Sales of new build private homes in London have collapsed to their lowest level in history, latest official figures reveal today.
Just 19 houses and flats newly built by private developers were recorded as changing hands in May across the whole of the capital, according to new data from the Land Registry.
That is less than one per borough in a city of more than eight million people with a long standing housing crisis. The tiny figure for May is even lower than the 23 recorded in April.
Historically sales of new built homes - often going to first time buyers - have averaged around 1,000 a month in London, according to Land Registry records going back to 1995. They peaked at 1,844 in June 2017.
But even in the depths of the recession that followed the financial crisis, new build sales never fell below the 369 recorded in February 2011.
However, activity has fallen off a cliff over the past year, creating a huge headache for Mayor Sadiq Khan in his quest to deliver more housing for Londoners.
It is also a massive problem for the Government as the capital is expected to deliver 440,000 of the government’s 1.5 million new homes target by 2030.
But the latest dismal data from the Land Registry suggests the model for housebuilding in London is completely broken.
Tim Craine, founder and director of industry analyst Molior said: “Residential development in London has stopped, it no longer happens. We have visited 1,400 development sites this quarter around London and only 16 have started construction.
“Molior’s research suggests fewer than 1,000 homes commenced construction in London during the third quarter of 2025. At this pace we are on track for just 5,000 residential construction starts in all of 2025.”
He pointed out there are currently unbuilt planning permissions for 281,000 homes across the capital. But many development sites with consents are now effectively abandoned “ghost sites” with little or no work going on.
However, half of them are in areas where sales values are below £650 per square foot making development unviable. Construction costs have soared over recent decades while real incomes have barely grown since the banking crisis of 2008.
About 90% of unbuilt permissions involves building over six storeys, which means they are caught in the disastrous backlog of approvals from the new Building Safety Regulator by Michael Gove in 2022.
Other factors include the disappearance of off plan foreign buyers who helped finance development costs and the ending of the Help to Buy scheme in 2023 leaving first time buyers with no support for the first time in decades.
Earlier this week trade group the Home Builders Federation (HBR) said the Mayor "unrealistic" affordable housing targets were "strangling" attempts to build new homes.
The HBR’s chef executive Neil Jefferson, said Sir Sadiq's development strategy for the capital "effectively made London a no-go zone for housing investment".
