How do people end up living in a £1 million house?

[shortsaint]

As I do my nightly peruse (daydreaming) on Rightmove (most expensive first) I am wondering how people end up living in a million plus property?

I do not live in the south east or Home Counties, just an ordinary Midlands town. I consider myself fortunate as we come to the last couple of years of the mortgage. We probably have the lowest value house of my friends, with an above average joint income, 2 kids, both work f/t. We have had 2 houses in 20 odd years so haven't followed the property ladder, had no inheritances or windfalls. Is that what it is?

Bought in SE England commuter belt in 1999 for £355k with a big mortgage.Both working full time.
Did about £150k worth of improvements over the years.
Paid off mortgage about 4 years ago.
Now worth £1.2 - £1.3m.

I'm looking at one bed flats that cost almost a million! Central London.

Laughs at notions of a McMansion.

For me it is a combination of an early loaned deposit, property inflation, having a high salary and now an inheritance to take me up to my dream property.

Still slightly undecided about moving tbh. My current home is lovely and continuing to live her will give me different options (early retirement!)

I live in the NE. A friend of mine lives down south and has just bought a £1.2M house. It's a 4 bed detached late 20th century house. Nice, but round here similar houses cost less than half the price. The main difference is that house prices in the NE have only recently started increasing after ~10 years of stagnation. I'd rather be here and view my house as a home rather than an investment. And have young people able to afford a house, you can get 2 bed period properties in a nice area for £100k.

Omg @whattodo2019 your final sentence!

SO bloody patronising and so very southern in attitude! Yes we both have degrees and now I work in a RG Uni - there's uncalled-for arrogance in RG unis I believe. DH is a teacher. Serving our communities, you know. No bloody city / financial stuff here.

There's a lot of stealth bragging going on. I do not think living in a £1m is to be admired. I more think it's bloody outrageous. Fake money. Where will your kids live?

@shortsaint my DH's family friend who owned a £1 million house sold her house so 2 of her children could get deposits on their own homes. Which is why older people want house prices to increase so that they can help their children. Its a bit self defeating really.

I don't really see it as surprising that an average house in London is £1 million. Its the same for all other global cities/financial centres so why not london. What is perhaps surprising is the discrepancy between London/commuter belt and the rest of the country. London is one of the very few regions in the UK which is a net contributor to tax revenues. the taxes of 9 million people plus the companies can't support a country of 67 million people!

£1M in London is a uninspiring 3 bed in an average part of London, few miles away from the center (zone 5 onward). Most may claim their hardwork and investment flair over the last 20 years are behind the paper value of their house, but ultimately, price went x10 since the 90s in most area of London. Turning point was around 2015-2016 where inflation in housing price came to a halt (expedition made of the last 12 month and the Covid induced situation). Anything purchased before would have increase their owner’s wealth often much more than their job. This is why you may see on RM 2m houses with dated interior and cheap kitchen/bathrooms. As the downward interest rate 40 year cycle comes to an end, it is likely that assets and housing in particular will not offer the same return. Salary alone can hardly justify the current valuation so your question is relevant and partly beg the question, will the gap ever close between the asset owner and the younger generation.

There’s really no secret to it. Some people have access to more money than others. It comes from family, salaries, investments (including property) or random luck. As it’s always been and always will.

DH and I did not grow up with money but we both earn good salaries now and we have both accrued a variety of bonus/retention incentives that vest over a period of years. He is in banking and I am in sales. We did pretty well with London house price increases over two moves and then my DH’s company went public and we got a large windfall. We bought our current house for £1.7m and we are spending about £150K on renovations. In the next 2-3 years we plan to either put in a basement or buy a second property in the countryside.

Live in London and my grandmother lives in a million pound house. She just brought it in 1960 (for peanuts!) and then a formally quite rubbish area got gentrified.

For most people it was timing for when they bought. It's a very different market in the last few years in terms of building equity.

Most may claim their hardwork and investment flair over the last 20 years are behind the paper value of their house, but ultimately, price went x10 since the 90s in most area of London. Turning point was around 2015-2016 where inflation in housing price came to a halt (expedition made of the last 12 month and the Covid induced situation). Anything purchased before would have increase their owner’s wealth often much more than their job. This is why you may see on RM 2m houses with dated interior and cheap kitchen/bathrooms. As the downward interest rate 40 year cycle comes to an end, it is likely that assets and housing in particular will not offer the same return. Salary alone can hardly justify the current valuation so your question is relevant and partly beg the question, will the gap ever close between the asset owner and the younger generation.

Agree & younger generations have suffered wage stagnation while assets have increased.

Ever increasing house prices are not a good thing & I say this as a homeowner.

find it fascinating how many people think their house price rises are a result of their own cleverness rather than mostly luck.

If you wear old enough to buy in London in the 90s I actually don't see how you wouldn't have made a huge profit.

exactly. huge numbers of people have made more money than they've ever earned simply by buying a house in London before 2000. earlier the better. it's quite hard not to spend 1 million on a house in London anywhere inside zone 3.

Property rising in value over time.
Upgrading house and selling for good profit then reinvesting in more expensive property. Do that several times and you end up in an expensive house.
Inherit money and get more expensive house.
2 people have average houses but get together and sell both and reinvest in more expensive property.

If house prices continue to rise as they have/are, ours will be worth over a million. We however, do not currently have a house worth a million. As we moved to our current area prices increased a huge amount, and that has helped.

We're pretty confident we'd get seven figures for our home right now if we were selling.

• We managed to buy a small terrace in an untrendy London area with a combo of a redundancy payoff and some money inherited by my DM which she chose to gift on.
• Area became massively trendy while we lived there and we sold for way more than we paid for it.
• Found an unloved house with potential further out and spent a lot of money renovating and extending it.
• two good salaries, which we've kept increasing.

We bought our first house 11 years ago.

There's a lot of stealth bragging going on. I do not think living in a £1m is to be admired. I more think it's bloody outrageous. Fake money. Where will your kids live?
What did you expect when you asked the question? You asked people to tell you and they did and then you accuse them of bragging - really? I expect my kids to live wherever they please - not necessarily near us because we will be moving - we live in our £1million+ house because the schools are good and the commute to London isn't too bad - but now the commute to London is not required so frequently and the dcs are done with school, it's likely we'll sell up and buy somewhere cheaper, warmer or more interesting, we're lucky to have options - the dcs might choose to join with us but I expect they'll have their own plans. We didn't get help from our parents or inherit money, it was paid for out of our salaries, we just bought accommodation to suit our needs same as you, two properties in 20 years - a flat and then I got pregnant, so we bought a house - in the South East - the only place dh could get a job, I'd have preferred somewhere more northern but you go where the jobs are.

We bought in a London suburb 8 years ago, value has increased from £270 to £550 in that time. Considering selling it and going north to live a carefree life...

DH bought in London, rough area, 30 years ago... we met, he sold, and we've climbed the ladder a couple of times - only buying properties that needed work and doing them up ourselves.

We bought in a great area where prices have gone up hugely in the last 10 yrs. bought for £585K and current place is worth £1.1m.

@shortsaint

Omg *@whattodo2019* your final sentence!

SO bloody patronising and so very southern in attitude! Yes we both have degrees and now I work in a RG Uni - there's uncalled-for arrogance in RG unis I believe. DH is a teacher. Serving our communities, you know. No bloody city / financial stuff here.

There's a lot of stealth bragging going on. I do not think living in a £1m is to be admired. I more think it's bloody outrageous. Fake money. Where will your kids live?

Op. You asked the question and said you dreamed of living in one, now you’re lashing out, saying it’s not to be admired and posters are bragging. They aren’t they are answering the question you asked.

@JurgensCakeBabyJesus

My grandparents sold an ordinary 3 bed ex council house in London in the sixties to move out to the suburbs which was the dream in working class areas at the time, that house now would be worth well in excess of a million of they'd just stayed there like some of their contemporaries have

This is crazy isn't it? My parents couldn't afford to sell up in London and move to the suburbs. In the 80s it really wasn't desirable to live in London. That same house is now worth 750k.

Earned lots of money 🤷‍♀️

@mewkins my dad's colleagues thought he was mad to buy in London in the 80s, they all lived in the home counties. My parents house was about 60k, they now sell for approx 1.8m

Only I think that cycle is happening again perhaps. My area of SW London has really seen much price change in the last 5 yrs

There's a lot of stealth bragging going on. I do not think living in a £1m is to be admired. I more think it's bloody outrageous. Fake money. Where will your kids live?

Where are we supposed to live in our communities if not in one of these ‘fake money’ properties?