Last year, 160 families saw their property’s value rise to £1m or more due to mounting house prices in the UK.
There are now 400,000 homeowners whose houses are worth £1m or more, as the combined value of homes is worth £836 billion.1
Experts predict that this rate will continue to rise to around 200 per day this year. However, lots of these families are still cash-poor due to their wealth being invested in their pricey property.
In 2014, three times the number of seven-figure costing homes sold than a decade ago, revealed Savills estate agents and the Sunday Times.1
In Britain, there are over 10,600 streets with an average property price of at least £1m. On 12 streets in London, you cannot buy even just a garage for less than that.1
In the most expensive area, Kensington Palace Gardens, the average house price is £42.7m.1 In London, there are more properties worth over £1m than the whole of the UK combined. However there are areas where there are many property millionaires, such as Cornwall, Cheshire, Edinburgh, and Suffolk.
The Sunday Times’ report of Land Registry and local authority figures found that seven-figure property sales has increased up to eight-fold in some parts since the 2007 property boom.1
Property sales worth at least £1m in Cambridge rose 200% since before the recession. In Hackney, and Lewisham, this figure increased by 814% and 275% correspondingly.1
There are around 275,000 properties worth £1m or more in London and 72,100 in the South East. Seven-year house sales in the East of England and the South West have risen 35% and 17% respectively since 2006-07. This is believed to have been caused by Londoners selling their £1m homes and buying mortgage-free in the countryside.1
Property experts think that most of those owning £1m or more homes do so by accident. These houses would have been reasonably priced ten or 20 years ago, and the value has spiralled in the last few years. Concerns are building that these homeowners will be unfairly affected by Labour’s planned mansion tax, which would see those with properties worth more than £2m paying £250 a month.