London live/work market going strong

Specialist live/work estate agency Cityscope has reported strong ongoing demand for London live/work properties, with enquiries from ‘serious’ buyers coming in daily.

‘Demand was good last year and it’s just as strong now. In February, March and April this year we sold just as many live/work properties as we did in the same period in 2007,’ reported director Simon Harris.

 Functional combination

‘In the last 10 days we have had requests from three people looking for properties suitable for a recording studio, two for design studios, two from accountants and three from other creative businesses looking for functional combined working and living spaces.’

Live Work Homes marketing manager Liz Wakeham-Jones also noted record numbers of visitors to liveworkhomes.co.uk, the UK’s only website dedicated to helping people buy or rent live/work.

Harris said that, as with properties at the top end of the market, live/work appeared to have bypassed unscathed the credit crunch. ‘The audience for live/work units is mostly creative businesses and by the very nature of their work they just haven’t been affected by the instability of the credit crunch.

‘Live/work mortgages are still readily available on the same terms as they always have been and appear unaffected by tighter lending terms.’

Confirming reports by brokers John Charcol earlier this month, Harris said live/work mortgage loans tended to be structured on a more secure loan book basis. ‘They could never be really associated with the sub-prime market which has affected the buy-to-let or high loan to low wage mortgage products.’