House prices soar by 47,000 per cent in the 90 years since the Queen was born
The price of the average British home has ballooned by 47,000 per cent since Queen Elizabeth II was born in April 1926, new research shows, rising from £619 to £291,505 over the past 90 years.
Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and analysed by Jackson-Stops & Staff to mark the Queen's birthday later this month found that between 1926 and the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, average UK house prices rose by only £40, to £659, a rise of 6.5 per cent.
By 1953, however, the year of the Queen’s coronation, prices had jumped more than threefold to £2,006. In 1966, the year England won the world cup, house prices stood at £3,840. Over the next decade, prices rose by 331 per cent to £12,704, rising to £36,276 in 1986 and doubling to £69,889 by 1996.
The 471-fold increase in prices since 1996 makes property better investment than even gold and equities – up 20,425 per cent and 11,685 per cent over the same period.
Meanwhile in that time the UK’s cost of living index has risen by 5,413 per cent, which implies that £619 cash in 1926 would be now worth around £34,105.
Nick Leeming, Chairman of Jackson-Stops & Staff, said: “It is not the fact that property has outperformed over the last 90 years that is surprising, but the sheer scale of it. The 471-fold increase would take a 65cm pot plant, which could easily fit under a kitchen table, to a giant tree that is taller than London’s Shard, standing at 306 metres.”
The estate agent has also calculated that if prices continue to rise at the same rate as they have in the last 23 years, the average property will cost £1.3m when Prince Charles celebrates his 90th birthday in 2038, and to £11.3m when Prince William reaches the same age in 2072.
When Prince George turns 90 in 2103, London house prices will average £667m.
“While these projections are seemingly unbelievable, if anyone was told back in 1926 that a new house purchase valued at £619 would be worth nearly £300,000 in 90 years’ time, it would almost certainly have been laughed out of court,” Leeming said.