19 Sep House prices in prime locations breached £1m, survey shows

Towns with the highest proportion of million pound houses for sale are clustered in the home counties, with Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire topping the table with a staggering 47 per cent of properties on the market for £1million-plus.

The figure for the area – just half an hour by train from London – compares to just 3.5 per cent of homes worth upwards of £1million for sale nationally.

It also dwarfs the 13 per cent of similarly-valued homes on the London market. On a regional level, Surrey contains the most ‘millionaire towns’, with ten of the 41 hotpots based there. Hertfordshire is represented six times, while Buckinghamshire is represented five times.

Overall, some 41 towns across Britain have a higher percentage of their homes for sale over £1million than London.

If you want to rub shoulders with the wealthy it could be time to move to Beaconsfield – if you can afford it.

The Buckinghamshire town, famous for being the setting of ITV’s Midsomer Murders, has been named as having the greatest density of million pound homes in the country.

Almost half of the town’s homes sold for more than £1m in June, according to property website PrimeLocation.com. It comes as the number of homes changing hands at more than £1m reaches a near-record high of one in every 29 sold.

There is also good news for those with more modest abodes as the latest Rightmove House Price Index today shows the average asking price increased by 0.7% to £233,139 over the past month. But the average price is still down 3% over the summer and unsold stock is still at levels not seen since the 1970s.

Over the past three years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers triggered the financial crisis the average asking price has risen by 2.5%, compared to a 16.4% increase in the previous three years.

Demand is strongest at the high-end of the market, with almost 20,000 £1m homes on the market in the three months to the end of June.

While more than half of the 19,746 £1m -plus homes on estate agents’ books were in London, the capital only ranked 41st in terms of density of £1m properties.

Beaconsfield, which sits in the Chiltern Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and is just 29 minutes by train from London, tops the table with 47% of properties valued at more than £1m against 13% in the capital.

Next on the list is Virginia Water, Surrey (44%); Much Hadham, Hertfordshire, (38%); Radlett, Herfordshire (37%) and Chelsea footballers’ and their wives favourite Cobham, Surrey (33%).

Nigel Lewis, property analyst at PrimeLocation.com said: ‘Despite the recession the capital’s commuter towns continue to be hotspots for million pound homes and the surprise is just how high the proportions are within many of them.

‘The common thread that links all of the towns on this list is that they manage to combine the best of both worlds, offering a spacious, quiet environment while still being an easy commute to a major city.’

Top towns with % of properties on market for £1m-plus

In fact all of the top 15 towns are within an easy commute of the capital. The only abnormality in the top 50 is Haddington, a pretty town 20 miles east of Edinburgh, which ranks 16th.

London retains the highest average asking price at £427,889, up 2.4% in the last month and 7.2% over the past year.

The cheapest region is the north of England, with an average asking price of £145,430 – a 2.6% fall over the past month and 4.2% down on last year.

• Rupert Neate
• The Guardian, Monday 19 September 2011