Storming Ahead - high end properties still flying off the shelves

Two reports this morning suggest that activity in the most expensive sectors of the housing market is doing as well as the frenzied mid- and lower-end sectors.

Firstly a new survey by Rightmove shows that houses with an asking price of £1m or more are taking an average of 63 days to find a buyer, which is 18 days faster than this time last year.

Time to find a buyer has dropped across the whole market as well for houses, but only by nine days, decreasing from 59 days in August last year to 50 days now.

The analysis also found that million pound homes are outperforming the rest of the property market for the number of sales being agreed.

In August, the number of £1m-plus houses finding a buyer rose by 105 per cenrt annually, a higher rate of increase than the market as a whole, where sales agreed of all houses increased by 61 per cent year-on-year.

At a county level, the hottest millionaire markets are in Norfolk, Wiltshire and Cornwall, where the number of sales being agreed by agents are up by 244, 174 and 165 per cent respectively.

Looking at the speed of local markets, the fastest sales of million pound plus homes are in Hackney, Tooting, Stoke Newington and Balham in the capital, while outside London the fastest markets are in Cambridge and Berkhamsted.

Rightmove’s director of property data Tim Bannister says: “Houses in the million pound plus market have always taken longer to find buyers than the wider market because of their higher price points, but our new analysis shows that wealthier buyers who are fortunate enough to be able to move to bigger homes have been driving this sector of the market to a pace not seen since back in 2014. 

“Unsurprisingly, the counties seeing the biggest annual rise for sales agreed of million pound homes all benefit from beautiful coasts and countryside. 

“Available stock in this price bracket is up around two per cent compared to this time last year, which is the first time since 2018 that there’s been an annual jump, meaning there’s a little bit more choice for this group of buyers. However, given the surge in demand it’s still likely they’ll find themselves up against a lot of competition when they’re putting in offers.”

Meanwhile Arlington Residential estate agency in London - active mostly in the St John’s Wood area of the capital - has sold Kilgarron House, the former residence of author Frederick Forsyth.

The writer lived there in the 1980s, around the time he wrote The Day of The Jackal and The Odessa File.

The sale of this neo-Georgian double fronted detached family house, which achieved close to the asking price of £6m, comes at the end of a six week period which has seen Arlington Residential complete on in excess of £70m worth of sales in north west London.

“Over 85 per cent of these recent sales received offers from more than two buyers and over a third of those sales went to ‘best bids’. The current market sentiment is very much one whereby buyers know not to hesitate if they see a property they like” explains Marc Schneiderman, Arlington Residential’s director.

His company’s other sales in this period include a classical house in Regent’s Park, a detached family house in Hampstead and a 12th floor penthouse apartment in Swiss Cottage.