House sales sink to historic lows in Olympic boroughs

Land Registry figures reveal that values for residential fell harder and faster than the Greater London average from the summer of 2007 to August 2009.
The most badly hit was Newham which witnessed a 22% fall in the average price of a house to £201,726, closely followed by Hackney where the average price is down 21% to £303,909.
DJ says a main part of the problem has been the significant amount of stock returned to market because buy-to-let investors have been unable to complete on off-plan purchases.
A host of schemes in the area remain on hold as developers wait for the market to recover.
DJ highlights Galliard Homes' Canary Quarter in Tower Hamlets, which commenced construction in May 2008, and Genesis Housing Group's Stratford Tower, as projects that have been put on hold.
A number of major schemes are still under review including Ballymore's Manhattan Wharf, Capital & Provident's Peruvian Wharf and Silvertown Quays.
All of this makes for depressing reading for those expecting the Olympics to increase land values in east London but of course is not greatly surprising. However, DJ makes two particularly interesting points.
Out of the 25 schemes completed between 2008 and 2009 in the Olympics zone only Emotion in Waltham Forest and Queensbridge Quarter in Hackney delivered houses - the other schemes were all high-rise developments offering apartments. Will this be viewed as a major mistake in years to come?
Secondly DJ estimates that 70,000 units have the potential to be completed in the Olympics zone by 2020 but many of the schemes have infrastructure problems and are for various reasons not currently viable. DJ writes: "Our instinct is that actual delivery will underperform the current potential identified in this study - by a considerable margin."