Millionaires’ rows have hit the skids Streets with homes worth average of £1m fall 10%

THE number of ‘millionaires’ rows’ has fallen by 10 per cent as property values have dropped over the past year, an analysis found yesterday.

It showed there are 1,805 fewer roads where houses have an average value of £1million or more.

The research found that in September there were 15,484 ‘million-pound streets’ in the country, down from 17,289 in the same month last year.

The report said: ‘The bulk of the losses have been in London and the South East, which are home to the majority of million-pound streets but are also areas where house prices have been generally falling recently.’

The findings by property website Zoopla come after figures from the Office for National Statistics and the Land registry showed house prices fell by 1.4 per cent in London and 2 per cent across the South East in the year to July.

Some 820 streets lost their average £1million status in the South East this year and 514 in London, said Zoopla.

The country’s most expensive street, Kensington palace gardens in West London, lost nearly £2.8million from its average value, a drop that took the typical price of a house to just under £33million.

Some parts of the country beyond the South fared much better. In Yorkshire and the Humber, for example, the number of £1million roads increased by four to 165.

The most expensive street outside London is Montrose gardens in Leatherhead, Surrey, with an average house price of £6.5million.

Despite the decline in overall numbers, towns and cities across the South East still have some of the highest concentrations of the most expensive streets.

Zoopla counted 207 in reading, Berkshire, 200 in guildford, Surrey, 196 in Sevenoaks, Kent, and 190 in Leatherhead. In Wales, by contrast, there were 31 £1million streets.

The study came as a social housing organisation estimated that 8.6million people are living in unaffordable, insecure or unsuitable homes.

The National Housing Federation, the umbrella body for housing associations, said there were 3.6million in overcrowded homes, 2.5million who could not afford their rent or mortgage and 2.5million trapped in a house from which they could not afford to move away. The last category included those living with parents, for example, or with a former partner.

The federation said 1.4million were in poor- quality

‘Pushed into debt and poverty’

homes and 1.7million in unsuitable housing, for example old people in homes in which they found it difficult to move around or families without outside space for children to play. A further 400,000 are homeless or at risk of homelessness.

The figures were developed from a long-running ‘ panel survey’ tracking the progress of households maintained at the University of Essex. Numbers from the survey were multiplied to produce national estimates.

Kate Henderson, of the federation, said ‘millions of people are being pushed into debt and poverty because rent is too expensive’.