Westminster and Kensington are the most popular areas for rich foreign buyers.
More than 20 per cent of homes in these areas have been sold to overseas
buyers in the past four years, according to figures obtained from the
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Seventeen per cent of property sales in the City of London were to foreign
buyers since 2010, while 12 per cent in Tower Hamlets went to foreign
customers.

Camden, Islington and Hammersmith and Fulham were also in the top 10 boroughs
targeted by overseas investors.

It comes after the average price of prime property in Central London reached
£4,700,000 between June and August this year. This was an increase of a
million pounds compared with the previous three-month period.

Rich foreigners are queueing up to buy the latest high-end residential
properties on the market, including a planned £100million complex of 22
luxury flats in Old Queen Street – next door to Downing Street and
Buckingham Palace.

Shadow Justice Minister Sadiq Khan, who obtained the Whitehall figures, wants
the Government to arrange for properties to be advertised in the UK before
they are advertised abroad.

The Labour MP for Tooting said: “Londoners are being priced out of the
housing market by an influx of foreign buyers, who see London property as an
investment and in many cases leave properties sat empty as ‘ghost homes.’

“While Londoners suffer from the dire housing crisis under David Cameron,
there are more than 60,000 homes sat empty across the city.

“In some parts of London, up to one in five of homes, already in short
supply, are not available to Londoners as a result.”

One agent, Richard Barber, from the Knightsbridge firm W.A. Ellis, said 54 per
cent of his company’s sales were to overseas buyers.

He said: “Supply is at a much higher rate per foot than the ordinary man
in the street can afford. Homes are being built at very high luxury levels
on expensive land.

“A nurse is not going to be able to buy a property in Chelsea or
Kensington, and the fact a foreigner can buy it is not going to make the
difference.”

A study by agents Knight Frank showed that there had been a spike in the
number of investors in the London property market due to the weak economic
recovery in the Eurozone.

The firm revealed that between January and August of this year Italians were
the biggest group of overseas buyers followed by the French and then the
Russians.

A survey carried out by leading agents Savills in 2010 found that 55 per cent
of all properties in London worth more than £750,000 that it sold were
bought by foreigners and ex-pat British buyers during the year.

This compared with 45 per cent when the housing market hit its peak in 2007.

This was said to be the first time that an estate agent had revealed that more
than half its clients were from overseas. The survey referred to an influx
of buyers from Russia, Italy, France and the Middle East.

Rival agents Knight Frank said that 46 per cent of buyers of prime property in
Central London were foreign in 2010. One reason given was the falling value
of the pound at that time.