One in 45 British owners are sitting on a property price £1million

One in 45 homeowners live in properties worth seven figures or more, according to analysis by high-end estate agent Savills.

The property firm says there are now an estimated 673,143 homes valued at £1 million or more across Britain.

The number of million-pound property owners surged along with house prices during the pandemic. Today, there are 29 per cent more property millionaires than there were in 2019. 

However, their numbers are dwindling as the upper end of the housing market stutters.

The total number of property millionaires has fallen by 9 per cent, or 63,500 homes, since the peak of the pandemic housing boom in 2022, when one in 40 were property millionaires. Their numbers dropped by 29,400 in the past year alone.

Savills says 30 per cent of those who achieved the ‘property millionaire’ status during the pandemic market boom no longer hold it.

It is worth noting that not everyone living in a home worth £1million or more will own their property outright. Many will have a mortgage, meaning they are not technically ‘property millionaires’.

In 2023-2024, 37 per cent of households owned their home outright, according to the Department for Work and Pensions’ latest Family Resources Survey. 

 Why are there fewer £1million homes? 

The top end of the property market is struggling in some areas thanks to uncertainty over the economy, more expensive mortgages and higher taxes. 

Particularly in London and the south east, house prices are reported to be falling after years of sensational rises. 

Two in five homes in the south east homes that entered the £1 million-plus bracket between 2019 and 2022 have since dropped out, compared with 15 per cent in London. 

And rural and coastal areas that saw prices soar in the pandemic ‘race for space’ are also struggling as more workers return to the office. 

The south east and south west saw the biggest rise in £1 million homes during the pandemic, and consequently the largest fall back below the £1 million threshold.

Lucian Cook, head of residential research at Savills, said: ‘Unprecedented increases to property values led to a sharp rise in the number of £1 million-plus homes in the years following the pandemic, with numbers jumping 41 per cent between 2019 and 2022 alone.

‘But that momentum has since reversed. Higher mortgage costs, changing lifestyle priorities and tougher tax measures have rebalanced the market, causing pockets of growth to contract. 

‘More recently, additional tax burdens placed on the most prime properties, particularly in central London and across second-home hotspots, have meant that some of the most expensive neighbourhoods have experienced some of the sharpest pullbacks to values.’

Where are most property millionaires located?

Unsurprisingly, London is home to the highest number of property millionaires, according to Savills. 

It said there are 340,620 homes in the capital worth £1million or more, or about one in 11. London accounts for 50.6 per cent of £1million-plus homes in the UK. 

The highest concentration of £1 million-plus sales in 2025 was in central London, with 54 per cent of all sales across the constituency of Kensington and Bayswater at that level. This was down from 60 per cent in 2022. 

Other parts of London with very high concentrations of million-pound include the cities of London and Westminster where close to half of all sales were for £1million or more.

 Outside the capital, the constituencies of Harpenden and Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire are hotbeds for property millionaires. Here, 27.2 per cent of homes sold last year fetched £1million or more.

Meanwhile, in Chesham and Amersham in Buckinghamshire 23.6 per cent of homes sold went for a £1million or more in 2025. The same can be said for homes sold in Esher and Walton in Surrey. 

The analysis shows that many of the areas which saw sharp rises in £1 million-plus sales between 2019 and 2022 have since seen those gains unwind.

For example, in Winchester, the share of £1 million-plus sales rose from 7.8 per cent to 15.7 per cent over that period, before falling back to 12.1 per cent in 2025. 

In Honiton and Sidmouth in Devon, the proportion climbed from 1.3 per cent to 5.1 per cent, but has since dropped to 2.3 per cent of all sales in the area.

Lucian Cook added: ‘In the wake of the pandemic, new £1 million-plus hotspots emerged across Great Britain as buyer demand pushed the boundaries of traditionally high-value neighbourhoods.

‘However there has been something of a concertina effect with a focus back to the likes of Islington and Richmond in London, and hotspots with a short commute such as Beaconsfield and Sevenoaks.’

Savills says the North of England, the Midlands and Scotland saw the fewest number of properties fall back under the threshold over the past three years, with Scotland being the only region to have not experienced any falls in the past 12 months.

However, these regions will have had far fewer properties that breached the threshold in the first place.