However not all of the well off are celebrating either. Tony Pidgley Jnr is the son of the volume house builder the Berkeley Group owner Tony Pidgley and even he is finding it extremely difficult to sell his equestrian abode. The home in question is the palatial Barton Lodge situated in Winkfield near Windsor. In 2007 the property was on the market for an astonishing £18million. The huge asking price for the house includes extensive grounds for playing polo but the house did not sell. A couple of years later the asking price had dropped to £10million, still with the extensive polo grounds included in the sale. However the elusive buyer for the house was still non-existent. Savills are now marketing the property but the price tag of £7.5million just includes the 25 acres with the Georgian house rather than the polo grounds as well. Perhaps the seller may have some luck third time around.
Many people are witnessing a drop in their propertys price due to the economic gloom surrounding us and the talk of a double-dip recession. During the last downturn many felt that homes in the higher price bracket were relatively safe from the drop but not all. Take one house in Dublin sold in 2005 for £50million which is not back on the market today for an eye watering £15million, a £35million property price drop in just 6 years.
However it is not just the millionaire home owners who are feeling the pinch when it comes to their propertys price. Winkworths believes that there will only be 575,000 house sales completed this year. This compares with Land Registry figures of 1.6million total residential transactions in 2006 and the 880,000 last year. So with both ends of the property scale looking jittery the only place where there seems to be active selling is in the auction rooms. Many in the business believe that the activity in the auction room is only going to get busier as repossessions climb in the coming months. Low interest rates have kept repossessions at around 60,000 a year but once these begin to rise, which they will have to soon, then many people will find that they cannot keep up with their repayments.
Fiona Davies is a director at The Property Fairy.
She has worked in the land and property sector for the last ten years.
All articles on the website are written uniquely by her.
This article is copyright free.