London home sellers most likely to make a loss – Hamptons

London has overtaken the North East as the region where home sellers are most likely to sell for less than they paid, Hamptons says.

The estate agency said it marks a big shift in the housing market’s balance between North and South.

Its analysis shows 14.8% of London homeowners sold at a loss last year, the highest share across England and Wales and well above the national average of 8.7%.

For much of the past decade, that distinction had sat firmly with the North East.

London’s property prices

Aneisha Beveridge, the head of research at Hamptons, said: “In London, upward house price growth is no longer the one-way bet it once seemed.

“In some cases, even owners who bought a decade ago still face getting back less than they paid – something that would have been almost unthinkable in the heady days of 2015.”

He added: “Over the next few years, more sellers are likely to have missed out on London’s 2012-16 house price boom, having bought instead at what turned out to be the top of the market.

“That could make trading up increasingly challenging.”

The data shows that last year, the average homeowner in England and Wales sold for £91,260 (or 41%) more than they paid an average of nine years ago.

London homes lose money

Hamptons says that in 2019, nearly 30% of North East sellers lost money, compared with just 9.2% in the capital.

Since then, loss-making sales in the region have fallen steadily to 13.9% in 2025, while London’s figure has moved the other way.

Flats accounted for 60% of London transactions last year and they made up 90% of homes sold below purchase price.

Flat owners were four times more likely to take a hit than house sellers nationwide, with 19.9% selling at a loss compared with 4.5% of houses.

London boroughs struggling

The concentration is most acute in London’s central boroughs where eight of the 10 local authorities have the highest likelihood of losses.

They are led by Tower Hamlets where 28.2% of sellers sold for less than they paid and the City of London, Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster and Hammersmith and Fulham followed.

Each of those boroughs saw more than a fifth of vendors in the red, while just 5.3% of sellers in Barking and Dagenham fell into that category.

Despite this, average gains in the capital remain sizeable for long-term owners.

The typical London seller achieved £172,510 more than their purchase price, a rise of 44.6%.

However, most of that uplift was generated by those who had held property for more than a decade, who accounted for 77% of total gains.

North sees strong growth

Sellers across the North West, North East and Yorkshire benefited from stronger recent price growth, delivering higher returns than much of the South.

In the North West, average gains reached 45.4%, exceeding London and every southern region.

The Midlands and Northern England now dominate the list of areas where sellers are least likely to lose money.

Of the 20 local authorities with the lowest share of loss-making sales, only two were in the South.

Harlow topped the table at 0.8%, followed by High Peak and Broxtowe.