Cyberattack Crushes London Housing Market

The homebuying process in parts of London is grinding to a halt, sabotaged by a cyberattack that has crippled local systems.

Local authority searches by the Westminster City Council and Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea are impossible to process because of the attack, Bloomberg reported. That’s taking a critical part of the homebuying process off the table and frustrating thousands of buyers and sellers.

The cyberattack occurred two months ago, roiling the services of the two wealthy boroughs. Since then, the boroughs have been unable to look into information about properties and their surrounding areas, such as flood risk and new development.

Without the due diligence searches, buyers are unable to secure mortgages for their purchases, according to LonRes’ Nick Gregori. Furthermore, even cash buyers tend to execute the searches to avoid unexpected catastrophe.

The boroughs — which share technology infrastructure — are working with the police and national cybersecurity experts to get their systems back up and running, but there’s no timeframe.

“We know this is frustrating and will work as hard as possible to tackle the backlog once our systems are safely restored,” Kensington and Chelsea Council leader Elizabeth Campbell said in a statement.

A spokesperson for the Westchester City Council anticipated “resuming processing as soon as possible.”

The cyberattack “will undoubtedly impact the number of sales that can take place in the borough, and in turn the amount of revenue the borough will be able to generate,” Gregori said.

Between 2021 and 2024, the combined boroughs averaged roughly 350 home sales per month, according to LonRes’ analysis of Land Registry data. In 2024-25, taxes leveled from property sales hit approximately $728 million in Kensington and Chelsea.

The luxury housing market in the United Kingdom’s capital city is already going through a slump due to rising transaction taxes and the forthcoming arrival of a mansion tax for homes valued above £2 million ($2.8 million).

— Holden Walter-Warner