It’s no news that London real estate is one of the most expensive in the world. However, experts from Transparency UK decided to find out how it turned out that not all townspeople can simply afford a property in their own city. Almost half of all London property was bought for "dirty" money from foreign investors, which "inflated" London property prices to the highest rates, reports Domaza with the reference to the British tabloid Daily Mail, which published the results of the study.
 
According to a survey conducted with the owners of more than 2,000 houses in London, experts found out that 80% of their customers are foreign investors. Meanwhile, the report says, that a huge number of real estate objects in London are empty: investors buy objects for the purpose of saving and multiplying funds, whereas live and work outside the UK.
 
Having studied the legitimacy of the transactions, Transparency UK was amazed by the scale of the black market - according to their calculations, about 40% of deals are related to "suspicious money". It is specified that in monetary terms this amount reaches £ 4.2 billion. Journalists have already called London "a quiet harbour of dirty money" - the funds for buying real estate under the "grey schemes" are related either to corruption or to offshore companies.

At the same time, Londoners forced to leave the British capital in search of a more comfortable financial terms of places to live - "grey schemes" have increased the prices of rental and purchase of worthy properties in London so that the average Briton they are highly prohibitive. Authorities of the capital have promised to look into this issue and also to implement social projects that will facilitate the rental and mortgage burden for Londoners.

Domaza - Properties