There has been much speculation in the media in recent weeks about one of Nick Clegg’s favourite political goals –  a ‘super council tax’ or ‘mansion tax’ – being included within George Osborne’s budget, due to be revealed next month.

Details of the tax have always been hard to establish but properties worth over either £1 million or £2 million would pay an extra 1% tax, collected by local authorities via the council tax. So the owner of a home worth £1 million face an additional duty of £10,000 and for a £2 million property £20,000 and so on up the scale.

Nick Clegg: has he lost his bid to bring in a mansion tax?

It is understandable why the collation would want to raise such a tax at a time when the government’s budget has yet to be balanced, but is it a practical way to raise the funds?

At first the figures look promising. According to estate agent Knight Frank there are 155,000 homes in the UK worth over £1 million, which would help Osborne raise at least £1.55 billion. On the other hand there are 42,000 homes worth £2 million or more, which would raise at least £840 million.

The word mansion tax is misleading, of course. Many of Britain’s £1 million homes are not huge piles but apartments, bungalows and terraced Victorian houses. For example, in the London Borough of Westminster there are 630 million-pound homes for sale, of which 430 are flats. And in Buckinghamshire there are 540 million-pound homes, of which half are what many might call ‘ordinary’ three or four bedroom houses.

One other concern has been who owns these properties. While many are wealthy families, some are not and those opposing the mansion tax say the property rich (but income poor) will be unfairly punished by it; for the crime of having not moved to a smaller house beforehand.

Lastly, many say a mansion tax would be difficult and expensive to collect. Local government data on how much homes are worth – i.e. council tax bands – are extremely out of date and last calculated in 1991, so the cost of working which homes are really worth over £1 or £2 million would cost £200m, somewhat defeating the tax’s purpose.

Such arguments seem to have got through over the weekend. Yesterday, The Sunday Times quoted an anonymous Whitehall source who said Osborne would not be introducing a mansion tax after unrest within his party over the tax – a group headed up by the communities’ secretary Eric Pickles, who has opposed it since at least August 2011.

Conservative MP for Chesham and Amersham and Secretary of State for Wales Cheryl Gillan received a drubbing this week when it was revealed how she had sold her constituency home late last year, just before the government’s green light to run the second high speed train line from London to the Midlands.

And a route that more importantly will run just 500 yards from the Amersham’s ancient central streets and her former home. Gillan has said the sale of the terraced property (pictured, below with the agent board outside) was driven by the property’s steep and narrow stairs, which both Cheryl and her 84-year-old husband were increasingly unable to negotiate.

Photo credit: Rex Features/Ben Cawthra

But some constituents in the town have taken a different view and posters put up locally have been unforgiving in their cricism – as has media commentary.

Land Registry records show Gillan sold the property for £320,000 although originally she was asking around £380,000 when it was put on the market back in July 2010, which is still after it was know that HS2 would be screaming past the town – as highlighted by 2009 Department of Transport maps.

Photo credit: Rex Features

At the time (she been the area’s MP since 1992) Gillan was vocal in her opposition to HS2, at one point threatening to resign her cabinet position if it went ahead.

Her campaign work may have failed to halt the project but there has been some success. The planned route has shifted, moving nearer to her home (by skirting south rather than north around the town) and will also now go under Amersham via a tunnel rather than being above ground within a cutting, as had originally been proposed.

So why did it take Gillan 18 months to sell her home? A mixture of the property being over-priced; the effect of the HS2 route and (more likely) its tiny proportions all conspired – No.41 Whielden Street is a two-up, two-down cottage with a very small courtyard garden and double yellows outside the front door.

Two people who think the property has potential though are the 50-somethings who bought it off Gillan, most likely as an investment. They are currently offering it to rent at £1,350, a rental return of 5.06% before costs, putting it on a par with London (5.25%) and better than many UK cities including Brighton (4.8%), Manchester (4.384%) and Newcastle (3.58%), PrimeLocation.com but-to-let figures show.

The heady days of buyers queuing outside new developments armed with deposits and desperate to part with their cash are over, or so we’re lead to believe. But the launch of a recent central London development suggests it still carries on, albeit rarely.

Over 1,900 buyers registered interest for Central Square’s 170 new apartments in the capital’s edgy Clerkenwell, walking distance from the Square Mile, so we thought the launch party last week might be busy. When the doors opened at 5pm in rushed a flurry of buyers who, despite previously registering interest, had not been allowed to buy until then.

Between wine, canapés and viewings the prospective buyers – of all ages and nationalities – quizzed the selling agents. Then like the bear pit of a Wall Street trading floor, they started to buy. With two-bedroom apartments starting at £575,000 this is not a purchase to be bought in a hurry, but a buzz of chatter on the phones to banks or loved ones ensued and deposits of £2,000 per reservation were paid on credit cards.

By 9pm, 37 apartments were already reserved and over a chilled glass of Sauvignon Blanc we quizzed the Chief Executive of Mount Anvil, Killian Hurley, about the success of their latest launch.

Hurley said one of his tricks is to spend more on the finish, which means investing more in the product, but they sell faster. “You’ll notice when you go to look around the show apartments,” he told us. And we did. Every apartment has at least one balcony, the kitchens and bathrooms exuded high quality and we loved the heated wall and towel rail in the bathroom as well as the floor-to-ceiling windows which add to the sense of space.

And, unlike many new apartments, there’s plenty of storage space and built-in wardrobes. In the two bedroom flat there is a huge open plan living and entertaining space adjoining a large decked terrace and we were surprised at the decent size of the second bedroom.

So it is easy to see why these homes are flying off the shelves. And at £400,000 for one bedroom and £575,000 for two, these are not marketed at the wealthy City bankers looking to spend their bonuses. These pads are being snapped up by young professionals, often working in finance in the City (but not at the bonus level), looking for a trendy place near work.

Central is the operative word in Central Square; it’s within 14 minutes walk to St Pauls, Shoreditch and Liverpool Street. Brian De’ath, the sales director told us that the international buyers often aren’t used to commuting so it’s important for them to walk to work. It’s no wonder then that the development’s marketing slogan is “Unexpectedly close by. Hit snooze then stroll into the office”.

To give you more of a sense of its location, here’s a fun clip of the Kit Kat advert which was filmed in the building site of Central Square – look at the skyline, the building taking shape and its location.

And if you want to reserve an apartment at Central Square you’d better be quick.

Grand Designs presenter Kevin McCloud has long been a vocal supporter of green homes. But how does he fit that into his love of traditional architecture.

“It’s very important that we get this right,” says McCloud. ”Dealing with the historic pre-1919 stock is a completely different ball game to dealing with houses built in the ’60s or 1980s.”

Watch the full video of McCloud’s take on green homes below.

Of all the probing question Kevin McCloud asks each couple on Grand Designs, the most anticipated is ‘how much did you spend’?

But despite his best efforts to unearth some financial secrets, most people featured on the long-running Channel 4 series are guarded about their expenditure and the richer they are, the tighter their lips.

Last week’s couple, Tim O’Donovan and his wife Philomena, had their clamped particularly tightly and despite weighty badgering by McCloud to reveal all, the Cardiff-based would only go as far as to say that that their costs had been ‘heavy’.

It’s hard to know how much their outlay was on Tenby’s former Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI) lifeboat station, but £500,000 would be a good guess.

And one fact we can reveal is how much they paid for the property, which following its conversion is now a four-bedroom luxury holiday home for the couple.

Land Registry records note that the O’Donovan bought it in January 2010 for £100,000, which included the structure and foreshore it stands on, all freehold.

But it’s quite surprising that they paid anything for it. The RNLI, after moving out to its new, £5.5 million station next door, began a protracted and desperate search find a new owner for its old address. Refused permission to demolish it, the RNLI was faced with demolition costs running into the hundreds of thousands.

But Tenby’s local were keen to see it preserved, particularly as there’s been a station there for at least half a century. Records go as far back as 1962 and original ownership appears to have been shared between Pembrokeshire County Council and the RNLI under a leasehold arrangement, while the Crown Commissioners owned the freehold.

And it was the Crown relinquishing that freehold which helped persuade the O’Donovans to plough so much money into the property, which they will no doubt be spending a lot of time in given that they live just 85 miles down the coast in a relatively modest detached mock Tudor house in the northern suburbs of Cardiff, where Tim runs a demolition and civic engineering firm.

It’s a familiar story in today’s Prime property market – a Cheshire mansion bought for £1.85 million in 2007, bull-dozed, re-built and put on the market for £5 million. Two years and a price drop later Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff has finally sold his Prestbury pile – to another sports star, footballer Peter Crouch.

Apart from the set of cricket wickets carved above the front door and a mosaic of the Ashes urn in the swimming pool, this is the type of uber-luxurious house that was built for a footballer – even though it was actually built by a cricketer.

Flintoff bought the plot in October 2007 from ex-Fulham football manager Mark Hughes and after fights with locals and an initially refused planning application, he was able to knock down the existing property and build a six bedroom mansion akin to others on one of the UK’s most expensive streets, Withinlee Road, AKA Footballer’s Alley.

The house was designed for Flintoff family life and includes a large pool plus a smaller one for their three children. It also has a luxury gym and home cinema but the Flintoffs never lived in their made-to-measure home. Instead, they turned their attention to the dizzying heights of Dubai and their Cheshire mansion has waited patiently for two years for a buyer.

Despite being in Prestbury – the centre of footballer land (the Rooneys, Ferdinand and Tevez all live nearby) – Freddie wasn’t bowled over with offers for his £5 million pad. And only after changing estate agents, dropping the asking price by £500,000 – the price of a decent size house to most – plus the luck of footballer Peter Crouch moving Clubs, has the house finally sold.

Crouch is transferring from Tottenham Hotspur to Stoke City and moving up North with his new wife, Abbey Clancy and their six month old daughter and we have no doubt the house will suit the star couple’s needs perfectly, model Abbey will surely love the huge walk-in wardrobe (pictured above) and the WAG neighbours.

It’s been clear for some now that house prices at the top of Britain’s property market have survived the economic down better than the general market.

And in particularly this is true for the nation’s grand country estates. The latest example is to be found in the wilds of Lincolnshire, a hall that’s risen in price handsomely even though it’s a long way from the sought-after streets of central London or the white hot countryside of Surrey.

Holywell Hall - for sale with its estate in Lincolnshire

The Holywell estate includes a large Grade II* Georgian manor house, lavish and large gardens revived and redesigned by Bunny Guiness plus cottages, a fishing temple and lake, orangery, outbuildings, arable farm (with farmhouse) and shoot. Also, the main hall’s West Wing can be used as a stand-alone home.

But as well as a long list of features, Holywell also has a long and extraordinary history. This includes 11^th century origins and mentions in the Domesday Book before it was bought by Lady Mary Barnardiston for her nephew Samuel Reynardson in 1728. It then stayed in the family until the 1950s and has only had three owners since.

The orangery, for sale as part of the Holywell Estate.

The first of those is undocumented, but in 1994 the estate – which had fallen into disrepair  – was bought for £4 million by Jean Shanks,  who made a substantial fortune setting up a large clinical pathology business based in the London that was later floated on the stock market.

While studying chemistry at Oxford she worked alongside Margaret Thatcher and, after setting up her business, married a Russian prince and was also known as Princess Yuri Galitzin. Using both names she gave away millions to philanthropic causes including medical research and music.

And the Hollywell Estate’s superb condition today is largely down to Shanks, who lavished a fair slice of her £17m personal fortune on the property and gardens.

This included rebuilding the entrance, adding lavish chandeliers to the hallway, decorating the five reception rooms, ten bedrooms and eight bathrooms and upgrading the 810-acre estate.

One of the five reception rooms within Holywell Hall.

It was then bought in 2003 by Robert and Sally Gillespie for £7 million, an appreciation in price of over £300,000 year. But the Gillespie’s have done even better and, if they can sell it for their asking price, will have made nearly a million a year on the property which is probably a relief for the couple, who have carried on the improvement work of Jean Shanks, including adding land to the estate.

Holywell Estate is now on for sale with Bidwells for £14.5 million.

Want to buy a home overlooking the sea? Then any estate agent will tell you that whether it’s in the UK or overseas, expect to pay a premiumof up to 20% despite the risk (in some areas) of coastal erosion. But a seaside home that’s different in almost every way may soon be on offer, if billionaire dot com entrepreneur Peter Thiel (pictured, bottom) can get his latest big idea off the ground.

Thiel, who is the founder of online payment firm Paypal, has sunk (sorry, invested) £700,000 in a plan to create a floating island (pictured, above) not governed by the rules of any country.

The structures will reportedly have a displacement of 12,000 tons, be diesel-powered (so not that green) and initially be home to approximately 270 people. By linking the islands together they could grow to eventually support millions.

Thiel plans to anchor the islands in international waters making them therefore exempt from jurisdictions covering taxes, regulations, building codes, welfare requirements and weapons restrictions.

In 2009, a 3D design competition was held to help people visualise what these sea-bound communities may look like and the winning entry by Hungarian architectural cum graphic designer András Gyõrfi is described as a ‘recreational resort’, complete with grass, trees and a large communal swimming pool.

But what at first looks like a floating apartment block is in fact a experiment in creating a new society – which Thiel hopes can be achieved on the islands. Prices for properties have yet to be released, but despite it’s utopian aims, PrimeLocation.com thinks they won’t cheap.

Do you watch Kevin McCloud on Channel 4′s Grand Designs TV show and think ‘that could be me building my own home?

Then from 7th-9th October Birmingham is where you should be for inspiration. The live version of the TV series is at the NEC exhibition centre this year, which will be hosting the all-painting, bricklaying and roof tiling Grand Designs Live starring the ever-eloquent Mr McCloud.

Kevin McCloud speaking at last year's Birmingham Grand Designs event

Hundreds of suppliers and experts will be joining McCloud at the show so if you want advice and information about building your own home including interiors, technology, bathrooms, kitchens and much more, then PrimeLocation.com the show’s official property partner, has a 2 for 1 offer on tickets to the event. To find out how to take advantage of this deal and for terms and conditions go to the PrimeLocation.com website.

This is a Mayday call to the famously Welsh – and wealthy – actress Catherine Zeta-Jones. Catherine, your country needs you to save a historically important Welsh mansion that is falling into disrepair. Other buyers have so far shied away; one had hoped to turn it into a boutique hotel and golf course but then the recession hit. This huge restoration task desperately needs someone with millions in the bank and a passion for Welsh heritage.

The building in question is Piercefield, a Grade II listed forgotten country house. Although its history records date back to the 14th Century, what stands today was mostly built by 18th Century architect Sir John Soane, who also built the Bank of England. Sadly Piercefield is now just a shell; the outer walls remain mostly intact but there’s not much else left. But even with a crumbling facade, it stirs the imagination of what this handsome house might once have been like.

Set in 129 acres of parkland, with a gardener’s cottage, stables and other outbuildings (also in need of saving). It sits in a grand position at the end of a meandering drive way and overlooks the Monmouthshire countryside. Its position is considered the gateway to Wales and it’s close to the market town of Chepstow.

Despite its glorious setting, Piercefield has been left to rot. It hasn’t been lived in since 1921, when the last of the Clay Family died. The estate was then bought by Chepstow Racecourse Company. And, because the land now had a use, the house was left untouched – except for being used as target practise by American forces stationed nearby in the Second World War.

Now the racecourse want to sell the house and most of its land but as yet no one has stepped up to the challenge. In 2005 journalist Marcus Binney wrote an article for the Times and called it “one of the most challenging restorations of the 21st century” – and it is. We met selling agent Jackson-Stopps and Staff’s Dawn Carritt to find out more about this 17^th Century mansion.

It’s on the market for £2 million and Carritt says restoration costs will be between £7 and £15 million and when restored it’s not likely to be worth as much as it cost to repair.

So, who would buy a falling down mansion; spend their time and money restoring it to see no financial gain? “It needs someone with a big heart, as well as a big pocket”, says Carritt, “Someone who feels they have achieved everything in business will buy it as a way of restoring the heritage of Wales and putting something back in to the country.”

Our thoughts turn to wealthy Welsh people who are passionate about their heritage and would want to do something to save it. Catherine Zeta-Jones and husband Michael Douglas, who have a net worth of £180 million (according to this year’s Sunday Times Rich List) are an obvious choice.

Swansea born Zeta-Jones is proud of her Welsh heritage, she always talks fondly of her homeland, speaks the language fluently and supports several Welsh events and charities – the most recent was supporting the National Trust stopping Llyndy Isaf, a 614 acre farm in Snowdonia, ending up in the hands of developers.

Welsh pop star Tom Jones is reported to have £140 million and could also be worth sending the property details to.

Carritt says Piercefield’s restoration will be a challenge but the rewards would be priceless – we say they’d have to be.