For most people, it is beyond imagination that you would pay £50m for a flat – let alone that you would pay £3.5m Stamp Duty Land Tax on it.

But that is exactly what happened to the buyer of an apartment in Princes Gate, London.

The biggest deal of the year so far reported by the Land Registry happened in July. The property cost almost twice as much as the third most expensive deal – a £26.5m home in west London.

Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise Eye readers too much, but the block where the £50m apartment sold looks surprisingly mundane.

A bit brutalist, if anything. The buyers must have been paying an awful lot for the address – and the marble fittings, cinema, etc.

By contrast, the second most expensive deal of this year (a mere £27.9m home, with a Stamp Duty bill of £1.85m) does at least look interesting. As long as you don’t mind what looks like a very small garden which is seriously overlooked.

The properties are among 11,115 homes which sold for more than £1m this year.

Almost all were in London. Of the most expensive 500 sales of this year, only 30 were outside the capital.

What is interesting is that these are sales reported by the Land Registry – so by definition are historic.

As, presumably, are the SDLT payments.

The ‘top ten most expensive sales’ list compiled by ITV News is here