The average price of a detached family home in London has passed the £1 million mark for the first time, figures reveal today.
Huge demand for the grander cousin of the classic “semi” combined with the tiny number being built — only 300 over the past year — has pushed prices higher, particularly in the outer suburbs.
The average price has gone up seven per cent to £1.03 million across London in the past year and has doubled since 2003, according to analysis of Land Registry data by agents Hamptons International.
London has always had fewer detached homes than the rest of the country because of pressure on land, but property experts said they are now becoming an “endangered species”.
The cheapest on sale in the capital is a £415,000 three-bedroom house in Plumstead in south-east London, the Rightmove website says. The most expensive is a £40 million seven-bedroom mansion in St John’s Wood.
A classic of the genre, which served as the childhood home of the character Hermione Granger in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 1, recently went on sale in Hampstead Garden Suburb for £2.4 million.
Fionnuala Earley, residential research director at Hamptons, said: “Detached family homes are fast becoming an endangered species in London. Today they account for less than five per cent of the capital’s housing stock — a fifth less than 20 years ago.
“The hotspots for these homes are in leafy south-west and north London, But even there numbers are being squeezed by both the amount that have been converted into flats and the tiny numbers of detached houses built to replace them, less than two per cent of all new homes.
“This trend shouldn’t be so surprising given that both the cost and availability of land in London has led to building at higher densities, making detached homes less attractive to build.”
The £1 million average was hit as long ago as 1996 in Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster and reached Camden, Islington and Hammersmith and Fulham in the early Noughties.
However, seven figures for a detached home is now also the norm in some suburban areas, including Enfield and Kingston upon Thames.
Detached homes have always been in relatively short supply in London compared with the rest of the country. In the East Midlands they make up almost a third of all homes.