London Luxury Home Prices Rise for the First Time in 20 Months

London’s luxury home prices have increased for the first time since June 2023, according to a report from LonRes released in the U.K. on Wednesday.

The average sale price in February rose 0.6% from the year prior, though compared with pre-pandemic levels, prices were still 1.2% lower.

“While it’s only a single month of data and a small rise, a sign of return to growth might motivate buyers to become more active,” said Nick Gregori, head of research at LonRes. “This is in contrast to a long period where demand has been depressed by fears of further price falls.”

Prices rose even as inventory increased—new instructions, or the number of new properties on agents’ books, were 34% higher than a year before, and total supply was up 11.6%. This significant increase in homes for sale should keep drastic price increases at bay, Gregori noted in the report.

Supply is growing faster than demand in the U.K. capital—sales fell 8.4% annually last month though they were up 6.8% from 2017-19 numbers.

The rebound at the highest echelons of London’s market was even more pronounced.

In the £5 million-plus (US$6.5 million) sector, home sales were up 13.8% year over year in February, while new instructions increased by 30%. There are also now 21.1% more £5 million-plus homes available for sale in London than there were a year ago, and luxury apartments are becoming more prevalent in this sector.

“We have seen similar increases for all prime central neighbourhoods but a big difference between property types—the number of £5 million-plus flats on the market has grown at triple the rate for houses over the past 12 months,” Gregori said.

As for London’s high-end rentals, prices were up 6% from last February, the highest level of rental growth since November 2023, according to the report. This brings the city’s average rents to 33.3% above pre-pandemic levels.

“The prime London lettings market continues to be constrained by a lack of stock,” Gregori said. “Robust demand and low levels of new supply are sure to put upward pressure on rents, so it’s no surprise that annual rental growth increased to 6% in February, the highest rate for 16 months.”

“Call us optimists. Call us dreamers. Call us whatever the hell you want, but we’re betting on people, and we like those odds. The future is for everyone.”

That ad copy is from the voice-over of a July Meta Platforms META -3.38%.

spot that’s been part of a public-relations blitz to position Meta as the humanist AI company. The message was undercut by the ad’s inclusion of David Bowie’s “Five Years,” a brooding 1972 song about an impending apocalypse. But this week CEO Mark Zuckerberg left no ambiguity, publishing a 6,500-word manifesto—about 10 times the length of this newsletter—with a title that echoed the ad: “The Future is for Everyone.”

That seems to be Meta’s new tagline. In light of sinking public opinion and the company’s thousands of lawsuits from states, school districts, parents, and users, Meta’s public relations have been defensive. This push represents a return to offense, with a chance to distinguish Meta’s approach to AI from other labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, or SpaceX SPCX +9.65%.

“It is surprising that the discourse from many developing AI is so filled with doom,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I do not understand why anyone who believes that AI will eliminate most jobs and much of humanity’s relevance would rush to build that future.”

Zuckerberg frames what sort of future we build with AI as the central issue of our time. “We believe that delivering superintelligence to everyone is the way to answer this question,” he says. “This has the potential to begin a new era of personal empowerment where individuals can use this powerful new capability to reach their full potential, pursue their interests, and improve their lives and the world more than ever before.”

The flood of words belies the situation on the ground in mid-2026. Americans, at least, have a love-hate affair with social media. A November Pew Research Center poll reported that 71% of U.S. adults used Facebook, and 51% used Instagram. Worldwide, 3.6 billion people use at least one Meta app every day.

But in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in July and August, 61% of respondents said they wanted more government oversight of social media, and two-thirds supported laws to keep children under 16 years old off the platforms. When it comes to Meta in particular, in the 2026 Axios Harris 100, an annual poll about corporate reputation, Meta placed 96th out of 100. It’s only above two other social media companies, Chinese ultracheap retailer Temu, and Spirit Airlines, a defunct air carrier. Regarding ethics, Meta came in last, and it was only ahead of TikTok in trust.

The steady drip of headlines in the teen social media trials isn’t helping. Last week, Meta lost a judgment in New Mexico state court that raised their liability in that relatively small jurisdiction to nearly $1 billion dollars. On Wednesday, jury selection began for a federal case with four states suing Meta over addictive product design, and false marketing that said its platforms were safe for teenagers. In July, Meta claimed that the states are asking for a total of $1.4 trillion in damages, in addition to design changes in the apps. This is part of a multidistrict litigation, where thousands of federal trials with social media defendants are coordinated in Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ district courthouse in Oakland, Calif.

There is a separate such group of thousands of cases in California state court, mostly with individual plaintiffs. The steady drip of bad headlines from the courts will continue unless Meta decides to settle en masse.

Meanwhile, in the second quarter, Meta booked “$2.40 billion of charges related to legal proceedings,” according to its quarterly filing. That may be just the beginning.

Zuckerberg spent 6,500 words getting his utopian message out, but I can sum it up in two: Trust us. The evidence is that Meta has a long way to go to win back that trust.

London Luxury Home Prices Rise for the First Time in 20 Months

The slumping market finally saw the average sale price tick up, rising 0.6% in February.

Meta is betting on a human-first AI future, but growing legal battles and declining public trust are putting Mark Zuckerberg’s vision to the test.