In a targeted appeal to London's poorer voters, mayoral candidate Boris Johnson recently boasted that his Islington home is worth "shedloads". Or rather it was. The above figures show just how hard a job Boris would have if he tried to shift his house this week. Sales in Islington in the first three months of this year have collapsed to a quarter of what they were a year earlier.
There are, however, few signs of distress sales in Islington's smart Georgian villas. The turnover of property is low, which means that few buyers will have bought at the top of the market. Tony Blair's old street, Richmond Crescent, for example, hasn't seen a single sale in 2008 and saw only two sales in 2007. The much longer adjoining Richmond Avenue has not seen a single sale in 2008 either, having seen 10 in 2007. In a market with this kind of turnover it is academic whether prices are falling or not: there are simply too few sales to judge. What can be said is that prices have risen enormously in the 11 years since the Blairs sold up. They sold for £615,000. In 2004 the house went back on the market at £1.69 million and sold for £1.3million. Last September a similar semi-detached villa down the road sold for £2.25million, but there is no one selling at the moment to test the credit crunch market.
