Owning your own home

Indeed.

Real prices for London right now having researched for 6 months before I started looking 4 weeks ago (with a lot of research in the 2 months prior):

• £500 sq/ft = total revamp needed, zone 3+, probably ex-council
  
• £600 sq/ft = average quality, zones 2-5 (farther out gets you garden or drive, closer in just gets you average quality)
  
• £700 sq/ft = above average quality, zones 2-4 (with few downsides, i.e. lots of light, space is laid out well, long lease, no major detriments)
  
• £800 sq/ft = excellent quality, zones 2-3 (marble bathrooms start appearing at this price, the space is really nice - anyone who looks at the photos and floorplan swoons)
  
• £900 sq/ft = luxury, zones 2-3
  
• Above £950 sq/ft = overpriced and untenable at the moment, or deep into zone 1
  
  

I've no idea what you've got @Silly_Savage but those prices are what I observed places selling for. It's a huge range of value, but the prices reflect the quality of each place and pricing across London is far more consistent than I thought it would be (within those observed bands).

The place I've almost bought is £686 sq/ft in Crouch End, probably should have been around £725 sq/ft but the sellers were driven by circumstances to sell fast and that played in our favour... but of the 4 places we looked, 2 were being sold for less than they were purchased for (the worst of these was a 10% drop in value), 1 was being sold fast due to circumstances (the one we are involved in) and only the last was what the seller wanted (and it's been on the market 10 months and re-listed twice with drops already and is still on the market this morning).

I'm not selling, but if I were I'd be wary of staying on the market too long and so long as I wasn't left too much out I would be trying to get it done quickly.