The UK's first 'million pound towns' outside of London

Two towns have an average house price of more than £1million

Cobham in Surrey (Wikimedia)

For the first time the average price of a house has reached over £1million in towns outside of London.

The ‘million pound towns’ have been disclosed by researchers at Lloyds Bank who name Virginia Water, Cobham and Beaconsfield as Britain’s most expensive towns.

The most expensive on the list is Virginia Water in Surrey, in the borough of Runnymede close to where the Magna Carta was signed in 1215. The average house price in the area is £1,168,992.

In second place is another Surrey town: Cobham, where the average house price is £1,042,552.

Thirdly is Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire where the average price of a property is £1,003,367.

The combined number of sales in these three towns in 2015 was higher than combined sales of all towns in the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber, East Midlands and Wales.

However, these towns seem to be exempt from current trends as, according to the research, the number of property sales worth at least £1million has fallen in the first half of this year— the first such decline since 2012. The same is true for London, where the decline of £1million houses hasn’t occurred since 2009.

However, London sales of these properties continue to make up 66 per cent of all million pound house sales in the UK, with the majority in the boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster.

Sarah Deaves, Private Banking Director at Lloyds Bank said: “The number of homes sold for over £1million has fallen sharply over the past year, with a pronounced slowdown in the prime and Central London market.”

“However, the regional picture is much more mixed and we’re seeing the emergence of towns where the average price is at least £1millin. Whilst there are several London neighbourhoods where prices are already at this elevated level, outside of the capital this is a first.”

Ms Deaves suggested the national decline of £1million houses could be due to the Stamp Duty rates which were introduced last year or the “uncertainty generated by the general election in May.”