Super-rich houses take a hit

PRICES of London's most sought-after homes in Kensington, Chelsea and Mayfair have fallen back for the first time in 15 months as fears of a slump in the housing market spread to the super-rich.

Houses in the capital's smartest West London addresses, including Kensington Palace Gardens where Russian oil baron Leonard Blavatnik paid £42m for a home earlier this year, saw the biggest price falls.

House prices in Kensington, Notting Hill and Holland Park fell 1.2% with an average home there worth £3.15m last month, a drop of £64,000 from August.

The findings are contained in the latest Knight Frank London Prime Property Index, which shows an average 0.3% fall in the cost of top central London homes with agents blaming renewed caution among the capital's elite army of international home owners.

Russians bought 16% of the properties worth more than £5m sold in the third quarter this year, the findings reveal, up from about 13% at the end of last year.

Noel Flint, partner at Knight Frank's Sloane Avenue office, said: 'Buyers are taking longer before making the plunge. This happened through most of 2003 when again prophets of doom said prices would fall. And then this time last year people came off the fence.'

'Buyers want to see more of how the market develops - October is a time the market monitors itself,' Flint said.

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