- American buyers are the leading foreign buyers of London property
- Brokers say disaffected West Coast tech execs are leading the trend
- A strong dollar against the British pound has fueled this trend
A growing number of San Francisco tech executives are leaving the city for London, sparking a US-led boom in foreign home sales in the British capital.
“Tech workers are increasingly disillusioned with San Francisco,” Annie Ingram, a private banker at Coutts, told The Telegraph this week, citing concerns about rising crime, homelessness and outdoor drug use in the Golden Gate City.
According to Knight Frank real estate agency data cited in the report, Americans were the largest group of foreign buyers in prime central London last year, overtaking Chinese buyers at the top last year and the French in 2020.
Facilitating this trend was favorable exchange rates, which, according to a January study by Beauchamp Estates, gave dollar buyers an effective discount of 30 percent when buying property in London for parts of last year.
Last year, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri made a highly publicized move from the Bay Area to London’s ritzy Kensington, despite being recalled by bosses at parent company Meta and set to return to the US later this year.
Instagram boss Adam Mosseri made a startling move from the Bay Area to London’s ritzy Kensington district, despite being called back to the US by Meta People bosses. Open drug abuse on the sidewalk in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, where overdose deaths have skyrocketed in recent months
Alex Schultz, Meta’s Chief Marketing Officer, has also relocated to the UK and lives in London’s West End.
Also last year, former UK MP Sir Nick Clegg-turned-meta manager returned to London after three years in California and said he wanted to be closer to his parents, who are both now in their 80s.
It’s unclear if Meta’s recent restructuring and cost-cutting moves will prompt Schultz or Clegg to return to California. A Meta spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday afternoon.
In the London real estate market, the American influence has been felt most clearly in real estate transactions in the super top end.
Beauchamp Estates estimated that last year 50 per cent of deals in Prime Central London for homes valued at over £15m ($18.6m) went to American buyers, who own luxury properties worth around £620m ($769m). ) bought.
The study found that buyers from Switzerland, France, India and the Middle East were the other top foreign buyers of luxury real estate in London in 2022, after Americans.
It’s unclear what percentage of American buyers are from Northern California, but realtors say they’ve noticed a growing influx from the Bay Area.
“America’s west coast is definitely a factor in London’s prime real estate market in a way it wasn’t five years ago.” And once you have a cohort of owners in London, their friends come,” said Rupert des Forges, Knight Frank’s head of property prime developments in central London, the Telegraph.
“A lot of that is actually at the levels below the CEO.” High-performing developers can make fortunes from stocks at a young age. “While it is tax efficient to incur debt on the property, all of these buyers can make these transactions in cash,” he added.
Last year, Sir Nick Clegg, a former UK MP and later Facebook executive, also returned to London after living in California for three years. In San Francisco, this 9,190-square-foot, seven-bedroom home in Pacific Heights is currently listed for $14,950,000, while in London for £12,250,000 ($15.2 million), this five-bedroom home in Chelsea is for rent
Des Forges said 1 Grosvenor Square in Mayfair is a popular location among US tech buyers, along with other coveted neighborhoods St John’s Wood, Regent’s Park, Kensington and Belgravia.
Although San Francisco’s population has shrunk by more than 65,000 to 808,437 since the pandemic began, international migration has not been the main driver of the trend.
According to census data, from 2020 to June 2022, the city gained 7,679 residents through international net migration but lost 70,929 people to intra-US net migration.
For discouraged San Franciscans, the city’s high cost of living combined with the declining quality of life, particularly for families, is causing many residents to consider relocating.
A recent study found that San Francisco is the most expensive US city to raise children at more than $35,000 a year.
At the same time, residents say San Francisco is beginning to feel like a ghost town as many retailers are moving out of town due to crime and low foot traffic.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk, who spends much of his time at the company’s downtown San Francisco headquarters, summed up the sentiment in a tweet earlier this month.
“So many businesses in downtown SF are closed.” “Feels post apocalyptic,” he tweeted.
A disturbing recent report showed that 95 retailers in downtown San Francisco have closed since the COVID pandemic began, down more than 50 percent.
Of the 203 retailers that opened in the city’s Union Square area in 2019, only 107 are still operating, a 47 percent drop in just a few years battered by the pandemic.
A file photo shows people sleeping, discarded clothing and used needles in San Francisco. A file photo shows homeless encampments along a street in San Francisco. Big stores continue to retreat from crime-ridden San Francisco, with a disturbing report showing 95 downtown retailers — more than half — have closed since the COVID pandemic began. This map shows a small selection of big-name departures. Of the 203 retailers that opened in the city’s Union Square area in 2019, only 107 are still operating, a 47 percent drop in just a few years battered by the pandemic
Heavyweights include Brooks Brothers, Ray Ban, Christian Louboutin, Lululemon and Marmot. At least one other is about to close: Williams-Sonoma announces closure in 2024.
Whole Foods’ flagship store in San Francisco also closed just a year after it opened due to rampant drug use in the restrooms, violence against staff — and the theft of all 250 shopping baskets
While many of the problems San Francisco faces are related to property crime and quality of life issues, the brutal stabbing of CashApp founder Bob Lee in the city last month shocked the nation.
The man accused of murder, 38-year-old Nima Momeni, appeared to have had a personal falling out with Lee, who was reportedly dating his sister, and police say the murder was not a random attack.
Still, footage of Lee stumbling and bleeding to death on a San Francisco sidewalk only underscored concerns about the city’s safety.
Recent crime data paints a mixed picture in San Francisco: homicides are up 25 percent and robberies are up 15 percent year-over-year, while rape is down 22 percent and theft, by far the most common serious crime, is down 11 percent.
Overall, San Francisco’s crime rate is down 7.5 percent in 2023 from the year before, and the city’s per capita homicide rate is well below that of many other similar-sized cities, including Indianapolis; Columbus, OH; and Jacksonville, Florida.
San Francisco saw a staggering 41 percent increase in drug-related deaths in the first quarter of 2023
However, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins admitted last month that crime statistics don’t tell the whole story about public safety.
“I think San Franciscos are still very concerned about public safety and we still have a long way to go to make San Francisco as safe as it needs to be,” she told KTVU. “So it’s not always necessarily about data. It’s about the way our residents, business owners and even visitors feel.”
Tragically, the Golden Gate City still has scenes of rampant outdoor drug use and squalid homeless camps.
Latest data from the city’s coroner showed a 41 percent increase in drug-related deaths in the first quarter of 2023 compared to the same time last year, as fentanyl devastated the city’s homeless population.
In San Francisco, 200 people died from overdoses between January and March, compared to 142 deaths in 2022.
That’s one overdose death every 10 hours, and that The victims were a disproportionate number of black and Hispanic men, many of whom lived in the Tenderloin area, a gritty inner-city neighborhood where a drug treatment center closed in December.
