The Sunday Times - UK (2022-02-13

Dartford, where Daniel now

runs the Coaching Catalysts,

a coaching firm for

professional women.

The largest sacrifice

was holidays: the

couple decided to

only take day trips

in the UK

Aidan Murphy skipped the

starter flat and bought a

three-bedroom house with

his girlfriend at the age of 21.

Since graduating from

university last year, the

couple scrimped together

the £25,000 deposit by

Rebecca Daniel

and her boyfriend

saved £55,000

in two years to

buy a £300,000

semi in Dartford

moving back in with their

parents. In December they

paid £180,000 for their

first house in Caerphilly,

south Wales.

Murphy, who works in

social media for Liberty

Marketing in Cardiff, puts

their success down to clever

saving tactics. They each

put £4,000 in a lifetime Isa,

where the government adds

25 per cent to annual

savings as long as the

money goes towards a first

home or a pension. They

also invested through a

stocks and shares Isa with

Hargreaves Lansdown

and followed advice they

found on forums online. “Our

funds went up 25 per cent in

the first year — 24 times the

amount we would have had if

we had opened a savings

account.”

Murphy did skip some

takeaways and nights at the

pub, but he didn’t

dramatically cut back on his

expenditure. “You still want

to enjoy life, so it’s pointless

cutting down on things that

you need and use, and that

you enjoy, such as Netflix.

However, there are bigger

things you don’t need that

you can cut down on.” The

largest sacrifice for Murphy

was holidays; when borders

reopened, the couple decided

to only take day trips in the UK

to save on hotel and travel

costs.

Lockdown really

turbocharged our

savings

George Christou, 31, and

Dan Nicholls, 30, clubbed

together to buy their dream

home. The couple met two

years ago and moved into a

rented one-bedroom flat in

Hemel Hempstead in

Hertfordshire during

lockdown. Their savings pot

grew to £45,000 between

them — with no help from

friends or family. They

bought a new-build two-

bedroom, two-bathroom

flat with a balcony for

£330,000 in January 2021

at the Gade, a scheme by

housebuilder Hill.

They moved in in July last

year. Christou says: “My tip

is don’t rush to finish

everything immediately.

You feel like you need to

decorate everything and

buy your furniture right

away. Just accept that it will

take time. Focus more on

saving up to pay for the

deposit and getting into the

house earlier.”

Melissa York

NORTH YORKSHIRE

£1.1M

The Admiral’s

House dates from

1720, but has

some modern

touches, including

a new biomass

boiler. Most of the

nine bedrooms

face south,

overlooking a

Yorkstone terrace.

savills.com

BIRMINGHAM

£1.16M

In the suburb of

Edgbaston, this

nine-bedroom

home has some

quirky features,

including a

cylindrical drinks

room and an

Anderson shelter

in the garden.

knightfrank.co.uk

NOTTINGHAM

£1.25M

Live in splendid

isolation in the

Grange, a five-

bedroom house

30 minutes’

drive from

Newark-on-Trent.

There are beams

throughout and

the kitchen has a

bottle-green Aga.

savills.com

country house sales in Savills’

Edinburgh office, says: “My

first sale at £1 million was the

home of Anita Roddick,

founder of the Body Shop, to

Billy Connolly for £1 million in

the mid-1990s. I resold the

home for Billy in 2014 for over

£2 million.” Scotland now has

9,820 property millionaires,

the equivalent of 1 in 270

homes — an increase of 31 per

cent in the past year.

According to Halifax, by

2021 there were 6,926 sales

over £1 million in London

recorded at Land

Registry; 4,366 in the

South East of

England; 1,635 in

the East; 1,045 in

the South West;

and between

200 and 400

elsewhere —

apart from Wales

(49) and the North

East (47).

Melissa Lines, senior

branch manager with the

property consultancy George

F White, sold her first £1

million home in 2017; it was a

five-bedroom detached stone

house in a village just outside

Darlington, Co Durham. The

next didn’t come until 2019,

but more might be on the way.

“I’ve never seen as many

southern buyers as I have

recently,” Lines says. “We are

starting to see people moving

up with the Treasury.” The

exchequer plans to relocate

staff to Darlington in a move

that could reshape the local

property market. “Properties

in the city have a ceiling of

about £800,000. Until

recently people hadn’t really

heard of Darlington but now it

is becoming more popular.”

The Treasury relocators will

find that their £1 million will

stretch a lot further the further

north they venture. While

£1 million will buy a 1,389 sq ft

flat in London, it will buy a

palatial 3,601 sq ft house in the

countryside in the North East,

or a 2,799 sq ft detached

family house with garden in

Wales, according to Savills.

The chancellor will also be

counting the £43,750 collected

in stamp duty on each million-

pound sale.

the first £1 million property

was sold in the UK. The

earliest record-breaking deals

were in the mid-1970s. Knight

Frank’s first notable £1 million

sale was of Fountains Abbey in

Yorkshire in 1974. Simon

Agace, chairman of

Winkworth estate agency, says

his first £1 million deal was in

1976 — an entire block of flats:

Ivor Court in Gloucester Place,

Marylebone, central London.

Agace’s colleague Simon

Mautner, chairman of

Winkworth’s St John’s

Wood office, sold the

first £1 million house

for his agency in

late 1984 on the

Bishops Avenue,

Hampstead,

north London,

now nicknamed

“Billionaires’

Row”.

According to

Anthony Payne,

managing director at LonRes,

a London property data

analyst, there were 29 sales of

homes with asking prices of

£1 million or more in the

capital in 1987. The highest

deal recorded that year was

the sale of a house in Mayfair

for £9 million. In 1992 the

priciest house to hit the

market was again in the

Bishops Avenue: £12.5 million.

Then in 1993 there were sales

at 3a Palace Green, close to

Kensington Palace, for

between £1 million and

£5.5 million. This month

the penthouse at 3a

Palace Green went on

the rental market for

£11,000 a week.

In 2015 The Times

reported on the first sale

of a £1 million former

council flat. The 700 sq ft

home in South Kensington

was put on the market for £1.15

million after being bought by a

developer in 2013 for

£660,000. A year later The

Sunday Times reported that

Arthur Scargill, the former

leader of the National Union of

Mineworkers, was to be

investigated after he bought a

£2 million Barbican council

flat for a discounted price of

£1.05 million in 2014.

Jamie Macnab, director of

The Sunday Times February 13, 2022 7

LONDON SE22

£1.075M

A 1,560 sq ft

property with four

bedrooms, bay

windows, and an

impressive open-

plan kitchen with

doors opening on

to the garden.

North Dulwich

station is a mile

away for trains to

London Bridge.

knightfrank.co.uk

1 IN 11

homes in

London worth

£1m+

100,118

property

millionaires

created outside

London in

2021

689,168

UK homes

worth £1m+