The number of luxury home sales in London was up by 78% in the last quarter of 2019, compared to a year earlier.
Sales of mansions worth over £5m jumped at the end of the year after a slow third quarter, according to LonRes.
It was the highest number of luxury resi sales recorded since the end of 2016.
The figures come amid a boost in buyer confidence in the prime resi market, following a landslide Conservative election win.
LonRes said the surge in transactions came with decline in average prices, with buyers paying 4.5% less per sq ft compared to a year earlier.
Marcus Dixon, head of research at LonRes, said: “Some sales in Q4 were a hangover from Q3 when talk of changes to top-end stamp duty meant buyers dragged out exchanges to see what might happen to stamp duty rates.”
He added that, while the second half of the year saw 19% more transactions compared with the same period in 2018, pre-election nervousness over a potential Corbyn government delayed many sales.
Dixon added: “There is a strong feeling that the prime market is bottoming out and we believe that purchasers, who had been sitting on the fence will start to return in 2020. Some already have done.”
Across all price brackets, transactions rose 34% compared to 2018, with pricing up by 2.4% across the board.
While a number of buyers swooped on multi-million pound bargains in the run-up to the vote, agents said the Tory win helped seal deals with the lure of economic and political stability driving a so-called “Boris bounce”.
In the wake of the vote, central London agent Aston Chase reported a string of multi-million pound deals and luxury resi agent Beauchamp Estates secured the £65m sale of a Belgravia penthouse to a Hong-Kong millionaire, paying almost £10m in stamp duty.
This month, Beauchamp Estates also secured the sale of a 45-room mansion in Knightsbridge to Hong Kong tycoon CC Land chair Cheung Chung-kiu for more than £200m.
LonRes’s Dixon said that over the coming months threats of rising stamp duty could persuade more buyers to take the leap. “This could push through deals in the next couple of months, with buyers hoping to avoid additional costs,” he said.
But, Dixon said increases in activity were “far from returning to the heady days of 2013/14”.
He said: “We are expecting a slower recovery in both transactions and prices this year and confidence as buyers return to the market, albeit with an eye on the impact of the ongoing Brexit negotiations.”
In LonRes’s research, 89% of agents anticipate that sales volumes will increase in 2020, with 69% predicting a rise in achieved prices by the end of the year.
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