By Andrew Batt:
Property prices in prime central London have risen a staggering 33,000 percent during the reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, and far more than prices in Singapore during the same 60-year period.
As the U.K. celebrates the monarch’s Diamond Jubilee this weekend, Knight Frank has published a Prime Jubilee Index which reveals that a prime property in the heart of the U.K. capital bought for £10,000 (S$19,800) when Her Majesty came to the throne in 1952 will now be worth an average of £3.2 million (S$6.3 million).
A home elsewhere in London costing the same would now be worth some £799,000 (S$1.6 million) – a whopping 8,000 percent increase.
A cash lump sum of £10,000 (S$19,800) invested in 1952, which would have risen in line with inflation, is now worth around £236,000 (S$467,200).
To obtain a comparison for Singapore, PropertyGuru looked at Tiong Bahru Estate. Built in the 1930s, this is one of the oldest housing estates in Singapore. It was the first project undertaken by the Singapore Improvement Trust to provide mass public housing.
In the 1930s these flats were rented out, and it was only in 1965 that they were privatised. They were subsequently awarded conservation status in 2003.
Blocks 55 to 82 are the pre-war conserved flats. PropertyGuru believes the original prices of these homes to be around S$10,000 – although no official data is available. Prices for these flats are now commanding asking prices of close to S$900,000.
Assuming a selling price of S$10,000 in 1952, that’s an 8,900 percent increase over the last 60 years.
