"Lost" Â£450m in Â£1 coins could have helped 20,000 home buyers onto the ladder

Today the old £1 coin will no longer be accepted as legal tender, although a number of stores including the post office will continue to accept them for an extended period of time. As a result, it’s being reported that as much as £450 million has been lost overnight by those that forgot to check down the back of the couch. But what does that equate to in property terms? Even in a market as expensive as the UK, home buyers could have clubbed together with their old coins and put down a 10% mortgage on nearly 20,000 properties (19,895), or bought 1,990 properties outright at the current UK average of £226,185. In the North East, it could have stretched to 34,979 mortgages or 3,383 properties with the average house price in Scotland of £149,185 also meaning over 30,000 mortgages could have been secured or 3,000 homes could have been bought. The much higher price of property in London means just 9,208 mortgage applications could have been made or 921 properties could have been bought for the £450m, although this falls to just 323 in London’s most prestigious borough - Kensington and Chelsea. However, in the capital’s most affordable, Barking and Dagenham, the missing pound coins would have meant an additional 15,530 mortgage applications or 1,553 homes bought. In Bristol, the £450m pot would have secured 1650 properties outright or 9,208 mortgages, while in Liverpool it would have stretched to 37,391 mortgages with a 10% deposit or 3,530 homes. Founder and CEO of eMoov.co.uk, Russell Quirk, commented: “Although the figure of how many old coins are still in circulation can’t be known for certain, it’s a shame that they will be forever resigned to a life of darkness and dust down the back of the nation’s armchairs and sofas. While the issue of the UK’s current housing crisis remains very much about the lack of stock, it’s a shame that such a sum of money will be lost when it could have gone a long way in helping address the issues we are currently facing as a nation of aspirational homeowners.”