More than 100,000 home owners have become new property millionaires during the past decade, although numbers slipped due to the credit crisis, claims new research.
 
Postcodes in London and the home counties occupy the top 10 places As many as 132,000 homes are worth more than £1 million, concentrated mostly in London and up from almost 27,000 that existed at the turn of the Millennium.

But the figure would have been higher had it not been for the housing slump during the credit crisis which resulted in 43,000 homes losing their millionaire status.

Almost 80 per cent of the million pound homes are in London, with the capital’s “SW” postcode claiming nearly three in ten of the nation’s millionaire properties.

Postcodes in London and the home counties – including towns such as Guildford, Kingston upon Thames and Hemel Hempstead – occupy the top 10 places, according to the research carried out by Santander. London’s “SE” postcode area has showed a 23-fold increase in its number of property millionaires in the past decade.

Phil Cliff, director of Mortgages at Santander, said: “For many of us our ‘home is our castle’ and in recent years we’ve often viewed our home as a key investment too.

Melanie Bien, director of mortgage broker Private Finance, said: “Homes costing more than £1m are much more resilient to price falls than the mainstream housing market. Despite volatility in the housing market over the past decade, there has been a significant increase in the number of property millionaires. This also underlines why housing is so emotive, with so many people having significant wealth tied up in their homes.”

Separate research by personal finance researchers Defaqto suggested the number of fixed rate and tracker mortgages is now higher than before the credit crisis. However, the figures do not include subprime mortgages which were hugely popular during the property boom leading up to the economic downturn.

It said there are 33 per cent more fixed rate mortgages and 36 per cent more tracker deals compared with three years ago.