More than 50,000 over-65s in London live in properties worth more than £1m – giving them a combined property wealth of almost £130bn.
New research has found that all but two London boroughs are home to pensioners in million-pound houses – and that almost £70bn of pensioners’ property wealth is concentrated in just 13 square miles across two West London boroughs.
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While young Londoners spend tens of thousands on rent before they can afford to buy a house, pensioners hold tens of billions in property wealth as they feel the benefit of rapidly increasing house prices.
In many cases these older homeowners would have bought their properties for a fraction of today’s prices. They would have benefited too from higher inflation, eroding the value of their mortgages relative to their incomes.
Over 10,000 of the residents of Kensington and Chelsea are over-65s who live in properties worth at least £1m – or 6.3pc of the borough’s population of 160,000.
The second most affluent borough for pensioner property wealth is Westminster, where 7,152 people are over-65s whose homes are worth more than £1m.
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Camden, which includes areas around leafy Regent’s Park and Hampstead, has 7,775 property millionaires aged 65 or over.
Just two London boroughs – Barking and Dagenham and Newham – had no pensioners living in million-pound properties at all. Bexley had just one.
In total almost 52,000 people – or 0.6pc of Londoners – are over-65s with properties worth more than £1m.
The research also reveals just how much property wealth exists in the most expensive areas of London.
In Kensington and Chelsea, the average price of a property worth over £1m was a £4.5m, and the total value of £1m plus properties held by pensioners in the borough was an astonishing £45bn.
In Westminster the total was £24bn.
In total the value of the property worth more than £1m held by over-65s was £127,509,703,000 – more than £127bn.
The data, provided by data management company CACI, shows the stark difference in property wealth between old and young people.
British pensioners have combined property wealth of £926bn, according to data from equity release company Key Retirement, released earlier this year. This has increased by £9bn since January.
Meanwhile last week Telegraph Money revealed that just 45pc of under-45s own their own home – almost 20 percentage points lower than in 2004.
