Millionaire’s Row grows
While it was little more than a collection of woefully inadequate numbers which would need to be provided with considerably more background information before any meaningful conclusions could be drawn, this week’s story about the changing pattern and numbers of properties in the £1 million and £2 million ranges as researched by the Bank of Scotland does show that things are anything but stagnant at that end of the market.
Sales of £1 million properties made up 0.2% of all Scottish sales in 2007, which rose by 3%, but from a total of 144 sold in 2006, the number sold in 2007 rose to 343, and increase of 138%, or 2.4 times more than the previous year, if expressed sensibly.
Measured from 2003, the total here has increased by 7 times.
Looking at the £2 million plus range, the increase there was 30%.
Measured from 2003, these property sales have increased by 9 times.
The £1 million total for the whole of Great Britain was 8,257, up 36% on 2006.
In geographic terms, Edinburgh was second, after London, in terms of the number of £1 million properties sold. However, the pattern is changing, and while Edinburgh still accounts for the majority of of such property sales, its share is showing a decline, with clusters beginning to appear in places such as Glasgow, Perth, and Kinross.
We’ll never have, or see the information if it is available, but it would be interesting to see how these apparent increases fared if they were corrected for the effects of inflation and the general effects of increasing property prices, and how many of the properties were purchased by people who truly owned them through their own wealth, rather than by loans or mortgages, which are really only borrowing, until that last payment is made - of they can keep up the payments.
It’s always slightly amusing to watch English property programmes, and see homeowners sigh as they look at the soaring value of their properties, with many becoming unwitting property millionaires simply through lifetime ownership of the family home, but trapped in it as they do not have the income to support a move elsewhere, or realise that unless they move far, far away from their roots, there is no way for them to convert that increase in value into cash. If they sell and move anywhere nearby, all the other properties will have increased in price by a similar amount to their present abode.
As they say, you just can’t win.
