What if you bought London house in 1990?
Real estate · House. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play6.8× · S&P 500 same money: $19,429
$1,000 in London house at the start of 1990 would be worth about $6,750 today. A plain S&P 500 index fund over the same years would have made more — the boring option won.
The story
London house prices began this period falling: high interest rates and the early-1990s recession produced a slump in which many owners were stuck in negative equity, and nominal prices took most of the decade to recover. From the mid-1990s came a long boom, powered by falling interest rates, a thriving financial sector, buy-to-let mortgages and international buyers who saw London property as a safe store of wealth. Prices more than tripled between 1995 and 2007.
The 2008 crisis caused only a brief dip, as low interest rates, quantitative easing and the Help to Buy scheme supported the market, and London prices surged again into the mid-2010s. Then the momentum faded. Stamp-duty increases on expensive homes and second properties, the 2016 Brexit vote, tighter rules for landlords and simple unaffordability left London prices roughly flat for years, underperforming much of the rest of the UK. The mortgage-rate spike after the 2022 mini-budget added pressure. Over the full period values rose substantially, but nearly all the gains came before 2016.
The lesson: Past performance in a market comes from specific conditions; London's long boom stalled once interest rates, taxes and affordability stopped cooperating.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | $80.00 | $6,750 | $19,429 | 6.8× |
| 1995 | $70.00 | $7,714 | $14,783 | 7.7× |
| 2000 | $130 | $4,154 | $4,626 | 4.2× |
| 2003 | $200 | $2,700 | $7,727 | 2.7× |
| 2005 | $240 | $2,250 | $5,763 | 2.2× |
| 2007 | $290 | $1,862 | $4,789 | 1.9× |
| 2008 | $300 | $1,800 | $4,626 | 1.8× |
| 2010 | $280 | $1,929 | $6,071 | 1.9× |
| 2012 | $300 | $1,800 | $5,312 | 1.8× |
| 2015 | $400 | $1,350 | $3,301 | 1.4× |
| 2018 | $480 | $1,125 | $2,519 | 1.1× |
| 2020 | $480 | $1,125 | $2,092 | 1.1× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 1995, turning $1,000 into $7,714. The S&P 500 from that same year: $14,783.
Now try it without hindsight. The wheel decides the year and the asset class, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick, and we simulate to today. London house is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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