The ultra-wealthy owners of homes on Britain’s most expensive street have each typically seen more than £4m wiped off the value of their property in the space of 14 months, according to new research that suggests post-Brexit uncertainty has cost them dear.
Despite losing some of its lustre over the last year or so, Kensington Palace Gardens in west London managed to hold on to the top spot on the property website Zoopla’s list of the most expensive streets in Britain, with an average property value of £38.3m. This compares with a figure of £42.6m recorded in July 2015.
Kensington Palace Gardens is home to some of Britain’s wealthiest homeowners, reported to include Roman Abramovich, the Formula One heiress Tamara Ecclestone and the Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal.
Zoopla also said that with property prices overall continuing to rise since the start of the year, 40,000 new “property millionaires” had been created since January, taking the total to 660,924.
It said the number of streets in Britain where the average property value is over £1m currently stands at 12,418, compared with 10,958 in July 2015. One in eight London homeowners was now a bricks and mortar millionaire, it added.
Outside London, south-east England dominates when it comes to the number of streets with an average property value of £1m-plus. Guildford and Reading come in first and second place with 184 and 162 streets respectively.
Kensington Palace Gardens is not the only prestigious address that has seen sizeable price falls. On third-placed Grosvenor Crescent in Belgravia, a short walk from Buckingham Palace, typical values have fallen from £22.8m in July 2015 to £21.6m, and from £19.6m to £19m in fourth-placed Courtenay Avenue in Highgate, north London. Other roads in the top 10 “rich list” to see prices fall include Ilchester Place and Cottesmore Gardens, both in Kensington, west London.
Lawrence Hall, a spokesman for Zoopla, said: “While Kensington Palace Gardens continues to hold the top spot in the rich list, it’s interesting to see some property values in the most expensive neighbourhoods decreasing over the past 12 months.”
Earlier this month, the estate agent Savills said the “prime” central London markets – those where a typical property costs several million pounds – had been hit hard by “post-referendum uncertainty” and changes to stamp duty, including April’s 3% surcharge affecting landlords and second-home buyers.
It predicted that prices in these areas were expected to end this year down 9%, equating to a £360,000 drop in value for a £4m property in 2016.
