Creative ways to live with an ex-partner — if you can’t afford to move out

By Zoe Dare Hall

Colour-coding stairways and separate wings: rising living costs are trapping divorcees under one roof

Sara*, a company director from east London, is relieved to be able to make her next property move thanks to the Bank of Mum and Dad — or just mum, in her case. Sara is no twentysomething trying to get her first foot on the ladder. She’s a 45-year-old in the throes of divorce. And her mother, aged 77, is providing the finance that will enable her to keep her three-bedroom terraced house where she lives with her two children.

“My mum has been helping me with legal costs, keeping up with mortgage payments, a bit of extra money for the kids. She downsized recently and has given me access to about £350,000 so that I can buy out my ex-husband,” Sara explains.

She is far from alone in needing elderly parents to help to fund her divorce. Since no-fault divorces were introduced in England and Wales last April, removing the need for separating couples to play the blame game or stay together for two years until they can start divorce proceedings, 2023 is set to herald a 23 per cent spike in the divorce rate — the biggest rise in more than 50 years, the global professional services company PwC predicts.

But in a climate of rising living costs, the emotions involved in moving on may pale in comparison with the financial reality of starting again as a single person. More than a third of couples considering divorce will stay together due to the cost of living crisis, according to research by the law firm Stowe Family Law. Meanwhile, a recent survey by the property portal Zoopla found that 34 per cent of couples who co-own a home with their partner and then split up are forced to continue to live together for 1.3 years on average because they can’t afford their own property.

Selling the family home, however, is rarely the most cost-efficient strategy, says Kate Daly, co-founder of Amicable, a divorce advisory service. “It means selling costs and two lots of buying costs. I’m seeing lots of cases of the Bank of Mum and Dad where the parents are in their eighties and their children are in their fifties, [and the former are] stepping in to allow their children to stay in the property.”

Other separating couples are finding innovative ways of dividing their property to accommodate two lifestyles. Laura Mortimer, a family lawyer at BP Collins Solicitors, mentions a client in her sixties who still lives with her ex — and his long-term partner — in separate areas of the house.

Unable to sell their high-end listed Buckinghamshire property for a price that works for them — “both parties are retired, it’s their sole asset and there’s no other sensible option that isn’t financially punitive to both of them,” Mortimer explains — they have redrawn the floorplan. “We worked out which rooms, staircases and entrances each party would solely use and colour-coded them to help them avoid crossing paths with each other and any guests or new partners,” Mortimer says.

“They don’t see it as a permanent solution but my client feels an obligation to her adult children to preserve as much of the marital wealth as they can pass on to the next generation,” she adds. “They’ve had to agree on a range of practicalities, including their contributions to the bills, and promise each other not to go into the other person’s ‘section’ of the house when they are not in.”

Anto Clay of the search agent Stacks Property Search, in Monmouthshire, thinks that tricky as such arrangements are, they will become more common in a climate of rising selling, buying and living costs. He mentions examples of divorcing couples trying to share the family home. “One couple split the home so that they each had a bedroom, bathroom and living space, but they continued to share a kitchen and would all eat together when the children were at home. They continued with the set-up for decades after they divorced.”

Some divorcing couples agree to delay the sale of the property until, say, the children leave home — an arrangement known as a Mesher order. “We’re seeing more of this as people can’t afford to buy out their ex-partner and they are scared to remortgage in case the renewal rate is higher. Unless they are in a desperate or crisis situation, people are trying to sit still,” Daly says.

Others find the answer lies in nesting, where the children stay in the family home and the parents take it in turns to live there. Angela Rayner, deputy leader of the Labour Party, revealed recently that her husband, whom she is divorcing, lives in their Manchester home with their sons while she is in London and she takes his place from Thursdays to Sundays.

Nesting comes with its complexities and the high costs of maintaining multiple homes. It calls for tolerant new partners too. But it worked for Toby Hazlewood, a 47-year-old cyber security project manager, when he and his ex-wife separated in 2006, when their daughters were aged six and three.

For the first decade each parent rented a home in Sale, Greater Manchester — Hazlewood’s rent was £750 a month — where they would each live with the girls every other week. Their flats sat empty on alternate weeks when they returned to their new spouses and family lives.

“We decided to explore nesting as a way of cutting costs and to ease the constant moving back and forth for our daughters,” Hazlewood says. “It seemed logical to have one home with a spare room for the ‘parent of the week’, and each of us would move in and out for alternate weeks.”

The ex-couple rented a three-bedroom flat that they would each use, and split the bills. “It required a lot of compromise but it worked because it put the kids’ needs to the fore and it helped us to cut our costs too, by about £500 a month between us, which eased the pressure for each of us in our lives away from the kids,” Hazlewood adds.

No level of wealth, of course, is immune to the upheaval of divorce. While Blackpool, where the average house price is £143,000, has the highest rate of divorce (43 per cent) in the country — according to research by Savills estate agency — Craig Fuller, a buying agent at Stacks Property Search in the Cotswolds, says 40 per cent of the high-end country houses he deals with that are coming on to the market are due to divorce. “Some of them have had a huge amount of money spent on them to make them ‘for ever homes’,” he says. “Property transactions with vendors who are going their separate ways can be tricky as there is often some disagreement on price and/or timing and buyers need to tread carefully.”

The super-rich, though, have their distinct ways of handling matters. Camilla Dell, managing partner at the buying agency Black Brick, found herself looking for £50 million houses for one divorcing wife, then preparing her for court “so she understood the property market and running costs better and was prepared for cross-examination,” Dell says.

Jo Eccles, founder of Eccord, a prime London buying agency, deals with the kind of divorcees who are looking for rental properties in Belgravia with space for their children, nannies and a chef. “Space for staff is something that high-net-worth divorcees aren’t willing to relinquish as their support network becomes even more precious and they want to keep things as normal as possible for the children,” she says.

Eccles adds that another of her clients, who won joint custody of his four children, wanted a family home within easy reach “by Tube, foot or chauffeur” of their four schools and good access to Farnborough airport — which has a private terminal — in Hampshire for himself. She says: “We rented a beautiful house in Kensington for him for £50,000 a month.”

The new house price hotspots favoured by high earners

By Jayne Dowle

Wealth drivers — people with executive jobs — have long influenced house price growth. Now we reveal where they’re moving to next

If you want to follow the money, head to Dartford in Kent, Waltham Forest on the Essex borders, Trafford in Greater Manchester or Rushcliffe near Nottingham.

While gilt-edged London boroughs such as Kensington and Chelsea and Richmond upon Thames still attract the seriously wealthy, research from Savills finds some unlikely England and Wales hotspots where high-earners are making a huge impact on house prices.

Pulling together information from the 2021 national census and Land Registry house prices over the past ten years, the estate agency has focused on how an influx of “wealth drivers” (identified as managers, directors and senior officials, plus those in professional occupations) correlates to house price gains.

“Why did we do it? Because it’s a once in a decade opportunity to get your hands on this data,” says Lucian Cook, the report author and head of residential research for the estate agency. “The census is a really useful snapshot of household income. We’re already aware of some of the trends, but connecting the data with sold house prices allows you to investigate. It really tells us about the housing market and people’s life choices.”

Posh

Four London locations — the City of London, with 65 per cent of residents classed as high-earning, paying an average of £828,113 for a home; Richmond upon Thames (55 per cent, £976,160); Kensington and Chelsea (54 per cent, £2,409,454); and Westminster (53 per cent, £1,746,404) — top the locations with the largest concentration of wealthy residents. No surprises there then.

“These certainly are gilt-edged, although for different reasons,” says Guy Meacock, director of the buying agency Prime Purchase. “Kensington and Chelsea is London’s most cast-iron borough with a consistent density of high-income households and no weak spots; people will pay £50 million for one of the biggest houses on Upper Phillimore Gardens. It has enduring domestic appeal, although plenty of Americans are also interested.

“Westminster covers a wider cross-section of demographic and household income but includes top-end Belgravia and Mayfair — attractive to Middle Eastern buyers and ‘new money’.”

Meacock adds that the City of London is experiencing growth thanks to recent office-to-residential conversions creating handy pied-à-terres, and Richmond is a classic family favourite between town and countryside.

However, snapping at their well-shod heels is the city of Cambridge, fifth on the matrix of high-earners and high prices. As in Westminster, 53 per cent of homeowners in Cambridge are in the high-income bracket, but the average house price, at £557,714, is less than a third of that in the London borough — for now.

“In about the last four years we have seen a marked increase in buyers looking for houses in higher price ranges,” says Richard Freshwater, director of residential at the east of England estate agents Cheffins. “We have had a huge amount of people coming out of London — a lot attracted by the schooling and the fact that they can cycle to the station [the average rail journey time from Cambridge to London King’s Cross is an hour and 16 minutes]. However, it coincides with a massive change in the labour market. Increasingly, they are not having to go to their place of work every day.”

Getting posher

“When it comes to the rising ones in London, I could probably have told you without the data,” Cook says. “Less immediately obvious, boroughs such as Waltham Forest and Greenwich have seen quite significant increases, and so have Dartford, Bexley and Newham. London house prices are such that if people want to meet requirements for space, they will be pushed into areas they wouldn’t have previously considered buying in.”

Camilla Dell, managing partner at the buying agency Black Brick, says that a significant factor is lack of supply in better-established — but still, to some, outlying — family-oriented areas, such as Dulwich and Wimbledon. “The £2 million-plus market in Dulwich suffers from severely restricted supply, with many people staying for 20 to 30-year periods without moving,” she says.

However, it’s the Greater Manchester borough of Trafford — home to fancy, family-friendly Altrincham, Hale, Hale Barns and Bowdon — that tops Cook’s “Posh and Getting Posher” category, bringing together high-earners and impressive growth; 44 per cent here are top-flight professionals, a figure that has risen 28 per cent in a decade, underpinning a 73 per cent increase in house prices to an average of £417,306.

“The profile of the people I meet moving into the area reflects this,” confirms Philip Diggle, head of Gascoigne Halman’s Hale office. “But one key point is that I’m constantly acting for and finding properties for business owners. There’s a lot of entrepreneurial spirit in the north, people in control of their own destiny, rather than working for someone else.”

When it comes to a concentrated number of high-income households outside London and the South East (including Cambridge), Rushcliffe — centred on the Nottinghamshire town of West Bridgford — is highest, with 47 per cent, but its average house price remains a relatively modest £346,302.

“Until recently Rushcliffe wasn’t really on the radar, but the schools are good and it’s within easy striking distance to Nottingham city centre,” says Steven Gray, director of the local estate agency FHPLiving. “And the average house price hides some expensive properties — people are prepared to pay £625,000 for a Victorian semi with no parking.”

Cook also highlights Cardiff as gentrifying — more than a third (37 per cent) of residents are now classed as high-earners, a 19 per cent increase since 2011.

At £282,158, the average Cardiff house price also hides expensive individual homes. “The M4 corridor coming down towards Wales has been very busy,” says James Thomas, associate director at Savills in Cardiff. “And you can get to London [Paddington] from Newport by train in two hours — it’s really changed the way Cardiff is performing. We are lucky in that we have about six or eight suburbs that are really desirable, including Llandaff, Penarth and Cyncoed.”

Not so posh

Inevitably, Savills has also identified locations experiencing “entrenched challenges”, meaning less than 25 per cent of occupations are classed as high-earning, leading to subsequent low growth in house prices.

At the top is northeast Lincolnshire, where 21 per cent of residents are high-earning, representing a rise of 13 per cent over the past decade. In this period, house prices in local towns such as Grimsby and Immingham have risen by 38 per cent to a northeast Lincolnshire average of £160,528.

Tim Downing, director at the Lincolnshire-wide estate agency Pygott & Crone, says that recent opportunities — such as the offshore wind farm industry, the Freeport incorporating Immingham, Grimsby, Hull and Goole, and £20 million for Grimsby’s regeneration from the government’s Towns Fund — will help to turn this tide. “And going forward I would like to see a mainline service to London [from northeast Lincolnshire] and better train accessibility to Leeds and Sheffield,” he says.

Northeast Lincolnshire is followed by Bolsover in Derbyshire (23 per cent high-earners; £171,895 average house price) — handy for Sheffield and Leeds — and Walsall in the West Midlands (25 per cent; £213,391). All three areas have had a 13 per cent rise in high-earners since 2011.

Cook says that future activity depends on “whether the levelling up agenda can gain traction in these areas, because wealth is generated by employment”.

However, he predicts that the change in working patterns, with more people employed on an agile basis, will eventually lead to property searches over wider areas.

He singles out Exeter as a good example of this. “An area that piqued my interest in the South West, for example, is Exeter [where high-earning occupations have risen by 25 per cent in a decade, to 34 per cent of resident homeowners, rather than second-home owners]. The question is, does Exeter have the capacity to do a Bristol, where house prices have rocketed in the last ten years? It depends on the traction of higher-value earners. It might well be one to watch.”

The best places to move near good schools

Whether you are looking for primary or secondary, private or state, here are the areas with A* grade schools to consider.

By Tim Palmer.

There’s a reason that education is always a big feature of the The Sunday Times Best Places to Live guides. Choosing the perfect school may not be a guarantee of future happiness but any parent who finds themselves living in an area with few good options will be all too aware of the stress that can cause.

Competition for homes in the best catchment areas is fiercest in the smartest locations. Exceptional schools and high property prices often go hand-in-hand. One piece of research published this week by the estate agent comparison site GetAgent.co.uk claimed that an Ofsted “outstanding” rating boosts property values in the surrounding area by £37,000. There’s a danger of taking this too seriously. It isn’t usually the school that causes a property premium but the reverse. It’s more likely the case that a school whose affluent pupils live in expensive homes will find it easier to achieve good results than one in a deprived area.

Whatever the reason, that’s still a big saving on the cost of putting a couple of kids through the private system, even factoring in the cost of a tutor to make absolutely certain that the little ones ace the necessary selection tests.

Caspar Harvard-Walls, a partner at the buying agency Black Brick, says that, with the cost of living crisis striking fear even among the wealthy, he expects buyers in the most prime areas to start looking even more closely at state school catchment areas. “If people’s income is squeezed, saving on school fees will become a massive issue, especially as 70 per cent of new Oxbridge undergraduates now come from state schools,” he says.

The list below highlights areas with a particularly good choice of top-performing schools. It’s based largely on the annual Sunday Times Parent Power guide, an exclusive league table showcasing the schools with the best exam results. But these schools are not the be-all and end-all. There are few bad schools in the UK — almost 90 per cent of state schools in England are rated “good” or “outstanding” by Ofsted. And a high-achieving school doesn’t guarantee the best results for every child. Many psychologists recognise that it’s better for a child to be one of the cleverer pupils in an average environment than it is to struggle to keep up with a bunch of prodigies. So never mind if one of the leading schools mentioned in the list below isn’t for you — our Best Places to Live guide has many more places to put down roots, all with excellent schools and much more besides.

York

High house prices, crowds of tourists and an accompanying surge in the number of holiday lets pushed 2018’s overall winner off our Best Places to Live list last year. The city’s attractions — excellent train connections (London is about two hours away, Edinburgh half an hour further), beautiful surroundings and a superior selection of pubs, restaurants and leisure activities — are as beneficial to residents as they are to visitors.

York’s greatest asset, though, is its schools. It’s hard to find anywhere in the UK with a better choice of exceptional schools. Every secondary is rated at least “good” by Ofsted, and the city has no fewer than four comprehensives in the Sunday Times Parent Power list of the country’s top state secondaries. Pride of place goes to Fulford, chosen as the Sunday Times comprehensive school of the decade in 2020. Its villagey catchment area, close to the university and a couple of miles to the south of the city centre, is tight, according to Victoria Hunt, owner of White Rose Property Search, and competition for the best family homes can be fierce. Family-sized rentals, in particular, are hard to find, she says, because so many have been converted into Airbnbs, so don’t bank on being able to try before you buy.

If you can’t squeeze in here, no problem. Archbishop Holgate’s CofE and All Saints RC, not far behind Fulford in Parent Power, are close at hand. The north side of York has two further Ofsted “outstanding”-rated secondaries in Huntington and Manor CofE Academy. Private options are bountiful too. Venerable St Peter’s, one of the oldest schools in the world and the alma mater of Guy Fawkes (day fees, £6,850), is within the city walls, along with Bootham, Queen Margaret and the Mount, within walking distance of Bootham, whose grand Georgian and Victorian terraces offer the city’s best postcode cachet.

Average property price: £314,126 (source: Rightmove)

Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

If anywhere can rival York as an educational hotspot, it’s this refined Regency spa town, famous for its festivals and surrounded by lush Cotswold countryside. Ofsted rates all but one of the town’s 34 schools as “good” or “outstanding”, but rather than good schools for all it’s academic excellence that’s on offer here. In independent Cheltenham Ladies’ College, selective Pate’s Grammar and comprehensive Balcarras, it has three of the very best schools of their type in the country.

Pupils at selective Pate’s — Parent Power’s state secondary of the year in 2020 — achieved almost 95 per cent grades 9-7 (A-minus and above in old money) in last month’s GCSE results, while Cheltenham Ladies’ College was Parent Power’s South West independent secondary of the year. Fees start at £9,340 per term and boarding is £13,950 per term, so a family with two girls at the school could save a total of more than £50,000 if they live nearby.

Meanwhile, the performance of Balcarras, The Sunday Times South West state secondary of the decade, has made the suburb of Charlton Kings, two miles from the centre of Cheltenham, one of the most fought-over catchment areas in the country. If you’re not within half a mile of the school gates, prepare for disappointment. The houses — mostly hefty, postwar family-sized jobs — go for the same price as the period eye-candy close to the station, shops and offices in the town centre. Don’t expect much change from £2 million for a generous detached with a big garden. Happily Balcarras is spreading a little of its stardust more widely, as sponsor of the new Leckhampton High School, which opened last week.

Average property price: £369,639.

Best of the Rest

Altrincham, Greater Manchester

Before the arrival of the inspirational market and food hall that lifted Altrincham from suburban dead zone to on the 2022’s Best Places to Live list, big houses, the handy tram link and exceptional schools had kept the town squarely in the sights of well-to-do families seeking a safe berth just far enough from central Manchester.

The new buzz about the town has done nothing to dampen the educational offering, which is the best in the North West by some distance. There are more than 15 Ofsted-“outstanding” primary schools within three miles, and its three selective secondaries are in the top five in the region, according to Parent Power. Altrincham Grammar School for Girls was Parent Power’s North West state secondary school of the decade, with the boys’ grammar its only serious challenger. Loreto Grammar and non-selective Blessed Thomas Holford Catholic College (2013) are also rated “outstanding” by Ofsted.

Average property price: £578,531.

Barnet, London

Why do London parents seem in a constant state of panic? The capital is the very opposite of an educational minefield. Getting a place at your preferred school can be tricky — less than 70 per cent in inner London get their first pick, according to figures from Savills. But that’s no disaster as the general standard of schools in the capital is so high. Almost a third are rated “outstanding” by Ofsted, way above the national average, and only a tiny handful aren’t up to scratch. Even an area such as Newham in east London, which has very high levels of deprivation, has more than its fair share of the inspirational primaries and some exceptional sixth-form options too.

But for those parents determined to exercise their tiger tendencies, we suggest the leafy borough of Barnet. The commute to the centre of London can be gruelling from this far north, and the streets aren’t the cleanest, but educationally it’s hard to fault. Parent Power’s two top state secondaries in London are both in the borough — the highly selective Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar (boys) and Henrietta Barnett School (girls), with St Michael’s RC Grammar in Finchley (also girls) also in the top ten.

Better still, there are plenty of excellent secondary schools that don’t require an entrance exam. The Archer Academy, the Compton School, Wren Academy and the Hasmonean High School for Boys (there’s a girls’ school, too, but that hasn’t been inspected yet) are all comprehensive and rated “outstanding” by Ofsted. There’s an even better choice at sixth-form level. Woodhouse College is one of the top 10 sixth-form colleges in the country, according to Parent Power, and pupils can also travel a few miles into Hertfordshire to take A-levels at Dame Alice Owen’s, Parent Power’s South East school of the decade.

Average property price: £789,805.

Birmingham

Like the city itself, Birmingham’s education system can be hard to navigate. At primary level, it’s easy. The prime suburbs of Moseley, Bournville, Kings Heath and especially Harborne all have “outstanding”- rated primaries. Keep a close eye on the catchment areas for these and you won’t go far wrong.

After that, the star turn is the King Edward VI Foundation, which runs two independent secondaries, six grammars and three comprehensives. All are excellent performers, though it’s the selective grammars and the independents that dominate the league tables. Five of the grammars are in Parent Power’s 20 best state schools in the West Midlands and the two independents are in the region’s three best private schools. This means entrance exams or school fees are hard to avoid for Birmingham’s most ambitious parents.

The Edward VI Foundation’s leading schools are dotted around the city and pupils take one standard entrance exam, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to think about where to live. The foundation has recently introduced a geographical element to encourage more pupils to pick a school close to home; traffic in Brum can turn a straightforward-looking school run into a daunting daily expedition.

Sarah Briggs, head of sales at Knight Frank’s Birmingham office, recommends that families should base themselves around Edgbaston or Harborne to be reassuringly close to many of the best performers.

Average property price: £233,078.

Chelmsford, Essex

Down-to-earth Chelmsford has always scored highly for commutability — Liverpool Street is 35 minutes by train — and the arrival of John Lewis in 2016 put what was then Essex’s only city on the map as a shopping centre. However, it’s the exceptional selection of schools that’s the biggest draw here, according to Jamie Stephenson, a director of Jackson-Stops estate agency, with high-performing options across all sectors.

The two selective grammars — King Edward VI Grammar (boys, mixed sixth form), known as Kegs, and Chelmsford County High School for Girls — are in Parent Power’s top 25 state secondaries in the country. Comprehensives, such as Moulsham High, The Boswells and St John Payne, which also features in the Parent Power table, are all rated “good” by Ofsted. Primaries such as Beehive Lane, rated “outstanding” by Ofsted, and Perryfields have the kind of reputations that get parents poring over catchment-area maps, while good independent secondary schools include New Hall, where this year’s A-level cohort achieved 54 per cent of grades at A* or A.

Average property price: £260,486.

Durham

There’s a mixed picture for education in the North East. The number of schools rated “good” or “outstanding” by Ofsted is slightly above the national average and a higher proportion of applicants — 96 per cent — get their first-choice school here than in any other part of the country. On the other hand, fewer people go on to university from the region and it has the smallest representation in the Parent Power rankings of the nation’s best secondaries.

The ancient university city of Durham, however, is a match for most places, largely owing to the extraordinary performance of Durham Johnston, a comprehensive whose results — more than 52 per cent A* or A grades at A-level — put it ahead of more than half the country’s selective grammars. An address within a couple of miles of the school gives you a decent chance of a place. Failing that, Framwellgate and St Leonard’s Catholic are also in Parent Power’s regional top 10, though a critical Ofsted report on the latter in January raised issues about leadership and provision for pupils with special educational needs.

There are good independent options in Durham High School for Girls and Durham School, and more than 20 primaries are rated “good” or “outstanding” by Ofsted.

Average property price: £209,326.

Ilkley, West Yorkshire

It’s not the choice of schools so much as the lack of it that makes this year’s overall best place to live such a reassuring base for parents. Three of the five primaries are rated “outstanding” by Ofsted, the other two are good. Best of all is the fact that pretty much everyone attends Ilkley Grammar, rated “outstanding” by Ofsted and the seventh-best state secondary in the North of England, according to Parent Power.

This doesn’t just spare parents the sharp-elbowed stress of fighting for places (leaving more time to enjoy the town’s magical scenery or its lively high street), it also brings everybody together in a tangible way, adding hugely to Ilkley’s unique sense of community. The nearest independent alternative is Bradford Grammar (day fees, 11-18, £4,511 a term), also in the Parent Power guide.

Average property price: £485,274.

Ottery St Mary, Devon

Colyton Grammar is the big name around here. It’s the second-best state school in the region and one of the top 15 in the country. The only selective secondary for 40 miles, it attracts pupils from all over East Devon and Dorset, including Ottery. However, live here and there’s no reason to make the 11-mile journey to Colyton if you don’t want to.

The town has its own “outstanding”-rated comprehensive in The King’s School. The choice of primaries includes West Hill, one of the top 250 in the country according to Parent Power, and Feniton CofE, rated “outstanding” by Ofsted. Ottery’s other big advantage, according to Oli Custance Baker, head of country houses at Strutt and Parker estate agency, is a handy location close to the A30. “It means you’re also within range of private schools in Exeter. There’s a lot going on in the town, you’re right in the countryside and close to the east Devon coastline,” he says.

Average property price: £375,663.

Stratford-upon-Avon, West Midlands

Shakespeare may be Stratford’s biggest tourist attraction, but for househunters it’s his old school that’s top of the bill. In a dozen years, King Edward VI School has risen from 93rd to 22nd in the Parent Power ranking, making it one of the top three schools in the West Midlands, behind Birmingham’s top two King Edward VI schools (no relation). It also has an excellent reputation for sport, music and — naturally — drama.

Along with the equally impressive Stratford Girls’ Grammar (fifth in the region according to Parent Power), the Ofsted “outstanding”, centrally located Stratford-upon-Avon Primary and “good”-rated comprehensive Stratford upon Avon School, the state sector has all bases covered. So much so, says Paul Houghton-Brown, an associate director at Hamptons estate agency, that many of the area’s affluent parents are now choosing to save on years of school fees by paying a tutor to secure success in the grammar selection tests.

However, the private-school tradition remains strong, with a well-trodden path from the Croft Preparatory School in Stratford to nearby Warwick School or King’s High in Warwick, then possibly on to Rugby School a few miles further north.

Average property price: £381,532.

Cowbridge, Vale of Glamorgan

With its chichi cafés, designer handbag shops and plentiful Pilates classes, this plush, lush country town is a strong contender for the title of Wales’s most bougie address. No surprise, then, that Cowbridge also has its best state secondary in Parent Power. Cowbridge Comprehensive — non-selective — has easily the best GCSE averages: 44.5 per cent of pupils achieve grades 9-7 (equivalent to A*/A). Not surprisingly, it gets an all-round “excellent” verdict from inspectors at Estyn.

Even better, there’s no race for a place as the catchment area stretches right across the fertile Vale of Glamorgan to the outskirts of Cardiff in one direction and the edge of Bridgend in the other. Primaries Y Bont Faen (English medium) and Ysgol Iolo Morganwg (Welsh) are both rated “good”.

For families keen to avoid the short but slow commute into the centre of Cardiff, the city-centre locations to aim for are Cyncoed and Roath Park, well placed for the tight catchment area of highly regarded Cardiff High (universally “excellent” according to Estyn) and Llandaff, home to two of the best private options, Howell’s School and Cathedral School.

Average property price: £496,686.

East Renfrewshire

It takes only the briefest glance at any Scottish schools league table to realise that this collection of suburbs on the fringes of Glasgow is the country’s educational powerhouse, in the state sector at least. As the flood of primary-age families heading a couple of train stops south from the city testifies, moving here is pretty much a guarantee of a place at a high-scoring school.

Three of the top ten Scottish state secondaries in the Parent Power Guide are here: Mearns Castle High in Newton Mearns, St Ninian’s High in Giffnock and Williamwood High in Clarkston. Nearby Eastwood High and Woodfarm High are no slouches either, both featuring in Scotland’s top 20.

For anyone used to the hustle and bustle of Glasgow, life here can seem sedate but transport links are good. Glasgow Central is only 15 minutes by train from Giffnock, for example.

Other Scottish hotspots can be found in the north of Glasgow, where Jordanhill School tops the Parent Power table and Bearsden Academy is seventh. For anyone looking to get away from the city and breathe some fresh almost-Highland air (while remaining safely within commuting distance), Dunblane is the best bet. Dunblane High School is second in the state secondary league table, with 75 per cent of students attaining the “gold standard” of five Highers.

Average property price: £303,308.

Why house prices are heating up in London’s elite postcodes

With oil going up and the pound going down, wealthy buyers are feeling flush in the capital

By Carol Lewis

Whatever the woes of the economy, London still retains the power to persuade the world’s wealthiest individuals to part with their cash in return for bricks and mortar. The global super-rich — the oligarchs and sheikhs, industry magnates and tech billionaires — are back post-pandemic, outbidding each other to own a trophy home in the capital.

The wealthy Hariri family, a business and political dynasty that has produced two Lebanese prime ministers, sold their five-bedroom, 6,500 sq ft Knightsbridge home close to Harrods last week to a Lebanese tycoon for just under £20 million, and are now believed to be looking for an even larger base in London. Gary Hersham, founder and director of Beauchamp Estates, who sold the property, says: “We have seen a flurry of deals for London properties priced over £15 million. As international flights resume we are seeing the return of wealthy international buyers.”

It wasn’t the only super-prime deal in London last week: a family home in Hampstead, north London, was sold to another Middle Eastern buyer, also for just under £20 million. “It’s the first Middle Eastern sale at that price point I’ve done in a while,” Marc Schneiderman, director of Arlington Residential, a prime London estate agency, admits.

Both sales are a sign that as the schools in the Gulf break for summer and Middle Eastern families make their way to London for the holidays, they are keen to indulge in the activities they have missed during the pandemic — including shopping. Many come buoyed by profits from the booming oil and gas markets and the strength of the dollar against the pound.

“Anyone working in oil and gas seems quite interested in the London property market — I have a few Nigerian clients and inquiries from Africa, the Middle East and the United States. Oil is up, the pound is down, so London property will benefit from these buyers feeling much wealthier,” says Camilla Dell, managing partner of Black Brick, a buying agency.

International buyers are back

London’s summer season is back, after a two-year hiatus, kicked off by the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy. Spectators sip Pimm’s to cool down at the Queen’s Club tennis championships and exhibitors are polishing up their antiquities in readiness for the annual Masterpiece arts fair in Chelsea.

“People are going out, restaurants are packed and there is a feeling that everything is coming back to life — and that includes the London property market,” says Peter Bevan, co-head of central London’s residential desk for Savills.

Sales were driven by wealthy British-based buyers during the pandemic and they remain the driving force in the market — there are 177 billionaires in the country, according to The Sunday Times Rich List, and many more multimillionaires.

However, international investors are beginning to return, bar the Russians who are stymied by international sanctions over the war in Ukraine. Bevan says Savills’s office in Dubai reports that several wealthy Middle Eastern buyers are planning to come to London this summer to invest. Others report that rich Chinese and Hong Kong parents are back buying flats for their children ready for the start of the next academic year.

Hersham says that since the start of 2022 there has been a wave of deals for London homes priced above £10 million to foreign buyers in Knightsbridge, St John’s Wood, Kensington, Belgravia and Chelsea. Ashley Wilsdon, head of London buying at Middleton Advisors, is also seeing more big deals than before: “I’ve been out looking at large lateral apartments in Knightsbridge and Mayfair for between £3 million and £10 million with clients from the Middle East and Far East, and it’s been a while since I’ve done that,” Wilsdon says.

The agents — whose commission at the very top end of the market is 0.5 to 3 per cent — have to prove their worth. Often they are required to sign non-disclosure agreements, and after an instruction, it has been known for an estate agent to receive a legal letter warning that the seller reserves the right to sue if anything goes wrong during the sale. It is a high-stakes, high-reward business.

For estate agents to get a foot in the door with the wealthiest buyers requires getting past a legion of gatekeepers: estate managers, private bankers, wealth advisers, lawyers and buying agents. Estate agents have been known to woo an entourage with invitations to weekend shoots or dinners in Michelin-starred restaurants.

Not everyone is feeling flush though: “My clients in private equity are extremely downbeat about the world particularly in the last few weeks with trillions wiped off the [stock] markets. They’re feeling much, much poorer and those who had their money in crypto [currency] are probably finished,” Dell adds.

Inflationary influences

The Bank of England raised its base interest rate to 1.25 per cent last week on the expectation that inflation could exceed 11 per cent by the autumn — it stands at just below 8 per cent with an update due this Wednesday.

While most in the property market blithely remark that buyers in the prime markets are “immune” to such trifles as a rise in interest rates, Louis Harding, head of London residential sales for Strutt & Parker estate agency, points out that many are old enough to remember that rates were 5 per cent before the global financial crash and 13-14 per cent in the late 1980s and early 1990s. “They’re sensible about the fact we are in a period of normalisation,” Harding says.

“It’s wrong to say that the wealthy aren’t influenced by interest rates — most can afford to buy in cash but will take out as much in mortgages as they can because money is cheap,” says Mark Wells, chief executive of Invisible Homes, an off-market property platform. Schneiderman adds that he doesn’t think that wealthy buyers will be troubled by interest rate rises until the base rate hits 5 per cent; although the highest rate that even the most gloomy economists expect the Bank of England to go is 3 per cent.

Sales might be funded by putting up other homes, businesses or even yachts as collateral against loans. The paperwork is sophisticated and aimed at ensuring privacy. All buyers, though, are subject to stringent anti-money laundering checks, and any agent found to be involved in a sale with someone subject to sanctions faces a possible prison sentence and a hefty fine.

Flats are back, but we prefer houses now

“The sweet spot is houses in Notting Hill and Kensington between £5 million and £10 million. If I had a property for around £8 million then I’d have 20-30 viewings within 2-3 days and in a lot of cases it would go to sealed bids and sell for over the asking price,” Harding says. Much of this demand is fuelled by British-based buyers who work in the City or have inherited family wealth.

The house markets in Marylebone, Regent’s Park and St John’s Wood are strong but also making a return are the pied-à-terre markets in Knightsbridge, Westminster and further afield as British buyers look to enjoy the return of the London social scene. “The flat market is coming back, with people looking for pieds-à-terre near the theatres or village hubs, such as Marylebone, Belsize Park, Islington, Kensington, Westbourne Grove and Elizabeth Street [in Belgravia]. It’s less that people regret leaving London and more that they want to come into town and have the best of both worlds,” Bevan says.

Encapsulating the desire for flats and turn-key properties — buyers are aware of the rising cost of building materials and the shortage of tradespeople — are sales at 80 Holland Park, Christian Candy’s latest endeavour. The super-prime development, which is mostly flats, has just three out of the 25 homes still available to buy. The contemporary homes on the edge of the park were sold mainly to British-based buyers, many local residents — with penthouses selling for £10 million-plus.

What next for prime central London?

During the pandemic, when many people left the city and headed to the country in search of space and a more relaxed lifestyle, property prices in London remained subdued while those elsewhere soared. In March, London house prices clocked an annual price rise of 4.8 per cent against 9.8 per cent across the UK, with some regions such as the East Midlands experiencing more than 12 per cent growth, according to the Office for National Statistics.

“Prime central London is coming off the back of a wretched few years and we are still not back to where we were at the top of the market in 2014,” Harding says. Data from LonRes, prime London property analysts, shows that in May transactions were 11.5 per cent ahead of a year ago and prices up by just under 9 per cent.

Knight Frank estate agency said that the number of offers it accepted in May was “the highest monthly figures in a decade” with prices rising by 2.4 per cent in the year to May — the highest rate of annual growth since April 2015. In prime outer London, prices increased 4.8 per cent over the 12-month period, which was also the highest rate of annual growth in more than seven years.

The estate agency is optimistic about the prime central market’s prospects and predicts a 6 per cent rise in prices next year and 22 per cent from 2022-2026. Savills is slightly bolder, predicting just under 24 per cent growth over the same time period.

Agents say that many of the top-end deals continue to be off-market (not openly advertised) although some of these are simply the result of being sold quickly by agents armed with black books stuffed with buyers ready and waiting to snap up the right property when it comes along. Others are sold secretly because the buyer or seller doesn’t want publicity or a digital record of the sale — particularly if, whisper it, the price has to be reduced.

There is more choice for buyers though: “Supply is finally picking up, the number of new sales instructions in May was the sixth-highest figure in ten years,” according to Tom Bill, head of residential research for Knight Frank. Although Alex Woodleigh-Smith, of the buying agency AWS Prime, asks: “The question is: once the buyers in the market have bought, are we going to have new buyers coming into the market to replace them?”

Analysis: how will the stamp duty holiday affect the housing market?

Will the stamp duty holiday boost sales and house prices?

By Martina Lees

We’re not going on a summer holiday, but — as Cliff Richard didn’t sing — at least we’re getting one on stamp duty. Will that boost a recovery in the housing market?

Despite an all-time record of 8.5 million visits on the Rightmove site the day after the chancellor announced the tax break, the answer is far from simple.

Most economists expect consumer confidence to dip towards October, when the government is planning to stop paying the wages of furloughed workers and mortgage holidays are due to come to an end. Then there will be more uncertainty over the risk of a no-deal Brexit as Britain’s transition deal with the EU ends in December.

The stamp duty break is going to be valid until March 31, 2021 — far longer than originally anticipated — and is being timed to reduce the impact of unemployment and economic uncertainty on the housing market.

Announcing the measure, Rishi Sunak pointed out that housebuilding supports almost 750,000 jobs, but that “property transactions fell by 50% in May”. He went on to say: “House prices have fallen for the first time in eight years, and uncertainty abounds in the market . . . We need people feeling confident — confident to buy, sell, renovate, move and improve. That will drive growth.”

According to a forecast from the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), the policy will lead to a 6% rise in property transactions — that’s 41,000 extra sales — over the next nine months.

However, Jon Bell, a housing analyst for Deutsche Bank, warns that while the measure will push up sales temporarily, this will come to an end when the holiday period finishes in March. He explains: “For petrolheads, this is a jump-start, rather than a new lithium battery.”

Bell also points out that the policy won’t actually make much of a difference to prices. For example, a home mover buying a £250,000 property would save only £2,500 (1%) of the price in stamp duty. The buyer of a £500,000 home would save £15,000 (3%), with the relative saving falling above that level.

An HM Revenue and Customs study has also shown that a two-year stamp duty holiday from 2010 for first-time buyers on homes under £250,000 only ended up pushing up house prices by 0.5-0.7%. And buying a house is such a significant financial decision that in times of uncertainty “not many people will commit before the outcome is clearer,” says Jamie Durham, an economist at the consultancy PwC.

The CEBR is forecasting a 5% fall in house prices this year and a further 10.6% drop in 2021 before they start rising next autumn. Pablo Shah, its housing economist, predicts a slow property price recovery in the shape of a “Nike swoosh” — as do Bell and Durham.

“Unlike previous economic crises, it’s not founded on structural imbalances in the housing market. We expect prices to recover as people’s incomes recover,” Shah says. “We’re not expecting any kind of boom.”

At least one non-economist disagrees. Rob Bence, the co-founder of the Property Hub investor podcast and forum, has made his boldest prediction in seven years of broadcasting: “We’ve never had this much financial stimulus injected before.

“We won’t just head into a recovery, we’ll be pushed into an almighty economic boom . . . It won’t happen immediately, but it’s coming. When the boom comes it’ll be at a scale we’ve never seen before.”

Lu believes that this view is overly optimistic, but Andy Haldane, the Bank of England’s chief economist, has claimed Britain is on track to rebound faster than expected — in a V-shaped recovery.

Ultimately the stamp duty cut should boost jobs for housebuilders, estate agents and conveyancers — and even homeware shops and garden centres, if buyers spend their savings on a sofa or an outdoor dining set. However, Bell warns that the cut is “best seen in the context of an 86% year-on-year fall in mortgage approvals in May” — a worrying sign for future volumes.

Does a stamp duty holiday go far enough — or should we abolish it altogether?

By Hugh Graham

Abolish stamp duty. It has been the mantra of high-end estate agents ever since the then chancellor George Osborne introduced reforms of stamp duty land tax (SDLT) in 2014, which made buying a house cheaper for purchases under £937,000 — 98% of households — but more expensive in Mayfair. Even after last week’s stamp duty holiday was announced for purchases under £500,000, Home’s inboxes were full of emails from top-end agents saying Rishi Sunak did not go far enough.

Take Enness Global, a high-net-worth mortgage broker. It argues that although buyers in prime central London — where the median sold price is £4.92 million — will save £15,000 under the new reforms, buyers on a £14.1 million home will still pay £1.6 million in tax. “High-end homeowners certainly won’t be getting any richer thanks to Rishi,” says its chief executive, Islay Robinson. “This archaic tax continues to leave a bad taste in the mouth of prime buyers. It’s about time this government money-grab was abolished completely.”

Trevor Abrahmsohn, director of Glentree International, an estate agent in north London, argues that ever since Osborne’s 2014 reforms, “transaction numbers have been reduced by 70%, and the cost to the Treasury has been between £5 billion and £12 billion in lost taxes”.

These industry arguments have become so pervasive that they have filtered into the mainstream. Andrew Pierce, a journalist, said on Good Morning Britain this week: “When George Osborne was chancellor he massively increased stamp duty, and what happened? Less money came into the Exchequer.”

However, the claims of lost revenue are a myth. New figures from LonRes, a property data company, reveal that HMRC’s stamp duty receipts have been higher every single year since the reforms were introduced in December 2014, by at least £1 billion annually. Before they were introduced they stood at £6.45 billion for 2013/2014. For the year ending 2019/2020, ending March 31, they stood at £8.39 billion.

It is true that transaction levels above £1 million fell 30% between 2014 and 2019, according to LonRes. Abrahmsohn argues that the lower activity at the high end reduces other revenues such as pay as you earn, VAT, capital gains and corporate tax, but doesn’t have figures that show this reduction is significant enough to offset the government’s increased stamp duty revenues since 2014.

Camilla Dell, founder of Black Brick, a London buying agent, would welcome tax cuts at the top end, but is resigned to the status quo. “I can’t see it happening politically. They’d be accused of being a party for the rich when they are trying to help the north. Sunak’s reforms gave my buyer on a £2 million flat in St John’s Wood an extra £15,000. I think this is as good as it gets for us.”

Henry Pryor, a buying agent, is one of the few agents to defend George Osborne’s 2014 reforms, saying the higher rates stopped double-digit house-price inflation in Notting Hill and Chelsea, deflated a bubble and helped 95% of buyers. “Osborne deserves credit. The reforms did exactly what he wanted. It brought prices down.”

Times are of course very different now, but he can’t see the government scrapping or cutting stamp duty at the high end, not least because, contrary to what many agents say, SDLT is still a cash cow for HMRC. “I would imagine the government has done its sums. Sunak’s policies helped 90% of the people, but the Treasury is enormously dependent on the top end for revenue. Something like 45% of the SDLT revenue comes from the £1 million-plus market. We need some of these deals so we are at least getting some revenue.”

Come on, super-prime buyers: splash out to help out.

What does selling off market mean?

There are clear signs that “private” sales are going mainstream

By Melissa York

Pssst… are you “off-market”? No, I don’t mean married — is your house on a secret list of properties for sale? Though this practice sounds clandestine, all it means is that you’ve chosen to keep your house out of the public domain, away from browsing eyes on Rightmove and Zoopla and out of high-street windows. Instead, estate agents trade these homes among themselves, matching them with the requirements of registered off-market buyers.

While buying and selling this way isn’t new, there are clear signs that “private” sales are going mainstream. Once the exclusive preserve of oligarchs and celebrities who didn’t want the contents of their home splashed all over the internet, the practice has moved further down the market in recent years.

“We used to be dealing in £20m properties, but now it can be anything from £1m upwards,” says Caspar Harvard-Walls, partner at the buying agency Black Brick. He estimates that the number of off-market properties on his books has risen from a quarter in 2018 to a third in 2019.

“I was looking on behalf of a buyer who had a £4m budget. I found six houses that met their specific brief and not one of them was on the open market.”

And this phenomenon isn’t limited to the chattering classes in the capital. Agents at Carter Jonas in York have also noticed an increase in off-market sales in the middle market, up from 10% of listings to 15% over the past year.

While there are many personal reasons one might go off-market — security for starters, as you will discover in my feature — the internet has played a significant role. Selling your home is just a lot more public than it once was. Now any buyer can see how long your home has been on the market, how much you bought it for and the value of similar homes in your street at the click of a button and a scroll of a mouse.

In 2018, 26% of homes on Rightmove, the UK’s biggest property portal, sat unsold for more than six months. If a buyer sees this, they will start to think it isn’t selling because there’s something wrong with it and will sniff a discount in the offing. Properties that have had a price reduction on the open market are also doomed to a similar fate. Those kept off-market, on the other hand, retain a certain mystique.

In an uncertain time, perhaps it is smart that buyers are testing the water in this way, rather than hanging their dirty discounts out for everyone to see. Maybe this trend isn’t clever at all, but merely a sign of the times. Harvard-Walls links the rise in estate agents leaving big firms to set up on their own as independents to this trend. Like artisan coffee, craft gin and boutique hotels, perhaps going off-market with a buying agent simply seems like a rarefied, fashionable way to sell your house these days.

Speaking of hipsters, new research from Jackson-Stops has revealed an unusual penchant for high ceilings among millennials. The estate agency conducted a survey asking more than 2,000 UK adults to name their favourite architectural period features (niche, I admit). Lofty ceilings ranked fourth, with 28% picking them, behind bay windows (38%), grand open fireplaces (37%) and a country-style kitchen (29%).

However, when only 18- to 34-year-olds were included, high ceilings came out on top, with more than a third (36%) saying it was their most desirable period feature. Londoners were also especially keen on raising the roof (35%). Perhaps this isn’t such a mystery when you consider the cramped conditions in many new-build high-rise flats — the only option young people have in the capital if they want to purchase their first home using Help to Buy. A head-banging conundrum if ever there was one.

Where Britain’s youngest millionaire’s live

By Melissa York

Knightsbridge, Chelsea… Reading? Melissa York reveals the property portfolios of the under-30 and minted.

Among them are Ben Francis, 26, owner of the online sportswear retailer Gymshark, who made his first appearance in ninth place, with a fortune of £73m; and the Wellingborough-based vlogger Dan Middleton, who swapped stacking shelves at Tesco for playing games on YouTube, and is worth £25m at the tender age of 27.

Unlike bankers, young tech buyers can work from anywhere, so location is less of a concern. According to the 2018 Tech City Index by TNT Direct, these purchasers look at broadband speeds and the quality of an area’s tech graduates before they decide where to base themselves. University cities score highly, particularly Bristol (ranked second), Leeds (third), Edinburgh (fourth), Cambridge (seventh) and Oxford (10th), but unheralded Reading tops the list, thanks to its solid base of tech jobs and a strong start-up survival rate.

Yet the cultural draw of London often proves too much, which is why the capital lands at sixth place on the index. Tech entrepreneurs who have made it in the Big Smoke love a fixer-upper or an east London warehouse conversion: the chance to add mod cons and personal features is seen as a bonus. Jo Eccles, managing director of SP Property Group, says she helped a tech entrepreneur build up a portfolio of 16 properties; for himself, he bought a £7m house in Notting Hill, with skylights instead of windows, that was in dire need of renovation. “It was very much about buying a blank canvas that he could turn into something futuristic and amazing.”

YouTubers, on the other hand, are a mixed bunch. Zoe Sugg, aka Zoella, gave her 16m subscribers a tour of the five-bedroom Brighton house where she lives with her boyfriend and fellow vlogger, Alfie Deyes, which was bought for £1m, according to reports in 2017. Deyes has made no bones about being a serial property investor, telling his subscribers in the same year: “I own quite a few properties that I’ve bought over the years, and I’m a landlord to people. Obviously, I don’t meet them and do all that kind of stuff — I have people who do that for me.”

Among the top property investors on The Sunday Times Young Rich List are the singers Rita Ora, who has bought in the UK and the USSTARTRAKS PHOTO/REX

Vloggers often have their pick of interiors, too, with brands willing to furnish their homes free or at a discounted rate in the hope of being featured in the background of a video. “Even the windows,” Eccles says of one client. “He got bumped right to the front of the queue so it would all be in place for his YouTube videos.”

Creatives such as actors and musicians tend not to have much time to lavish on their homes. Dictated to by gruelling schedules, which often include international travel, they are looking for turnkey properties that require the minimum amount of work. Staying close to the capital’s airports and cultural credentials, these young stars are looking for a discreet party pad that will impress their famous peers.

Exclusive research from Savills estate agency reveals the number of under-30s in each ward in the UK who fall into Experian’s City Prosperity grouping, defined as those who “work in high-status positions: commanding substantial salaries, they are able to afford expensive urban homes”. Greenwich West topped this list, with the newly developed Greenwich Peninsula also featuring in the top 20, alongside Balham, Brixton Hil and Herne Hill — all popular areas with the creative set.

“When it comes to affordability, these young people haven’t had the time to build up the same level of equity as the previous generation, who are still living in established wealthy areas,” says Lawrence Bowles, senior analyst on Savills’ residential research team. “So these places don’t come across as attractive for hip young things, who would rather live in Brixton than on the King’s Road.” Marylebone and Fitzrovia are also touted by buying agents as hotspots for creative types, due to their proximity to Soho’s arty private members’ clubs.

Among the top property investors on The Sunday Times Young Rich List are the singers Rita Ora, who has bought in the UK and the US, and Ed Sheeran, whose estate in his home town, Framlingham, Suffolk, hit the headlines recently after it caught fire. The property, made up of four adjacent houses bought piecemeal, reportedly has its own pub and a four-room treehouse.

The former child stars of the Harry Potter films also have the magic touch: Daniel Radcliffe is said to have £76m in assets, though it’s unclear how much is invested in property, while Rupert Grint has been candid about his ‘big’ £12.9m portfolio, mainly concentrated in Hertfordshire. Emma Watson’s three-bedroom London mews property attracted attention after the Panama Papers revealed that she bought it for £2.8m through an offshore company in 2013. Her representatives say this was done to keep her purchase private.

For under-30s making a more pedestrian, but still affluent, living in the traditional professions in the City, the parts of Wandsworth nicknamed Nappy Valley — Earlsfield, Fairfield and the Common — figure strongly in the Savills table as enduringly popular places to buy a first family home. Edinburgh is also teeming with rich young things, both around the city centre and to the north, in Inverleith.

Anecdotally, it seems the wealthiest of the young rich also have the least freedom when it comes to where they buy. Under-30s who buy with inherited wealth tend to choose only the most established areas in the country — Kensington & Chelsea, Hampstead and Notting Hill — before moving to the countryside to take on the family pile. There is usually a team of wealth managers, lawyers and trustees behind such decisions, and a final sign-off from Mummy and Daddy is non-negotiable.

“We’ve never had an inherited-wealth client where the parent hasn’t had the final say,” says Eccles, who recalls one memorable occasion when a landowner in the north of England took a helicopter down to London for the day to approve his daughter’s purchase in Pimlico.

Hugh Grosvenor, 28, better known as the Duke of Westminster and Prince George’s godfather, is the richest person in the UK under 30, with a fortune of £10.1bn. In addition to the 300 acres of Mayfair and Belgravia that the family owns, it has assets in 60 cities overseas, but its historic seat is Eaton Hall, Cheshire.

Apart from a stint on the Grosvenor Group’s graduate scheme, the Duke has chosen to pursue his own interests, working in Bermondsey for the start-up Bio-Bean, which turns coffee grounds into clean energy. His slice of the Grosvenor pie is shared with his three siblings, but all its assets are tied up in a series of trusts to prevent any squandering of the family fortune. This is a common arrangement for wealthy heirs. “They’ll have a succession plan in place outlining how they’re getting the money,” says Tom Kain, of Black Brick. “That’s why they’ll tend to choose a safe investment that’s about capital growth and wealth preservation.”

Parents of the super-rich also tend to keep their children close to their own homes. “I can think of one billionaire who had a home in Knightsbridge, and two sets of children and his mum were all within a five-minute walk of him,” says Robert Watts, compiler of The Sunday Times Rich List. “These people worry just as much about their children as their businesses, because everyone’s got a story about so-and-so’s child ODing on something. The leash will be let out, but only so far.”

Young, rich and famous, but forced to live in Knightsbridge. It seems you can’t always get what you want.

How to deal with sealed bids

By Graham Norwood

Offer too much and you’ll overpay; offer too little and you’ll miss out for ever. Here’s our top tips for handling this one-shot opportunity

It’s enough to make a buyer’s heart sink: just when you think you’ll make a killer offer on your dream home, the seller asks for sealed bids. This means all interested buyers are requested to submit a bid in a sealed envelope by a set date. It’s a one-shot opportunity: offer too much and you’ll overpay; offer too little and you’ll miss out for ever.

It’s made worse because sealed bids — also known as “informal tenders” — are one-sided affairs. The vendor and agent have all the information on the property, its condition, rival offers and the deadlines and motivations behind the sale. The buyer has… well, not much at all.

Does this process only happen when the local market is strong?
Not always. Sealed bids often crop up for “really high-quality, best-in-class properties”, says Caspar Harvard-Walls, a partner at Black Brick buying agency. “As an extreme example, an unmodernised detached villa in Holland Park, west London, went on the market at about £13m. A round of sealed bids later, it sold last month for more than £18m.”

In a buoyant location, sealed bids can be used to heighten attention and offers. Yet Jeremy Leaf, who runs the north London estate agency Jeremy Leaf & Co, sounds a note of caution: “The whole process could be a bluff in a slower market by owners and agents trying to fool the few prospective purchasers that demand is stronger than it really is.”

Can a buyer find out who they’re bidding against?
It’s not easy, but if you push an agent or seller, you might wheedle out vital intelligence. “For example, if you’re only bidding against one other party who needs a mortgage, you may decide to make a slightly lower bid,” Harvard-Walls says. “If you’re bidding against five others who are all cash buyers, you may choose to go higher.” Canny bidders will seek out the vendor’s social-media accounts to see if they’ve blabbed online about why they are moving.

What counts in a bid? Is it just down to price?
Obviously, the amount offered is crucial, but in a difficult market where a third of agreed sales fall through, costing an average of £2,899 in wasted fees, according to Market Financial Solutions, you should also use the bid to convince the seller that you’re ready to go, without complications.

Remember, there is no obligation for a vendor to choose the highest bid. Agents often advise that a lower offer is preferable if the sale that follows has fewer potential pitfalls.

So what should go in the bid letter?
Anything that gives you the edge as a buyer. Specify if you’re chain-free and/or a cash buyer (and how long it would take you to draw down the money), and provide a copy of the in-principle loan agreement should you need a mortgage. Give your conveyancer’s details and tell the vendor what stage your own sale is at.

Don’t be afraid to pull at a seller’s heartstrings. In America, it’s common to include a letter, with pictures of your family, to demonstrate how much you love the house and how it would be great for your kids/dependents/dog. Estate agents in catchment areas for sought-after schools say the idea is catching on over here, too.

Any clever tricks?
If you’re super-keen, commission a survey of the house you want to buy before bidding. If no horrible problem surfaces, you can make an offer with the genuine promise that it’s not subject to a survey — another advantage over rival bidders. Instruct your solicitor to begin basic searches on the property, too, and let the seller know to emphasise that you’re willing to move quickly.

Vendors should be thinking ahead, too. Leaf says they should make some legal information available to would-be buyers during the process and have replies to conveyancer inquiries ready to go as soon as an offer is accepted. “After all that effort, owners would not want to be responsible for a sale falling through.”

What price should a buyer offer?
This is the trickiest bit. The property portals Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket will give you an idea of other asking prices in the area, while websites such as nethouseprices.com and mouseprice.com show what has been paid in the recent past — but that may be some months or even years earlier, and the market will have changed in the interim.

Obviously, you should put forward a sum you can afford — and remember, if it’s far more than a home is worth, your lender may not advance as much as you want. Mortgage firms make their own valuations, and you could be left high and dry if you bid wildly and can’t borrow enough.

The National Association of Estate Agents recommends avoiding round numbers so that you don’t find yourself making the exact same bid as someone else — you could bid £500,025 instead of £500,000.

And if I don’t win, that’s it?
Not necessarily — if you’re determined to get that house, keep in touch with the agent in case the successful bid falls through.

How I Made It

Camilla Dell

The Sunday Times

DIVING INTO THE PROPERTY GAME WAS BIG GAMBLE

House hunting for wealthy business people and foreign multi-millionaires is no easy job. One couple wanted a £10m house perfect for a chihuahua, “with no balcony and the right outside space”, while some superstitious buyers would only consider addresses with numbers “that didn’t mean death”.

It pays well, though. Camilla Dell’s property agency, Black Brick, which she set up in 2007 using £20,000 of savings, made a pre-tax profit of £1.6m on sales of £3.1m last year.

After working for the upmarket estate agents Knight Frank and Foxtons, Dell decided that finding homes for a fee could work as a standalone business, rather than just being a service offered by the chains.

Black Brick helps investors and companies, as well as individuals, find homes in London and southeast England, negotiates a price, and closes the deal for them. It does not own properties, or handle the listings.

Dell recently helped a member of a Middle Eastern royal family to buy a £55m mansion, and a Bollywood actress has just signed up for her services. It is not just the super-rich who come to her, though. Recent buys include a two-bedroom flat costing £374,000.

About 60% of customers are from the Middle East, Russia, India and America. Critics have accused property buying agents of fuelling the surge in so-called ghost homes in London. Last week the mayor, Sadiq Khan, called for local authorities to be able to raise the council tax on properties left vacant.

“There’s a misconception that buying agents are only for the very wealthy and for people who are going to buy homes here and leave them empty,” said Dell, 39. “We’ve got our oligarchs, but we’ve also got very normal people.”

She said that less than 5% of the properties bought by Black Brick were ghost homes. “We’ve never been a volume business. We don’t have to pump out hundreds of deals to survive.”

Clients pay an upfront, one-off registration fee of £3,000. If Black Brick seals a deal, it gets 2.5% of the final price or 20% of what it manages to save customers by negotiating a lower price.

Dell, the managing partner, grew up in Hampstead, northwest London, as the youngest of three children. Her father, a property developer, died when she was 9. Her mother, an Israeli former model, was a “lady of leisure”.

Dell was a boarder at Cobham Hall, a private girls’ school in Kent. She qualified as a scuba-diving instructor at 18 and studied marine biology at Newcastle University. Once she graduated in 1999, she worked behind the scenes at the broadcasters Tyne Tees and Granada. After a year she moved to Egypt to teach scuba diving, but returned following the 2001 terrorist attacks. “The number of tourists just dropped off,” she said.

Dell spent the next six years climbing the ranks at Foxtons and Knight Frank before striking out on her own, not without some trepidation. “I had sleepless nights setting up Black Brick and coming off the payroll.”

She started hiring after six months and by the end of the year had tied up sales of £1m. Today the business, based in Mayfair, has nine staff. Dell is the sole owner, and does not rule out an exit if “someone makes an offer you can’t refuse”.

Dell lives in Hampstead with her husband, Jeremy, 49, and daughters Sydney, 5, and Sukie, 2. Her advice for new bosses is to put in long hours: “I don’t believe in shortcuts. You have to learn and understand your industry.”

Tips on selling large-family homes

It’s all fine and dandy, until you try to sell up: there are fewer buyers and they tend to be more picky. Experts share their tips to ensure you seal the deal

Owning a house with four or more bedrooms and a couple of acres of land might not seem like something to complain about. But if you’re trying to sell a home that’s on the large side, you may well have found that what you thought was the ultimate aspiration can actually be a real headache (not that you’d let any of your space-starved friends hear you whinge about it — much).

Research by the property portal Rightmove shows that, in July, homes with four bedrooms or more took the longest to sell: typically 74 days from being advertised online to being marked as sold subject to contract, compared to an average of 58 days for one-, two- and three-bedders. That’s not such great news for the thousands of parents who, with their children heading off to university, have decided it’s time to downsize.

As well as being patient, owners of sprawling pads have to be ready to cut the asking price. “Our analysis of the first half of this year shows that properties where the achieved value fell below the asking price sold at an incrementally slower pace,” says Oliver Knight, a country research associate at Knight Frank estate agency. “When the achieved value was 90%-95% of the asking price, exchanges took an average of 12 weeks. This compared to two weeks when there hadn’t been a reduction.”

Beyond the average family home, of course, those with serious square footage have fewer potential buyers — especially since the higher rates of stamp duty made the cost of moving up the property ladder substantially higher. So you’ll need to be realistic if you really want to sell.

“Correct pricing is key in today’s market,” says Rupert Sweeting, head of the country-house department at Knight Frank. “I am always advising clients to be brave enough to make the house look good value, as this approach will increase the number of viewings and the likelihood of competitive bidding.”

Alongside price, Sweeting adds, it has to look good — obvious to some, but it’s amazing how many houses are shown to viewers with beds unmade, dirty clothes strewn over the floor and the loo seat left up. This makes for a stark contrast with the decluttered, styled photographs in the brochure. “First and last impressions count, as many buyers make up their mind within the first or last five minutes.”

Even if you’ve got price and presentation covered, there’s a host of other thorny issues to tackle when trying to sell a large home. Here’s our tailor-made guide.

Does my house look big in this? Your brochure — whether online only or in vellum-bound glossy print, with drone shots — is your bible. And whether you have four bedrooms or 10, a modest garden or acres of parkland, every inch of it has to look good for the photos (and be maintained). Yes, we’re all bored with hearing about decluttering, but it’s a vital tool in presenting a fresh-looking home.

Don’t leave the place bare, though, says Richard Barber, director at the prime central London estate agency WA Ellis. “Good furnishings ensure the property is photographed well. If your home is empty, rent furniture with help from an interior designer. Spending £10,000 will easily add £20,000 at the £1m level.”

As for the grounds, have them photographed when they are at their best and full of colour. “Even if you want one more Christmas in the family home, have your pictures taken earlier in the year, when the garden is in bloom,” says Caspar Harvard-Walls, a partner at the buying agency Black Brick.

Other things to stress in the brochure (if you can) are low heating bills and the fact that the price includes curtains, carpets and any specialist garden machinery — which will help ease in new owners.

Do your homework You need to be ready for when someone makes you an offer you are prepared to accept. Decide on the price point and timescale you are happy with. Before the “For sale” board goes up, get all your legal paperwork in order, including any related to building regulations and planning consents, so nervier buyers don’t pull out.

A view to a kill You want to make a good impression from the second potential buyers arrive. “Ensure the driveway is clear of boats and spare cars, and freshen it up with gravel — but not so it feels like a painful walk along Chesil Beach,” says Richard Banes-Walker, a partner at Strutt & Parker estate agency’s office in Farnham, Surrey. You’ll also want to keep the house welcomingly warm on chilly days, so don’t spare the thermostat.

It may be a good idea to make yourself scarce, at least during first visits. “An owner being present on a viewing more than halves the chance of a sale,” says James Robinson, general manager at Lurot Brand, a London estate agency. “Regardless of the size of the house, your being there will make many buyers feel claustrophobic. And you probably won’t like what your agent needs to say about the house in order to sell it.”

If it really is vast, the innovative features that make it liveable should be stressed. Laundry chutes, lifts and intercoms can make things feel more manageable, and maintenance should seem smooth — have average running costs ready on a spreadsheet. Above all, make sure viewings are kept interesting: even the most committed buyer’s attention will flag once they have done the 20,000 sq ft mansion, polo fields, stabling, leisure suite and office complex. Work with your agent to set up refreshment pit stops where your home or grounds can be seen from flattering angles.

If you’re not sure how to pitch it, you could always enlist a friend as a “mystery shopper” and test-drive the agents’ patter — but, again, be prepared for some brutal honesty.

From garish to greige Getting rid of that creepy doll collection, toning down the purple walls and hiding those nude photos of yourself can never be a bad thing, but the process of “essential neutralisation” that many agents extol can be taken too far. In fact, making a home too neutral, and a canvas too blank, can be offputting, as the Los Angeles-born composer Brian Banks, 60 — who has worked with musicians including Michael Jackson and David Bowie — and his British wife, Sarah, who runs his production company, have decided.

The couple bought Elberton Old Manor, a grade II listed house set in 1.7 acres of gardens near Bristol, for just over £1m in 2004, and have spent about £500,000 creating a luxurious family country home. They have restored the property, which has almost 8,000 sq ft of living space and seven main bedrooms, and created state-of-the-art equestrian facilities, but now their daughters, Charlotte, 19, and Elektra, 16, are leaving home, so they are selling up for offers over £2m.

“The kitchen is quite neutral and the bathrooms are classic, but we have a piano, all our artwork and clearly defined living spaces with different feels to them,” Sarah says. “It’s a quirky, interesting home, and I think people want to know a place is truly loved and live in.”

Size matters

• Don’t be greedy. If you price your home correctly, it should sell, whatever its size.

• Keep up the cleaning and tidying. A home should be immaculate for every viewing, inside and out, not just the first.

• Discuss strategies with your agent. A particularly appealing room or feature should open and close a viewing: most decisions are made during the first five and last minutes.

• If you have extensive grounds, make sure you have a pit stop set up for refreshments — you don’t want to exhaust viewers.

• If your house needs work, and you can’t afford to get it done yourself, get detailed quotes prepared.

• All legal documents and paperwork should be in order from the off. Many buyers end up pulling out because they are not prepared to wait.

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Meet the UK’s rental elite

Contrary to popular belief, not every tenant is the victim of a cruel property market denying them the right to own a home and condemning them to a dangerous, overpriced hovel that has been left in disrepair by a modern Rachmanite.

A spring report suggested almost 80% of private renters were happy with their home and what they got for their money. Figures released last week also showed that, in July, average annual rents in London fell for the first time in six years, as landlords flooded the market with buy-to-lets. While the decrease was just 0.5% — or £7 on a typical £1,280 a month — Countrywide estate agency estimates that tenants now have 23% more homes to choose from in the UK than this time last year.

At the top end of the market, more people are opting to rent rather than buy. And they’re about as far from the image of the downtrodden tenant as you can imagine — we’re talking billionaire business types, international investors and some of the world’s top athletes. This new breed of affluent rentysomethings falls into four categories.

Stamp-Duty Savers

Sales of high-end homes have plummeted in recent months, mainly because of high levels of stamp duty. Duty payable on purchasing a property at £15m can now be as high as £2.14m — about three years’ rent for a home of comparable value.

Knight Frank estate agency says the number of homes worth £10m or more let successfully to renters in prime London increased by a third in the year to March, while sales of homes in the same price range and the same areas have dropped by about 30%.

“With enormous stamp duty, mistakes can be costly, so many more people are now renting. And with economic uncertainty, our overseas visitors are in no hurry to buy,” says Mark Tunstall, founder of the high-end letting agency Tunstall Property London.

Ironically, the glut of high-end renters is more than matched by the glut of frustrated owners who cannot sell their ultra-expensive homes and so seek to let them out. Knight Frank says rents fell 2.3% in prime central London in the year to May, with 18.1% more high-end flats and houses for renters to choose from.

Sporting Super-Renters

The specialist agency Tennis London finds homes near the All England Club for Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and the Williams sisters for Wimbledon fortnight, but it’s football’s new signings that make letting agents’ mouths really water. Professional soccer contracts finish on June 30, with the transfer window opening the next day, triggering up to 100 high-value player moves within the UK. “Many of these are working-class kids aged 19 and upwards who have come into money and find themselves renting homes that, outside London, could cost £10,000 to £15,000 per month,” says Stephen O’Kane, head of the sports, media and entertainment division at Savills estate agency.

Footballers such as Olivier Giroud and Hugo Lloris have opted to rent rather than buy. Chelsea players gravitate to Cobham in Surrey; Spurs players look to Hampstead; and signings for the Manchester teams head to Cheshire. “They often want new-builds with modern interiors, perhaps in gated complexes,” says O’Kane. “Most know that their professional lives can be relatively brief, and so not that many commit to buy, at least not while they’re young. Many recognise that property is a good investment, so they put some of their earnings into a buy-to-let, even if they rent themselves,” he says.

Global Brexit Opportunists

Post-Brexit, long-term uncertainty may create the occasional bargain home for Brits moving up the ladder, but the real winners are foreign buyers in central London who are benefiting from lower asking prices and a weak pound.

Some feel the sales market is on the floor and have bought, but others — along with some canny locals — are renting because they think prices have further to fall. “We may see more and more would-be buyers opting to rent in the short term to give them greater flexibility. When the buying market slows down, the rental market usually picks up,” says Jo Eccles, founder of the buying agency Sourcing Property.

Camilla Dell, managing partner at Black Brick, another buying firm, says the fear of a possible second Scottish independence referendum is also boosting demand from Scots for high-end rentals in London.

Music, Movie and TV Tenants

Matt Damon took over a pad in Paddington, London, while filming the fifth instalment of the Bourne franchise. Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill all rented near Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire when they shot Star Wars: The Force Awakens last year. The accommodation costs were nothing compared to the $2bn the movie made.

“Film shoots start at about 5am so renting near the studio is important. Likewise, if a musician rents while he’s doing a tour of the UK, being near Heathrow or transport links becomes the key criterion,” O’Kane says.

There have been no reports of A-listers complaining about mould or dodgy electrics — although Margot Robbie, the poster girl for A-list flatsharers, has moaned about the boys in her shared Clapham house stealing loo roll.

Having money to spend on the rent doesn’t guarantee a perfect rental property. Some consolation, perhaps, for the more typical tenant who is saving for that elusive deposit on their first home.

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