Grim up north? Just 40 of the 16,000 £1m+ UK homes are in Lancashire

As per data analysed by Property Solvers, just 20 homes in Lancaster sold for £1m or more, as well as eight homes in Preston, seven in Blackpool, and five in Blackburn, taking the total value of such purchases to £51,961,310 – a drop in the ocean of the UK total of £27,489,137,202.

Focusing on sales between September 2021 to September 2022, the research uses HM Land Registry sold house price statistics and shows a sharp decrease from the 2020/21 year when 78 such properties were sold for a combined total of £104,828,025 – a 51% decrease.

Unsurprisingly, top of the list of areas with the most £1m+ sales was South West London, where 2,280 such homes were sold for a whopping total of £4,598,608,023. The top-placed location outside of London was Guildford, where 627 such homes were sold for a total of £1,062,265,025, while the top-placed location outside of the South of England was Edinburgh with 259 homes totalling £370,175,395.

“Such a pronounced drop would suggest that buyer appetite for these types of homes is decreasing,” said Property Solvers co-founder Ruban Selvanayagam. “Million-plus-pound properties, even for the wealthy, are major commitment and indeed affected by the wider economy. “With continued inflationary pressures and rising interest rates as a result, it would not be too much of a surprise to see a continued cooling off across the high-end property market in the coming year at least.”