It was once a fabled number. Owning a £1m home marked you out as a success story, with the sports car on the gravel drive and the obligatory champagne lifestyle. So it’s tough when you find out you’re not quite as special as you thought.
Until recently, a home valued at seven figures, with two commas, was a sign you’d made it, usually through hard graft on your part. But an increasing number of people are waking up to find they have become accidental millionaires — brick-rich even if they are cash-poor. If you bought at the right time, in the right place — whether it was a dingy Knightsbridge basement, a nice detached villa in the home counties or a Scottish castle — you may have joined the ranks of owners of the 394,000 properties across the UK sold for £1m or more.
Exclusive research for Home by Savills estate agency shows there has been a hike of 124% in the number of £1m-plus properties in the past decade. The number of “millionaires” more than doubled between 2006 and 2016, and these homes now have a combined value of £883bn. This can be chiefly attributed to rocketing price growth in London and the corresponding boom in its hinterlands.
“Historically, that £1m mark was the pinnacle of property ownership, putting you in an elite group,” says Lucian Cook, director of residential research at Savills, who used data from the Land Registry and Registers of Scotland, as well as from HMRC and the estate agency’s price indices, to crunch the numbers. “But although today it isn’t exactly run-of-the-mill, it’s certainly not the benchmark it was 10 years ago.
“Where once you’d think it would have to be a large rectory or farmhouse commanding that price tag if it were outside London, it can now be something far more ordinary, such as a terraced house.”
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That said, you won’t be surprised to hear that the lion’s share of £1m and £1m-plus properties have a London postcode. Savills estimates that 63%, or 250,000, of the seven-figure homes are in the capital, with homeowners in Westminster coming out on top at 36,300 properties — many of them in swanky office redevelopments, capitalising on their proximity to Big Ben. Kensington & Chelsea follows closely behind, with 33,400 £1m homes.
Those two boroughs combined contain 18% of all homes in this price range across the UK, and almost half as many as there are outside London. In fact, 16 of the 20 local authorities with the highest number of seven-figure properties are in the capital.
The British rower Ben Hunt-Davis, 45, who won a gold medal at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, bought his airy five-bedroom flat at the top of a mansion block in Barnes, southwest London, for £700,000 in 2005. (The London borough of Richmond upon Thames comes sixth on the list — 21.6% of its housing stock is valued at £1m or more.) He has just put the flat on the market for £1.65m (020 3553 2506, carterjonas.co.uk).
“It has rooftop and Hammersmith Bridge views, though none of the river,” says Hunt-Davis, who is busy preparing for his role on the management committee of the Henley regatta. “We did a loft conversion, but didn’t really do anything else significant. I knew what was happening comparably in the area, but frankly it just seems crazy that it should be worth so much now.”
Hunt-Davis plans to upgrade to a five-bedroom house in the same area — which could easily cost twice as much as he will get for his loft-style flat.
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The other headline figures from Savills place the rest of the country’s £1m-plus sales into even starker perspective. About 95% of all properties across the UK to have achieved this price are in the south of England, with more in the west London borough of Hounslow (5,000) than in the whole of Scotland (4,300). And there are more in the southwest (14,300) than in the Midlands and the north of England combined (14,100) — the Surrey borough of Elmbridge has more than twice as many such homes as the entire northwest. Feeling the heat from the London boom are Cambridge and Bath, each with as many seven-figure homes as there are across Yorkshire and the Humber, hotspots such as Harrogate notwithstanding.
So, if you’ve got £1m to spend, where are you going to get the most bang for your buck? Clearly not in the capital, where the average seven-figure home has 1,389 sq ft of living space. “There are four London boroughs where you get less than 1,000 sq ft for £1m — in Kensington and Chelsea, where you only get 806 sq ft, and in the City of London, Westminster and Camden,” Cook says. “But out in Bexley, southeast London, and Havering, in the east, you can expect to get more than 2,410 sq ft.”
You’ll need to look further afield, to Stratford-upon-Avon, Harrogate or Rushcliffe, in Nottinghamshire, to get 3,000 sq ft for £1m. Outside the capital, the smallest square footage is in Oxford, where buyers typically stump up £1m for 1,733 sq ft of living space.
Yet the UK’s £1m map is in a constant state of flux, as new places constantly pop up to happily report their first £1m sale. Data from Hamptons International estate agency and the Land Registry shows that over the past 12 months, 18 UK postcodes saw their first £1m or £1m-plus property sold, including those in Manor Park and Hayes, in London; Calcot Row, in the southeast; Selly Oak, in the West Midlands; Hebburn, in the northeast; and Llangollen, in north Wales.
Cook does sound a word of warning: we are unlikely to witness the same level of growth over the next decade. “I would be surprised, what with mortgage regulation, the prospect of interest rates rising and some stagnation over the next couple of years, while Brexit is sorted out. After that, I would expect to see a bit of rebalancing.
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“Those who have accumulated a lot of housing wealth in London over the past decade will be looking to see where else in the country they can find the most for their money.” And a new topic to boast about at dinner parties.
How to sell it
• If your property has been on the market for a few months and you haven’t had any bites, chances are that the price tag is too ambitious. A cut of just £1,000 can work wonders in the psychological game that is selling and buying houses, but it will probably take a serious reduction to get fresh viewers in. Once you do, listen to their feedback.
• Savvy buyers will research top prices achieved in your postcode: more than a third of UK neighbourhoods have never seen a home sell for seven figures.
• Factor in stamp duty from the off. A property sold at £1m will incur £43,750 in tax, but by £1.1m, it’s an extra £10,000. According to Tim Waring, a director at Dacre, Son & Hartley estate agency, an increasing number of homes in the golden triangle around Harrogate, Leeds and York are coming onto the market for about £2m, incurring a levy of more than £150,000 — and buyers are negotiating hard.
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• A central London flat, a rectory in the home counties and a Welsh farmhouse are different beasts: work their merits accordingly.
• Avoid gimmicks. Include soft furnishings and furniture in the sale — but throwing in a Porsche is so last recession.
Properties for sale
Cornwall £975,000
Despite getting valuations of more than £1m from various estate agents, when they came to marketing it, the vendors of Hillsborough Farm wanted to pitch it at a level that would generate plenty of interest. Less than a mile from the perfectly picturesque north Cornish village of Boscastle, and just 250yd from the South West Coast Path, it has eight bedrooms spread across the farmhouse, the “boathouse” annexe and the barn conversion. The entire property can be let for up to £3,500 a week in the summer months. 01208 222300, rohrsandrowe.co.uk
Kingston upon Thames £999,950
In a central location in the royal borough, just a short walk from the station — trains take 32 minutes to get to London Waterloo — this four-bedroom Victorian terraced house has high ceilings, a decked garden and the potential to extend and to convert the cellar into additional living space. 0800 086 9844, nested.com
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East Sussex £1.075m
Its independent spirit, wild Bonfire Night revels and farmers’ markets make Lewes popular with free-spirited types and young families alike. This grade II listed five-bedroom townhouse on Southover High Street is all double-fronted elegance, with almost 2,500 sq ft of living space and views of the castle from a roof terrace. 01273 475411, struttandparker.com
Wiltshire £1m
Behind dry-stone walls stands the soothingly symmetrical Priory Cottage, a five-bedroom home in Corsham. You might want to spend a bit extra redoing the interiors, which seem slightly dated, but the house has more than 3,000 sq ft of living space, the gardens are gorgeous and Bath is only 10 miles away. 01225 220092, hamptons.co.ukhttp://www.hamptons.co.uk/
Sutherland £1.1m 0/0
A-listed Embo House, near Dornoch, has been on the market since 2014, but its price hasn’t been cut. Built 300 years ago in the style of a grand Edinburgh townhouse, the 10-bedroom property has coastal views and has been completely restored. 01463 719171, struttandparker.com
London N1 £999,000
You get just over 1,000 sq ft of living space, three bedrooms and four bathrooms — as well as a private garden — for your money on Caledonian Road, in the Barnsbury conservation area of Islington. Perks include air conditioning and underfloor heating. 020 3813 5862, knightfrank.co.uk
Flintshire £995,000
The transformation of this historic manor house in Caergwrie, near Wrexham, into a luxurious six-bedroom rural retreat is impressive. It has a spa, a treatment room and a sauna, with a hot tub in the 16-acre grounds. Further land is for sale in separate lots. 01244 328361, jackson-stops.co.uk
East Sussex £1m
This grade II listed home in Flimwell, near the community-minded village of Ticehurst, has exposed beams, fireplaces, stone tiled floors, an Aga in the kitchen and five bedrooms. You can glimpse Bewl Water reservoir from the well-kept gardens. 01892 640024, hamptons.co.uk