8 December 19, 2021The Sunday TimesHome
S
ales of Monopoly
soared during
the lockdowns,
presumably fuelled
by people who were
stuck at home and had finished
everything on Netflix. Yet the
locations on the original UK
version of the board game seem
woefully out of date. The most
prestigious addresses, Mayfair
and Park Lane, no longer seem
so desirable — they’re full of
mostly empty flats owned by
overseas buyers, and those
markets flatlined during the
pandemic as foreign
squillionaires stopped travelling.
So what would Monopoly look
like if the game were based on
today’s property market? Home
teamed up with the Savillsresearch team to reimagine the
board. The results reflect the
pandemic-era flight from cities
to the coast and country. So the
new Mayfair is St Mawes, an
exclusive fishing village on the
Roseland peninsula in Cornwall
where the average sold price
between August 2020 and 2021
was £1,057,353.
The new Park Lane is
Walberswick, a genteel village
outside Southwold on the
Suffolk coast (average price
£967,223). The next most
expensive addresses on the
Monopoly board, Bond Street,
Oxford Street and Regent Street,
have been replaced by the
affluent Devon yachtie resort
Salcombe (£844,838), the smart
Cotswold town of Burfordmore p
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The latFROM MAYFA
After homebuyers flocked to the countryside during the pandemic, Hugh Gra
St Mawes
(CORNWALL)
£1,057,353Walberswick
(SUFFOLK)
£967,223Skegness
(LINCOLNSHIRE)
£181,030
Porthmadog
(GWYNEDD)
£196,280
(£730,460) and Brockenhurst,
a pretty, pony-filled New Forest
village (£712,137).
At the low end, the bargain-
basement properties of Old Kent
Road have been replaced by
rough diamond Skegness in
Lincolnshire. The average sold
price was £181,030 — but a
£24.5 million regeneration
programme should bolster its
fortunes. And cheap-as-chips
Whitechapel Road has been
swapped for the harbour town
of Porthmadog in north Wales
(£196,280), where players would
make a fortune in hotel rents —
it’s the tourist gateway to
Snowdonia, the Llyn peninsula
and Portmeirion.
It’s a topsy-turvy world when
Cornwall trumps Mayfair in theglamour stakes, but St Mawes
deserves the crown, says Chris
Clifford, a director of Savills’
Truro office. “It has old-school
charm, like the Hamptons in
America. As you drive along the
Roseland peninsula you feel as if
you are going back in time. It’s
an area of outstanding natural
beauty, so it will never get built
up, and has the best sailing you
could ask for. But the St Mawes
set is different from the Rock set.
There’s a similar level of wealth,
but Rock is a little more flashy.
Homes in St Mawes are passed
on from one generation to the
next. Supply is low.”
Walberswick, the new Park
Lane, is refreshingly bling-free
too, says Peter Ogilvie, a director
of Savills in Ipswich. “It feelsMelrose is next
Tweed, and is at
of the Eildon HilWalberswick, in Suffolk, is ‘more
private, understated and
exclusive than Southwold’thwold
’‘Inappropriate
posting on village
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VAM STOCK/CHRIS STRICKLAND/MR STANDFAST/IAN FRANCIS/MICHAEL FOLEY/ALAMY; VICTOR HUANG/MOONSTONE IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES; TESLA/AP