Yahoo Finance Record share of £1m homes now outside of London
The number of £1m-plus homes located outside of London has reached a record high after affluent households fled the capital and forced up prices.
One in 40 homeowners are now property millionaires after price growth pushed more than 41,200 properties over the £1m threshold in 2022, according to analysis by estate agency Savills.
There are 730,390 homes valued at £1m or more, a rise of 40pc compared with the beginning of 2020, thanks to a pandemic-fuelled boom which saw buyers chase bigger homes and gardens.
The race for space has pushed the share of homes valued at £1m-plus outside of London to the highest ever recorded by Savills, since it began tracking the data in 2007.
In 2022, 53pc of high value properties were located outside the capital, up from 51.8pc in 2021 and 45.5pc in 2020.
Lucian Cook, of Savills, said: “The number of property millionaires has shot up over the past three years, as a consequence of a booming post-lockdown property market and people placing a greater value than ever on their home and lifestyle.
“But it is no longer just a London phenomenon. There are now one million-pound hotspots across the breadth of the UK in the wake of the pandemic, after affluent home buyers changed priorities in the search for more space.”
The average national house price grew by almost 28pc between January 2020 and November 2022, according to the most recent official data held by the Office for National Statistics.
Large houses with green space and outbuildings for home offices have been in particular demand since the pandemic. In the height of the property boom it was not uncommon for buyers to be locked in bidding wars over bigger properties and paying hundreds of thousands of pounds over the asking price.
The number of homes worth £1m or more has surged by more than half in all regions of the UK since the beginning of 2020, with the exception of London.
Wales recorded the biggest rise, with the number of prime properties jumping by 146pc over the three-year period to 4,899 in 2022.
In the south west of England properties worth more than £1m more than doubled, rising by 104pc to almost 52,000. Prime property sales were driven largely by hotspots in north Somerset, Devon and Cornwall, according to Savills.
In Scotland property millionaires surpassed 10,000 for the first time in 2022 – more than half of which are located in Edinburgh.
While London recorded the smallest percentage rise in £1m properties between 2020 and 2022, an increase of just 14pc, the capital still has the highest number of prime homes in the UK.
There are almost 343,000 prime properties in London, with almost one in ten homes priced above £1m.
Mr Cook said: “As some of the lifestyle drivers which saw so many leave the capital ease we expect more prime buyer focus to return to London.”
