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SUMMARY
Foreign buyers are coming back to London property, but this is a selective recovery led by North Americans, internationally mobile owner-occupiers and super-prime buyers rather than a revival of the old overseas-investor boom.
The clearest change is London's divergence from the rest of Britain. Overseas registrations to buy in London rose 8% year on year while they fell 10% across Great Britain, lifting London's share of international enquiries from 21% to 25%.
North Americans are the strongest broad source of returning demand. US and Canadian buyers now represent a record 19% of overseas applicants, and 28% of them are searching in London, compared with 17% five years earlier.
The buyer mix has changed as much as the volume. Buy-to-let and second-home demand has fallen from a combined 23% of international applicants a decade ago to 14%, while first-time buyers have risen to 23%.
This helps explain why foreign-buyer statistics can look contradictory. Overseas residents were only 2.9% of new Prime Central London applicants in one dataset, while international purchasers represented 45% of completed PCL transactions in another because the two measures capture different groups and different stages of the buying process.
New-build London remains the weak spot. Overseas buyers still take a meaningful share of sales, but their absolute purchase volumes have fallen, completed-unsold stock has built up, and companies and bulk purchasers now account for most new-home transactions.
Foreign buyers are returning while London is still getting cheaper. Prime Central London prices remain roughly 23% below their mid-2015 peak, and currency movements can make the effective discount substantially larger for some US-dollar buyers.
The old remote-investor model is much harder to make work. A non-resident buying an additional £1 million property can face about £113,750 of stamp duty before financing, service charges, letting costs or eventual selling costs are considered, while the replacement of the non-dom regime has weakened London's tax appeal to some wealthy households.
At the very top, the comeback is already visible: £15 million-plus London transactions and US$10 million-plus sales have risen sharply. But London still recorded only 45 US$10 million-plus deals in the first quarter of 2026 versus 193 in Dubai, so the city has not regained its old dominance.
The practical conclusion is that foreign buyers can improve liquidity in selected parts of London and give cash-heavy prime markets a lift, but they are nowhere near numerous enough to rescue the capital's development pipeline or reverse the broader price correction on their own.
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Are foreign buyers actually coming back to London property now?
Yes, foreign buyers are coming back to London property, but the comeback is concentrated in London and still much smaller than the international buying wave the city knew a decade ago.
Hamptons' latest international-buyer data gives us the clearest starting point. Overseas registrations to buy in London rose 8% year on year in the first quarter of 2026, even though international registrations across Great Britain fell 10%. London was the only British region where overseas demand increased.
That is a real change from 2025. A year earlier, overseas-based buyers represented just 1% of British house hunters in Hamptons' network, the lowest level in its series. In Prime Central London, international applicants had fallen to only 2.9% of prospective buyers.
Actual transactions are recovering too, although more slowly in London's expensive core. Knight Frank recorded London residential transactions rising 14% year on year in the three months to July 2026, while Prime Central London managed only 3%. Compared with two years earlier, exchanges were still 7% lower in both markets.
At the very top, the improvement is much clearer. London recorded 45 transactions above US$10 million in the first quarter of 2026, up 18% from the previous quarter.
So foreign demand has started growing again in London. What has not returned is the broad group of overseas investors buying everything from off-plan flats to Knightsbridge second homes.
| Indicator | Earlier position | Latest reading | What we see |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overseas registrations across Great Britain | Higher a year earlier | -10% YoY | International demand still weak nationally |
| Overseas registrations in London | Falling previously | +8% YoY | London has turned upward |
| London's share of international enquiries | 21% | 25% | More overseas searches are concentrating on London |
| London transactions | Weak 2025 base | +14% YoY over three months | Activity is recovering |
| Prime Central London transactions | Weak 2025 base | +3% YoY | Recovery is much slower |
| US$10m+ London sales | 38 previous quarter | 45 | Super-prime buying has picked up |
Why is it so hard to tell how many foreign buyers are buying London property?
London foreign-buyer data gives very different answers depending on whether we count people searching, completed purchases, new-build sales or £15 million mansions.
Take Prime Central London. Hamptons found that overseas residents represented only 2.9% of people registering to buy there in early 2025. Yet its transaction research showed international purchasers buying 45% of Prime Central London homes in 2023.
Those figures look incompatible until we look at what is being counted. One measures new applicants who live overseas. The other measures completed transactions involving international buyers, which can include people already spending time in Britain or moving to London.
New-build statistics measure another slice of the market. Molior data supplied to City Hall showed overseas buyers taking 11% of monitored London new-build sales in 2021, 18% in 2022, 25% in 2023 and 21% through the first three quarters of 2024.
Then there is the super-prime market. Beauchamp Estates counted just 34 London deals above £15 million in the first half of 2026, yet American and Gulf purchasers made up 55% of them. That tells us a great deal about billionaire demand in Mayfair and Belgravia and very little about who is buying £600,000 flats in Zone 2.
We therefore need to look at several markets separately. Otherwise one spectacular £50 million foreign purchase can end up being treated as evidence that overseas buyers are flooding back into London generally.
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Towers sold off plan to overseas buyers have been reselling below what the first owners paid for a decade now. Where asking prices sit furthest from what flats actually earn and resell for.
Is London attracting foreign buyers while the rest of Britain loses them?
Yes, London is currently pulling overseas buyers away from the rest of Britain rather than benefiting from a nationwide foreign-property boom.
Hamptons found international registrations across Great Britain falling 10% year on year in early 2026. London went the other way, rising 8%. As a result, 25% of all international enquiries in its network targeted London, up from 21% one year earlier.
Every other British region recorded falling overseas demand. International registrations dropped 26% in Scotland, 27% in Wales and 20% in South West England.
London's relative pricing helps explain the gap. Hamptons estimates that the average London property is now about 3%, or £18,000, cheaper than in 2022. Inner London is down roughly 7%, equivalent to about £50,300. Plenty of regional British markets have risen over the same period.
This creates an unusual situation. London remains expensive compared with Britain, but it has become cheaper compared with its own recent history. For a wealthy buyer choosing between global cities rather than British regions, that distinction counts for much more.
Are Americans the foreign buyers coming back to London fastest?
Yes, North Americans are driving the clearest foreign-buyer comeback in London right now, and their rise has been building for several years.
US and Canadian buyers accounted for a record 19% of all overseas-based applicants in Hamptons' early-2026 data. Their registrations increased 13% year on year while total international registrations fell 10%.
The longer trend is stronger. North Americans represented only 8% of international applicants a decade earlier. Their share has therefore more than doubled.
They are also becoming much more London-focused. Some 28% of North American applicants were searching in the capital, compared with 24% a year earlier and 17% five years earlier. In five years, their propensity to search in London has risen by roughly two-thirds.
But Americans are buying a different London from the international buyers of the early 2010s. Only 5% of North American applicants were looking specifically in Prime Central London, down from 13% in 2013. Their average PCL budget was £2.35 million, compared with £1.25 million for North Americans searching across London.
The American comeback therefore extends well beyond Mayfair penthouses. London is attracting US professionals and families looking for somewhere to live, alongside the much richer Americans buying trophy homes.
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Which foreign buyers are coming back to London, and which ones are still missing?
Americans and ultra-wealthy Gulf buyers are doing most of the running in London today, while the broader Middle Eastern, Hong Kong and Chinese markets look much less like the growth engines they once were.
The Middle East gives us the clearest contradiction. Across Britain, Middle Eastern applicants represented only 5% of Hamptons' overseas house hunters in early 2026, the lowest share recorded since 2013. After renewed conflict in the region, registrations at one point stood 58% below the previous year's level.
Yet London's luxury agents are seeing something completely different at the top. High-end finance broker Enness Global reported a 66% increase in Middle Eastern enquiries, including financing for two £15 million prime London purchases. Beauchamp Estates found US and Gulf purchasers accounting for 55% of the 34 London sales above £15 million during the first half of 2026.
Hong Kong demand has moved the opposite way from its post-2020 surge. Hong Kong-based applicants represented 17% of international demand in Hamptons' data in 2020, just before the British National Overseas visa route opened. By early 2025, their share had dropped to 2%.
Chinese and Hong Kong purchasers still appear frequently in central London agency data, and Chinese ownership remains substantial in areas such as Tower Hamlets. But neither group currently shows the kind of acceleration we see from North America.
The foreign-buyer comeback is consequently much more nationality-specific than the headline suggests.
| Buyer group | Recent evidence | Direction now | Our reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| North Americans | 19% of overseas applicants | Rising strongly | Clearest broad comeback |
| North Americans targeting London | 28% | Rising | Increasingly London-focused |
| Middle Eastern applicants | 5% of overseas applicants | Weak | Broad demand remains subdued |
| US + Gulf buyers in £15m+ London market | 55% of transactions | Strong | Super-prime demand is back |
| Hong Kong applicants | 2% in early 2025 vs 17% in 2020 | Down sharply | Post-BNO surge has faded |
Are foreign investors coming back to London, or are foreigners moving here to live?
Foreign buyers are increasingly coming to London to live, while the classic overseas buy-to-let and second-home investor has become much less important.
Hamptons' buyer-intention data shows the shift clearly. A decade ago, 17% of international applicants wanted a buy-to-let property. Today that figure is 12%. The share looking for a second home has fallen from 6% to only 2%.
Meanwhile, first-time buyers now represent 23% of overseas applicants, nearly three times their share a decade earlier. Among North Americans, 27% are first-time buyers and only 10% are looking for an investment.
This changes the economics behind foreign demand. Someone moving from New York to London for work can still justify buying a £1.2 million family home even if the pure investment return is mediocre. An overseas landlord comparing London rental yields with other global investments has a much harder calculation.
That is why foreign demand can rise while developers still complain that overseas investors have disappeared. Both can be true: more internationally mobile people are choosing London homes, while fewer remote investors are buying flats simply for yield or capital appreciation.
| Overseas buyer intention | Around a decade ago | Latest level | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buy-to-let | 17% | 12% | -5 pts |
| Second home | 6% | 2% | -4 pts |
| Buy-to-let + second home | 23% | 14% | -9 pts |
| First-time buyer | About 8% | 23% | Nearly 3x |
| North American first-time buyer | — | 27% | High |
The areas and new build projects in London that are most overpriced
Towers sold off plan to overseas buyers have been reselling below what the first owners paid for a decade now. Where asking prices sit furthest from what flats actually earn and resell for.
Are foreign buyers coming back to London new-build flats?
Not enough. Foreign buyers still purchase a meaningful share of London new builds, but the old overseas pre-sale machine has not restarted.
Molior's City Hall data shows how the market changed. Overseas purchasers bought around 1,540 monitored new-build homes in 2021, 3,070 in 2022 and 2,640 in 2023. Their share of sales actually rose from 11% to 25% over those three years because total new-build sales were falling even faster.
By the first three quarters of 2024, overseas sales had dropped to 1,330 homes, or 21% of transactions. Later GLA housing-market data showed the number of new homes sold overseas falling by roughly another 24% in 2025.
The latest stock figures make the weakness harder to dismiss. Molior data cited by CBRE shows 3,648 completed and unsold new-build homes in London in the first quarter of 2026. That stock equalled 39% of the annual sales rate, the second-highest proportion ever recorded.
Developers are increasingly clearing homes through bulk deals instead. CBRE found companies, including build-to-rent operators, affordable-housing providers and other bulk purchasers, accounted for 58% of London new-home sales over the 12 months to the first quarter of 2026, up from 52% in 2024.
London developers would obviously welcome more foreign pre-sales, but overseas retail buyers are currently nowhere near strong enough to fix this market.
Why does London property suddenly look cheap to foreign buyers?
London property looks unusually cheap to wealthy foreign buyers because prime prices have spent roughly a decade going backwards while property and wealth values in many competing global markets moved higher.
Knight Frank's latest Prime Central London index puts average prices roughly 23% below their mid-2015 peak. Prices were also still falling 3.3% year on year in July 2026, extending the run of annual declines to 39 consecutive months.
Hamptons sees the same long-term repricing from another angle. Its summer 2026 analysis puts the average Prime Central London home at about £1.60 million, down 5% from 2016, while the price premium between PCL and the surrounding prime fringe has narrowed from 98% to 71%.
For dollar buyers, exchange rates can magnify that decline. Analysis cited by Black Brick estimates that the combination of sterling movements and lower prime London prices can leave some US-dollar buyers with an effective discount of around 40% compared with the previous market peak.
The important point is what has produced the renewed foreign interest. Buyers are returning while prices remain weak. They are bargain-hunting rather than chasing a London boom.
That also explains why foreign purchases have not yet pushed the wider market upward. Knight Frank says PCL transactions increased only 3% year on year over the latest three-month period and remained 15% below the five-year average.
| Prime London measure | Latest position | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| PCL prices vs mid-2015 peak | About -23% | Deep long-term discount |
| PCL annual price growth | -3.3% | Prices are still falling |
| Consecutive months of annual PCL declines | 39 | Weakness has lasted years |
| PCL vs prime-fringe price premium | 98% in 2016 → 71% | Central London's premium has compressed |
| Estimated US-dollar discount vs previous peak | Around 40% | Currency can amplify the property discount |
Where sellers in London are cutting their prices the most
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Has stamp duty killed the old foreign-investor model in London?
Stamp duty has made the old London foreign-investor strategy dramatically less attractive, especially for someone buying a second home or rental property.
HMRC's current rules add a two-percentage-point surcharge for non-UK residents. Buyers who already own another property can also face the five-percentage-point additional-dwelling surcharge. The two charges stack on top of the normal residential rates.
On a £1 million London purchase, a UK resident buying their only home pays about £43,750 in stamp duty. A non-resident buying the same property as their only home pays approximately £63,750. A non-resident buying an additional home or buy-to-let pays around £113,750.
At £2 million, the bill for a non-resident buying an additional property reaches roughly £293,750.
The £1 million investor therefore gives up more than 11% of the purchase price in stamp duty before legal costs, service charges, financing, letting fees or eventual selling costs enter the equation.
The change in buyer behaviour is pretty much what we would expect from that tax structure. Overseas buy-to-let and second-home applicants have fallen from a combined 23% of international demand a decade ago to 14% today.
| £1m London purchase | Approximate SDLT | Effective rate |
|---|---|---|
| UK resident, sole property | £43,750 | 4.4% |
| Non-resident, sole property | £63,750 | 6.4% |
| UK resident, additional property | £93,750 | 9.4% |
| Non-resident, additional property | £113,750 | 11.4% |
Did the end of the non-dom regime push rich foreign buyers away from London?
Yes, Britain's tax changes pushed some wealthy international buyers away from London, and the damage is still visible in prime property today.
The old remittance-basis regime was replaced in 2025 by a residence-based foreign-income-and-gains system. New arrivals can use the new FIG regime for a limited initial period, but longer-term residents generally become exposed to British taxation on worldwide income and gains. The inheritance-tax system also moved toward a residence-based framework.
That is a much bigger issue for someone considering moving a nine-figure family fortune to Britain than for a foreign professional buying one London home.
Knight Frank has repeatedly linked the weak 2025 prime market to the end of non-dom status, alongside uncertainty over further property taxes. Its latest figures show activity improving now that some of that uncertainty has faded, but Prime Central London transactions remain well below normal levels.
The tax change also altered London's competition. Globally mobile wealthy households can compare Britain with Milan, Dubai, Monaco or Switzerland, so London's cheaper property prices have to compensate for a less attractive tax environment.
Some buyers clearly think the discount is now large enough. Others have left or stayed away. That is one reason the recovery among very wealthy foreign buyers remains uneven.
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Are Gulf and American billionaires really buying London mansions again?
Yes, London's super-prime foreign-buyer market has bounced back sharply, although London is still well behind Dubai, Hong Kong and New York.
Beauchamp Estates recorded 34 London transactions above £15 million in the first half of 2026, worth £1.24 billion. The comparable period a year earlier produced 27 deals worth £694.1 million. The number of transactions therefore rose about 26%, while total money spent jumped roughly 79%.
Americans and Gulf buyers accounted for 55% of those transactions.
Knight Frank's international comparison confirms that the improvement extends beyond one agency's deals. London recorded 45 sales above US$10 million in the first quarter of 2026, up 18% quarter on quarter.
But 45 deals does not put London back on top of global luxury property. Dubai recorded 193 transactions above US$10 million in the same period, Hong Kong 94 and New York 90. Dubai alone completed more than four times as many.
The billionaire comeback is genuine. London's old position as the obvious first destination for global property wealth has not returned.
| City | US$10m+ transactions, Q1 2026 | Compared with London |
|---|---|---|
| Dubai | 193 | 4.3x London |
| Hong Kong | 94 | 2.1x |
| New York | 90 | 2.0x |
| London | 45 | — |
Why can a relatively small number of foreign buyers still move London's prime market?
Foreign buyers can have an outsized effect on prime London because many pay cash while domestic buyers remain much more exposed to mortgage rates.
Dexters' latest Prime Central London buyer survey says more than 80% of the overseas buyers it identified were cash purchasers. Beauchamp Estates has also found cash dominating at the £15 million-plus end of the market.
We saw the effect when mortgage costs jumped. Hamptons estimated that international buyers purchased 39% of PCL homes in 2022 and 45% in 2023, returning their share to roughly its pre-pandemic level.
That increase did not require a huge influx of foreign buyers. Domestic purchasers weakened faster because financing became more expensive.
Cash also gives wealthy foreign purchasers negotiating power in today's softer market. A seller accepting an offer from someone who can complete without mortgage approval removes one major source of deal risk.
This is why foreign buyers can become highly visible in Mayfair, Knightsbridge or Belgravia without representing a large share of London transactions overall. Prime London is a relatively small market, and a few hundred cash-rich buyers can change its balance quickly.
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Could returning foreign buyers rescue London's struggling property developments?
No, returning foreign buyers can help London developers sell stock, but today's overseas demand is far too small to repair the development market by itself.
JLL says private-sector housing starts in London collapsed from 33,782 homes in 2015 to just 5,547 in 2025, a fall of roughly 84%. Sales dropped from more than 25,000 a year around the middle of the last decade to 5,933 in the first three quarters of 2025.
Foreign pre-sales used to make a real difference because developers could secure buyers before construction, reduce financing risk and get schemes started. Earlier research commissioned by City Hall found that this overseas "export market" played a meaningful role in getting some London residential projects financed.
These days the problems run much deeper. Construction costs are high, development finance remains expensive, planning is slow, domestic buyers struggle with affordability, and completed stock has built up.
The recent return of Americans and wealthy Gulf buyers improves demand at the margin. It cannot bridge a fall from more than 33,000 annual private starts to barely 5,500.
So, are foreign buyers coming back to London property?
Yes, foreign buyers are coming back to London property now, but this is a selective comeback rather than a return to London's old overseas-investment boom.
The strongest evidence is the change in direction. International registrations for London have risen even while overseas demand has fallen across Britain. North American registrations are growing particularly fast, Americans are becoming more London-focused, and the £10 million-plus market has started moving again.
The buyers returning are also different. More internationally mobile people are buying London homes to live in, while buy-to-let and second-home demand remains well below its old level. At the top, Americans and Gulf billionaires are taking advantage of large discounts. In new builds, overseas retail demand is still too weak to absorb all the stock developers need to sell.
London's prices tell us how early this recovery still is. Prime Central values remain roughly 23% below their previous peak and continue to fall year on year. If foreign buyers were truly back at anything close to the old scale, we would expect tighter discounts, stronger new-build pre-sales and much more obvious price pressure.
For now, London has won back some foreign buyers without winning back the old foreign-investor machine. The comeback is real, just much narrower than the headline suggests.
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OUR METHODOLOGY
This analysis tests whether foreign buyers are genuinely returning to London property rather than treating one rise in enquiries or a handful of trophy-home sales as proof of a broad comeback. We separated overseas demand, completed purchases, new-build sales, Prime Central London activity and super-prime transactions because each measures a different part of the market.
We distinguished leading indicators from completed activity. Registrations, enquiries and buyer intentions show where demand is moving first, while transactions, achieved prices and sales volumes show whether that interest is actually converting into purchases.
We also kept the sources' own definitions of "overseas," "international" and "non-resident." An overseas applicant in an estate-agent database is not necessarily the same thing as an international purchaser in transaction research or a non-UK resident under HMRC's Stamp Duty Land Tax rules.
For new-build London, we checked both market share and absolute purchase volumes. This avoids treating a rising foreign-buyer percentage as automatically positive when overseas sales can gain share simply because total sales are falling even faster. We also compared foreign sales with completed-unsold stock and the growing role of bulk purchasers.
For the prime and super-prime market, we compared the latest activity with longer-term pricing and transaction benchmarks. That includes Prime Central London's decline from its 2015 peak, recent transaction volumes, cash-buyer evidence and London’s position against competing global luxury markets.
Tax and buyer economics were checked separately using HMRC's current residential Stamp Duty Land Tax rules, the non-UK resident surcharge and the Foreign Income and Gains regime that replaced the old remittance-basis system. These are used to explain why the old overseas buy-to-let and second-home model has become less attractive, rather than as direct measures of foreign demand.
Key sources used for this analysis include Hamptons on Q1 2026 international demand, Hamptons on the 2025 overseas-buyer baseline, Hamptons on international purchases in Prime Central London, Knight Frank on the latest London and PCL market activity, Knight Frank on global super-prime transactions, Beauchamp Estates on £15 million-plus London sales, London City Hall on overseas new-build purchases, CBRE on completed-unsold stock and bulk sales, JLL on London's housing-development slowdown, HMRC on residential SDLT rates, and HMRC on the Foreign Income and Gains regime.
Everything a foreign buyer should know before buying in London
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