Last year, more than 22,000 houses were listed for sale in the Home Counties for more than £1million. But has living there lost its lustre? And what luxury bargains could you now snap up?
One of the earliest references appears in 1695 when Charles Davenant – the Tory politician and economist – wrote of the ‘Eleven Home Counties, which are thought in Land Taxes to pay more than their proportion’.
At the turn of the century, and right up until the 1960s, there was something of a cachet to living in the Home Counties – just as in London where the moneyed classes confined themselves to Mayfair, Belgravia and, at a pinch, the smarter parts of Kensington. The trend continued in 2023, when more than 80,000 Londoners purchased an out-of-town house. Some 78 per cent left the capital permanently in the belief that the grass was greener – ignoring the infamous jibe from Edouard Manet, the French modernist painter, that ‘the country has charms only for those not obliged to stay there’.
This week the international banking group, Investec, found that properties valued at more than £1million in the Home Counties fell by nearly 10 per cent last year – with an average buyer now saving more than £150,000. Other factors come into play. There’s the exorbitant cost of commuting into London by train, combined with routine rail cancellations and little advance warning.
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