Being valued at £2M doesn't mean you could sell all of them for that price or that the people living in them paid £2M for them.
The sort of person who could afford a nice house 3+ decades ago and spent the intervening years living in London isn't likely to move to somewhere more rural just because they can realise an investment.
> Being valued at £2M doesn't mean you could sell all of them for that price or that the people living in them paid £2M for them
But in London these houses do sell, normally very quickly (and bullshit apartments in shiny new blocks that are in same price bracket I guess same, generally they do seem to sell, but I assume that's just parking money for tax purposes so not quite same thing).
The sort of person who could afford a nice house 3+ decades ago and spent the intervening years living in London isn't likely to move to somewhere more rural just because they can realise an investment.