(Bloomberg) -- Rents in Nine Elms, the London district nicknamed Dubai-on-Thames because of its apartment towers, are soaring following the expansion of the underground to the neighborhood.

Asking rents in the area, which includes Battersea Power Station, have risen 25% since two Northern Line tube stations opened there in September, data compiled by property portal Zoopla for Bloomberg News show. The median asking rent in Nine Elms is now £3,250 a month.

That outstripped a 19% bounce in rents across London over the same period, with demand buoyed by more workers returning to the capital as the pandemic wanes. 

The rise in prices is a boon for landlords who bought up apartments in the district by the River Thames that is one of Europe’s largest regeneration areas. Developers had initially struggled to sell some of the 20,000 planned new homes, with demand suffering due to higher sales taxes on overseas purchasers introduced by the government. Troubled Chinese investors had to offload projects while cost overruns led to cuts in profit expectations. 

“The impact of the tube opening has been significant for sales and lettings – we saw a rush of new interest on the day of opening, and this has been sustained over the past nine months,” Simon Murphy, Chief Executive Officer at Battersea Power Station Development Company, said. “The rise in demand has been reflected in rental values, which have grown by 18% over the past 12 months.”

Despite being only a short distance from the UK’s center of power in Westminster, the Nine Elms area was largely used for industrial purposes, leaving a lack of facilities for local people.

Read more: London Bets $1.5 Billion Tube Extension Will Spur Jobs, Business

Rents fell across London during the pandemic as workers opted to move out of the city while corporate relocations came to a near halt. They have now recovered and surpassed their level in March 2020, the month that the country went into lockdown, Zoopla said in a report last month.

While rents have risen, sales at several developments in Nine Elms have been slow, hitting some Chinese developers which had snapped up local land. Guangzhou R&F Properties Co. agreed to sell a unit developing the Vauxhall Square project in March at a 42% discount to an October valuation, according to a filing earlier this year.

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