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One chart shows why London mayor Sadiq Khan is putting foreign property ownership under the microscope

Losing London
Losing London

London mayor Sadiq Khan launched a sweeping investigation into property ownership in the UK capital this week, promising “the most thorough research on this matter ever undertaken.”

The chart below shows how housing prices have gone through the roof in the last decade, with the average price more than doubling from £232,000 ($301,000) in 2005 to £485,000 in 2016, according to government data. The boom has been so sustained, it was hardly dampened by the 2008-09 global recession and prices are now skyrocketing.

At the same time, the money of the global super-rich has flooded into the city: an investigation by London’s Evening Standard last year revealed foreign buyers had spent £100 billion on London property between 2008 and 2014. This has artificially inflated prices, pushing the local elite out of the center of town, and forcing people in their thirties—the age you would normally be getting on the property ladder—to leave the city in droves to find somewhere affordable.

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