London Property Outperformed Seven Other Kinds of Investments Over Last Decade

Over the last decade, investment in London property had one of the best returns, only beat by Bitcoin and gold, according to a report from Foxtons on Tuesday.

The average price of a London home in December 2013 was £352,028 (US$444,777)—today, the average home is worth £508,037, according to the Land Registry’s December 2023 price data. That’s a 44.3% increase over the last 10 years.

“The London market is undoubtedly the pinnacle when it comes to U.K. property investment and while the last year may have been a challenging one, the value of a London home has still climbed considerably over the last decade,” Foxtons CEO Guy Gittins said in the report.

Gittins added that the capital city’s real estate market has seemingly “turned a corner,” with home sales beginning the year on a promising note.

Foxtons analysed nine other kinds of investments, including wheat, crude oil, natural gas and the FTSE 100 Index, and only two had higher returns than London property over the last decade. No other real estate markets were included in this analysis.

Bitcoin’s value increased the most, up a whopping 4,963% from 2013, according to the report. Gold was the second-best investment of the last decade, with a 66.8% increase in value.

Following London property, the value of silver increased 22.9%, the FTSE 100 Index saw a return of 15.7% and corn’s value increased by 7.9%, according to the report.

The rest of the investment options Foxtons analysed saw a decline in value: wheat fell by 2.5%, WTI Crude Oil by 26.3%, Brent Crude Oil by 30.2% and natural gas by 41.5%.

“The investment landscape is constantly changing, and while some traditional vehicles have seen a sharp decline in value over the last decade, such as natural gas, other emerging markets such as cryptocurrency have experienced a boom period, albeit with a heightened degree of volatility,” Gittins said. “However, it’s fair to say that bricks and mortar has remained one of the most consistent investments one can make down the years and the long-term returns speak for themselves.”

“Call us optimists. Call us dreamers. Call us whatever the hell you want, but we’re betting on people, and we like those odds. The future is for everyone.”

That ad copy is from the voice-over of a July Meta Platforms META -3.38%.

spot that’s been part of a public-relations blitz to position Meta as the humanist AI company. The message was undercut by the ad’s inclusion of David Bowie’s “Five Years,” a brooding 1972 song about an impending apocalypse. But this week CEO Mark Zuckerberg left no ambiguity, publishing a 6,500-word manifesto—about 10 times the length of this newsletter—with a title that echoed the ad: “The Future is for Everyone.”

That seems to be Meta’s new tagline. In light of sinking public opinion and the company’s thousands of lawsuits from states, school districts, parents, and users, Meta’s public relations have been defensive. This push represents a return to offense, with a chance to distinguish Meta’s approach to AI from other labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, or SpaceX SPCX +9.65%.

“It is surprising that the discourse from many developing AI is so filled with doom,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I do not understand why anyone who believes that AI will eliminate most jobs and much of humanity’s relevance would rush to build that future.”

Zuckerberg frames what sort of future we build with AI as the central issue of our time. “We believe that delivering superintelligence to everyone is the way to answer this question,” he says. “This has the potential to begin a new era of personal empowerment where individuals can use this powerful new capability to reach their full potential, pursue their interests, and improve their lives and the world more than ever before.”

The flood of words belies the situation on the ground in mid-2026. Americans, at least, have a love-hate affair with social media. A November Pew Research Center poll reported that 71% of U.S. adults used Facebook, and 51% used Instagram. Worldwide, 3.6 billion people use at least one Meta app every day.

But in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in July and August, 61% of respondents said they wanted more government oversight of social media, and two-thirds supported laws to keep children under 16 years old off the platforms. When it comes to Meta in particular, in the 2026 Axios Harris 100, an annual poll about corporate reputation, Meta placed 96th out of 100. It’s only above two other social media companies, Chinese ultracheap retailer Temu, and Spirit Airlines, a defunct air carrier. Regarding ethics, Meta came in last, and it was only ahead of TikTok in trust.

The steady drip of headlines in the teen social media trials isn’t helping. Last week, Meta lost a judgment in New Mexico state court that raised their liability in that relatively small jurisdiction to nearly $1 billion dollars. On Wednesday, jury selection began for a federal case with four states suing Meta over addictive product design, and false marketing that said its platforms were safe for teenagers. In July, Meta claimed that the states are asking for a total of $1.4 trillion in damages, in addition to design changes in the apps. This is part of a multidistrict litigation, where thousands of federal trials with social media defendants are coordinated in Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ district courthouse in Oakland, Calif.

There is a separate such group of thousands of cases in California state court, mostly with individual plaintiffs. The steady drip of bad headlines from the courts will continue unless Meta decides to settle en masse.

Meanwhile, in the second quarter, Meta booked “$2.40 billion of charges related to legal proceedings,” according to its quarterly filing. That may be just the beginning.

Zuckerberg spent 6,500 words getting his utopian message out, but I can sum it up in two: Trust us. The evidence is that Meta has a long way to go to win back that trust.

London Property Outperformed Seven Other Kinds of Investments Over Last Decade

Meta is betting on a human-first AI future, but growing legal battles and declining public trust are putting Mark Zuckerberg’s vision to the test.