The number of homeowners in the country whose property is worth £1m or more has increased by 75,796 (14%) since January, according to the latest research from property website Zoopla.
This 14% rise over the past year takes the total number of British ‘property millionaires’ to 622,939, and means that 2.2% of all homeowners have a property worth £1 million or more – up 1.9% over the past year. Of these million-pound properties, 82% are situated in London and the South East.
London has once again dominated the property millionaire league, with 61% of Britain’s million-pound piles located in the capital. In total, 380,337 homes in the city are now above the million-pound threshold, marking a 33,871 – or 10% increase – since the start of the year.
Within the capital, the boroughs with the highest number of property millionaires are traditionally expensive areas such as Westminster (51,607) and Kensington and Chelsea (44,972 ) – but these have seen the smallest rise in £1 million+ properties of any borough over the past year, up just 0.9% and 0.6% respectively.
Meanwhile, the boroughs that experienced the greatest increases – over 55% – are within the top 10 lowest average priced boroughs in London including Barking & Dagenham, Newham, Redbridge and Waltham Forest,
Outside of London, the East of England and Yorkshire and The Humber saw the largest increases of million-pound properties, up 28% and 24% respectively since January. At the other end of the spectrum, Wales has the fewest million pound properties in Britain with only 1,404 in total—despite, a significant 11% uplift since January. Meanwhile, Scotland was the sole region to see a decrease in number of million pound homes in 2015, falling 4.5% to below 9,000 since the start of the year.
Lawrence Hall of Zoopla said: “It’s interesting to see that areas such as the East of England and Yorkshire have seen bigger percentage rises in the numbers of property millionaires over the last 12 months compared with the south which typically dominates each year. However the number of properties valued at more than £1m in the south still outweigh the rest of Britain boosted by wealthy hotspots such as Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster.
“With an improving economy and the ongoing lack of housing supply, this continues to put upward pressure on house prices at all levels of the market and has nudged a whole new raft of properties over the £1m mark. A price tag that was once the exclusive preserve of stately homes or massive mansions is now an increasingly common label for more modest houses, particularly in the capital.”