Millionaires’ village
Enclave where HALF of homes now worth at least £1million
A LOCAL post office stocked with Dom Perignon champagne sounds like wishful thinking to most of us.
But it’s a reality in the village of Cobham – where almost half of homes are now worth £1million or more.
Research from Zoopla has revealed an extraordinary 44 per cent of properties there come with a seven-figure price tag. The leafy enclave is in Surrey’s ‘golden triangle’ which attracts scores of footballers and celebrities.
There are now nearly 3,000 million-pound homes in the Cobham area, the property website revealed yesterday – more than there are in the whole of Wales.
Guildford, just ten miles away, is the top place outside London for homes worth more than £1million – with a total of 5,615.
Famous faces who have settled in the Surrey countryside include tennis star Sir Andy Murray, actor Brian Blessed and footballers Peter Crouch and John Terry.
However, the number of property millionaires across Britain has fallen by nearly 35,000 over the past year amid a stuttering market in London and the South East. About 733,780 homes across Britain are valued at £1million or more, down from 768,550 a year ago.
London still has far more property millionaires than elsewhere in Britain – 395,871 – but has seen the steepest drop over the past year, losing about 34,850.
Experts have said stamp duty changes introduced by former chancellor George Osborne in 2014 are partly to blame for market troubles in the capital, adding to the cost of buying more expensive homes. That puts the brakes on sales of homes further down the ladder as well, as families wait longer to move into a bigger space. Outside London, however, the number of property millionaires is largely on the rise.
For example, Wales has gained 150 million-pound homes over the past year and now has 2,373 – although this is still less than the number in Cobham alone.
There was also a rise in the number of million-pound homes in Yorkshire and the Humber, the South West, the East of England, the Midlands, the North West and the North East of England. Zoopla spokesman Annabel Dixon said: ‘It’s hard to ignore the overall decline in million-pound properties in the past 12 months.
‘But it’s clear to see the majority of this decline resides in London. It’s also encouraging to see resiliency and growth in some areas of the market that haven’t traditionally been strong performers, such as North West England and Yorkshire and the Humber.’