Property Know

A visitor site posted a comment on the article (London Property Prices: Are they dropping?), about our views of why the London Property Market is still strong and why it will always be.

“London is the financial heart of the European Union (EU) and capital of one of only four trillion dollar economies in the EU with an infrastructure to match. The business infrastructure is being improved even further, because of London being selected as the venue for the ultimate global sporting occasion.”

So we are going to expand on the comment raised, and look at several points on why London is a financial hub. We will cover the “ultimate global sporting occasion” i.e. the Olympics 2012 later. London is one of the worlds Financial Hubs, even though there is a big uproar about the credit crunch and fears of a looming recession. Estate Agent Savills, estimates that £2 Billion will be spent from the “City Crowd” for 2008. This means that desirable areas in London such as South Kensington, Kensington High Street, May Fair etc will still be in high demand, even though there is a great deal of speculation and dropping property prices with the overall UK Property Market.

London has become a strong financial hub in the EU, due to its strength in Banking and Finance. Areas such as Canary Wharf, and more traditionally “The City” (Bank, Liverpool Street etc) have been centres of Banking and Finance for decades. And with the strength and stability of the UK Sterling (£) it has many advantages over other countries when it comes to the Exchange Rate and Forecasting.

Looking at London, and why companies like to conduct most business in London. We are going to take a simple look at Time Zones. The world has now become so small and to do business internationally is becoming increasingly easier. London is GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), and if a business has to call Asia it is only 6-8 hours ahead and if the company has to call North America it is only 5-8 hours behind. However if you are in Asia and want to do business with North America, it is roughly 12 hours ahead/behind - and vica versa. So if you wanted to contact your business associate in Asia and you were in America at 9am, that would mean that you would have to be in the office at 9pm however if you were in London/UK you would have to be in the office at 2pm-4pm, which is within normal working hours. Something as simple as that has a big impact on why many companies want to base their Head Quarters in London.