Soho is the worst place to sell a property in London: but what's the best?

While there’s plenty of talk about a return to office working and the resurgence of city living, a recent report by Quick Move Now and Home.co.uk lays bare how tough it still is to sell a property in London.

The figures revealed the locations across the UK, where it takes the longest and shortest time to sell, based on the number of days a property is on the market.

Of the 20 slowest-selling locations, a whooping 18 were in London.

The only two, non-London areas being Stretford in Manchester and Aberdeen, north of the border.

The toughest place to sell a property in the entire UK is currently Soho, where patient sellers need to wait an average of 241 days to secure a deal. This is up 16 days on March 2023, when the same property would have sold in 225 days.

Admittedly, much of this may be down to price; the median in Soho is an eye-watering £2,000,000, down £2,192,500 from last year.

The second worst place in the country to be a seller is Marylebone, where properties take an average of 236 days to sell, 20 days longer than they did in March 2023, and where the average price is £1,680,000, down from £1,820,000 last year.

While Mayfair is third, averaging 233 days, it bucks that trend in that its median price has actually risen since last year, from £2,360,000 to £2,395,000.

And it isn’t just millionaire London addresses that are slow sellers; the likes of Vauxhall (178 days), Broadgate (171 days), Fenchurch Street (171 days), Poplar (166 days) and St Luke (165 days) also featured in the worst-performing list.

In contrast, there were just three London boroughs that made the best-performing list.

Balham is the number one London location to be a seller if you want to your home to sell quickly. In eighth place overall, a property here takes an average of just 56 days to sell, a significant drop from last year when the average Balham seller needed to wait 93 days to move.

Interestingly, unlike the slowest-selling list, which was dominated by £1m+ properties, the median price of a Balham home is £700,000, up from £680,000 last year.

Balham’s neighbour, Furzedown, which incorporates parts of Streatham and Tooting, is the second fastest-selling London location. In tenth place, it takes 57 days to shift a property in this area, down from 100 days last year, and the median property value is £525,000, compared to £500,000 in March 2023.

Bexley, 17th on the list, was the only other London borough to make an appearance; property here takes an average of 62 days to sell, and its median price is £450,000.

Nationally, the quickest place to sell a home is Glasgow, at 41 days, and Edinburgh, at 51 days, but the London commuter belt also made an appearance. Reading, Ashford and Bracknell were in third, fourth and fifth on the best-selling list, with a typical time on the market of 53, 54 and 54 days respectively.

“Compared to this time last year, properties in Balham and Furzedown are typically on the market for a shorter amount of time and with a higher asking price. Properties in Bexley are also being taken off the market more quickly, but typical asking prices there have fallen over the last year,” says Danny Luke, Quick Move Now’s managing director.

“The current market is very much a tale of two halves,” says Luke.

“Properties that are desirable and priced well are still selling fairly quickly, but those that are initially overambitious and require price reductions are sticking on the market longer,” he adds

“Prices are also conflicted. 50 per cent of the best locations have a lower typical asking price than a year ago, 35 per cent have a higher typical asking price, and 15 per cent remain unchanged. This pattern is repeated in the worst places to sell a property.”