Hot property: London’s housing problem? It’s going to get worse

 

However, this is a problem which can’t be cured by air conditioning – although that will increasingly be the option taken by richer households, a move which will considerably add to our already strained electricity capacity. 

 

In any case, for those further down the food chain, the struggle to pay a mortgage and bills is too much to add air conditioning on top. For those renting, they will need the landlord to pay to fit air conditioning systems. Those who expect this to happen without rules forcing landlords to comply have little experience of renting. 

 

The problem is not just that London will be too hot, but that it will also be too wet. London faces two serious flooding risks. 

 

The first is surface water flooding, currently the number one risk on London’s Risk Register. This is where sudden, heavy, localised rainfall overwhelms the drainage system and causes immediate, serious floods in a particular area.

 

The city has seen increasingly serious and regular instances of this kind of flooding in recent years. So far the impact has been property damage, but the potential exists for major loss of life – especially if anyone gets trapped underground.

 

 

This could happen in the tube network, but an arguably bigger risk is basement flats – especially if the floods strike at night when people are sleeping. What will be a couple of inches of standing water on the surface could overwhelm basement flats and drown whole families. 

 

In June 2022, the Strategic Flood Response Framework for London set out plans for a basement flooding worst case outcome which projected up to 40 fatalities if surface water flood risk isn’t tackled. The rental market for properties of this type is slanted towards the poorest, and I have spoken to experts who believe that 40 deaths is an underestimate.

 

Even in instances where death is not caused, tenants face a huge struggle if their homes flood: Too often they will have little or no contents insurance and may not have a landlord willing to do the clean-up necessary to dry out the property and prevent mold and stench. Too often, the aftermath of flooding is poverty and poor housing. 

 

And this is just surface water flooding. London is in an unusually vulnerable position: built on a tidal river at a point where it is narrow enough to be bridged. This makes river flooding a major risk, and one we have forgotten because of the huge flood barrier at the eastern edge of the city.  

 

But should the Thames Flood Barrier, which has been working well beyond its capacity for years, fail to close during a major storm surge, the city faces an apocalyptic event estimated to displace 1.25m people and cause £200bn of property damage.

 

 

Still the risks to the city from a changing climate do not end. Londoners watched with the rest of the world in horror as wildfire tore through Los Angeles earlier this year. Many of them will not have known that a version of this horror is a risk in their city. 

 

London is not as hot as Los Angeles, but the danger comes from the fact that it is in transition to a hotter climate. We have forests, leafy trees and hedges connected directly to our houses and grassland throughout the city in immediate proximity to very built-up areas. Cities in hotter climates do not have these features, because they burn. 

 

Wildfires are on the rise in London, Wanstead Flats (a large expanse of grassland in east London) has burnt twice in the last eight years. It only needs to happen on a day with strong winds to set the very urban area of Forest Gate ablaze. Embers from a wildfire will have no trouble crossing London’s narrow streets if driven by the wind.

 

 

As the world gets hotter, fire is a bigger risk. London’s 40 degree day in summer 2022 was also the London Fire Brigade’s busiest day since the blitz. This was not a coincidence, and in the future will also likely happen when water supplies are already depleted by drought. 

 

All of this crashes into the property market in ways which we don’t yet understand. Who will want to buy the flats in flood risk zones? Who will pay for the upgrades to housing to provide shading and shutters? How will property insurance change in a city that burns, floods and rapidly overheats as a regular part of its seasonal weather?  

 

These are major questions for the future of London’s housing. We do not have long to find answers. 

 

Pete Apps is a journalist and author of Homesick: How Housing Broke London and How to Fix It and the Orwell Prize-winning book Show Me The Bodies which covers the build up to the Grenfell Tower fire. He spent 10 years writing at industry magazine Inside Housing and his work has also appeared in The Guardian, The New Statesman, The Times, The Independent and Private Eye. His second book Homesick examines how and why the housing crisis has reshaped London. He appeared in the Netflix film Grenfell: Uncovered in 2025.

 

Find out more Peter Apps will be discussing his new book in the context of climate resilience on 21 October at Festival of Place: Climate Resilience. Book your ticket this week and receive a free copy of Apps’ new book Homesick.