buyers, which experts argue has contributed to Britain’s housing shortage.
But it will lead to claims the changes have come too late to stave off the worst damage from the surge in overseas buyers.
Critics claim that the boom in London property is largely based on speculation.