Buckingham Palace has gone up 9000% in value

According to estimates by the Nationwide Building Society, Buckingham Palace has gone up in value by 9000% since 1952 when the Queen came to the throne.

They estimated that Buckingham Palace was worth £11m when the Queen came to the throne and has now risen to around the £1bn mark. Windsor Castle was valued at about £2m in 1952 – it is now estimated to be worth £189m. In comparison, their figures show that the average UK house in 1952 was valued at £1,891. That figure is now £162,722.

Nationwide’s House Price Index suggests that prices were up by just 0.3% over the last month, and 0.7% lower than May 2011. “Over the last eighteen months, house prices have been fairly stable, despite the challenging economic backdrop,” said Robert Gardner, Nationwide’s Chief Economist. “Demand for homes remains subdued on the back of weak labour market conditions, but the lack of homes coming onto the market is providing support for prices. This is in part a reflection of the low rate of building in recent years which has failed to keep pace with household formation.”

Their report suggests that:
* house prices remain high relative to incomes, at more than five times average earnings
* epayments on a typical mortgage are equal to around 31% of take home pay
* demand for housing is outstripping the available supply with rental growth outpacing wage growth by a significant margin.

Useful web sites for more information

• Independent Property Search Engine
• Independent House & Home section

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• snotcricket

  So the tenant should be paying us at least £50,000,000/ann in rent?

• http://twitter.com/francessmith frances smith

  are the any plans to sell buckingham palace? otherwise the valuation is meaningless, and there are some very dodgy neighbours nearby.

• I_See_Dead_Truth

  So really most homes have gone up by, according to your calculations, about 9,000% since 1952 is what you are saying.  Sorry, I may be missing something, but there does not seem to be any story in the article.  Why single out Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle? 

  …Unless…could it be that Alex is merely trying to take a pot-shot at the Queen?  An 86 year old lady who has been working in the same job everyday since she was 25…

  I might be interested in knowing things like…say, the value of Blairs homes since 1952, or Browns, or Camerons…oh wait…except for Brown, born in 1951, none of the others were even born before the Queen started her job.

• Kugelschreiber

  It should all be divided up into nice little council flats

• VoodooQ

  With so many people living squalor how is it justified that this handful have unimagined luxury?

  Can’t the people of the UK grow some and give the Windsors the boot, confiscate the property around the nation and use it to finance free education for all citizens?

• Exposeallpaidabusrs

  “Housing market” is a serious social and economic trap. Time to break it for good.