Soaring property prices have created almost 40,000 property millionaires in the past year
With the increase of house prices over the past year, a huge 40,000 people have now found themselves millionaires over the past year – almost all of them outside of London.
There are now 563,240 homes worth more than £1 million in Britain – 36,629 more than there were in 2019, according to data collected by Savills for The Sunday Times. It has been 6 years, 2015, since the number of million-pound properties has grown, and just 6,657 of those created in 2020 were located in the capital.
It comes after house prices shot up 7.3 per cent over 2020 to end on a six-year high. The property market surged after the end of the first lockdown with the pent-up demand working alongside people’s new found requirements of gardens and living in rural areas. This alongside the Stamp Duty Holiday helped boost the market.
Lucian Cook, head of residential research at Savills, told The Sunday Times: “It is quite staggering how house price growth has created so many paper millionaires. No-one would have believed it 25 years ago.
“Property has been a source of wealth and financial security for a lucky generation who have collectively accumulated more than £1 trillion in wealth.”
Data from the Office for National Statistics showed the average property in the UK was worth £249,633 at the end of November.