Britain’s booming pandemic housing market created 36,000 new millionaires last year, as sellers cashed in on rocketing sale prices.
The country now boasts 609,000 high-net-worth individuals, an increase of 6.3pc in 2021, according to consulting company Capgemini’s annual study of the world’s rich.
Making the grade requires at least $1m (£820m) of investable assets, meaning individuals hold that much wealth beyond property such as their main home.
The combined riches of the UK’s millionaires, meanwhile, grew by 7.4pc, reversing the modest declines suffered in 2020 on the back of the pandemic.
It came as house prices boomed in 2021. Prices were up more than 13pc at the peak of the growth spike in June, compared with the same month a year earlier. The pace had cooled by December, when the stamp duty holiday was over, but price rises remained high by historical standards with the average property up 9.5pc on the year.
The value of the average home has risen even further since, hitting another new record of £278,000 in March, up £24,000 on the year, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The UK has the sixth most millionaire investors, according to Capgemini. The US tops the list, with almost 7.5m displaying wealth on this scale, followed by Japan with 3.7m.
Germany is third with 1.6m, maintaining its lead over the UK with a 6.4pc increase in its number of rich inhabitants. Rounding out the top five is China, with 1.5m and France, which rose 8.5pc to pull ahead of Britain with a total of 775m millionaires.
This is largely due to the spectacular 29pc rise in French stock markets last year, its best performance in two decades. It almost doubled the 15pc increase in UK equities over the same period.
Globally, the number of ultra-high net worth individuals – those with more than $30m to invest – climbed by almost 10pc on the year. That outstripped the 7.7pc growth in the number of “millionaires next door” – those with between $1m and $5m – and the 8.5pc increase in the group of mid-ranking millionaires in between.
Now, however, rising inflation is slowing the world economy and forcing central banks to raise interest rates, threatening stock markets and house prices.
The world’s wealthy have lost around 4pc of their riches so far this year as “high inflation since the start of 2022 and talk about interest rate hikes from central banks have spurred stock market corrections that are accelerating”, estimated Capgemini.
“Due to high exposure to equity, HNWI wealth in North America is expected to be most impacted followed by Europe which also copes with the ongoing geopolitical crises.”
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