An Englishman's home is his castle
A simple, if somewhat time consuming, way of identifying new prospects is to do a search on your database for those who live in one of the low tax/no tax countries. It is no guarantee of wealth to live in one of these countries, but another useful starting point for further research.
Here is a fairly comprehensive list:
Andorra, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Austria, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Campione d'Italia, Cayman Islands, Cook Islands, Cyprus, Delaware, Dominica, Gibraltar, Grenada, Guernsey, Hong Kong, Isle of Man, Jersey, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Madeira, Malaysia, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Monaco, Montserrat, Nauru, Nevis, Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles, Niue, Panama, Puerto Rico, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and The Grenadines, Samoa, Sark, Seychelles, Singapore, Switzerland, Turks & Caicos, U.S. Virgin Islands, Vanuatu, Western Samoa.
More information about tax havens can be found here and here.
Property in dear old Blighty
Given that someone in a £1,000,000 property is more likely to be wealthy than someone in a £50,000 property, one tried and tested way of identifying wealthy prospects is through their property.
One easy way to do this is to look for people who live in large country houses, as they often end in one of the following: Abbey, Castle, Court, Hall, Manor or Park. (E.g. Lacock Abbey, Sudeley Castle, Coughton Court, Norman Hall, Owlpen Manor & Dyrham Park).
So, simply search your database (or to be specific, just the first address field) for Abbey, Castle, Court, Hall, Manor or Park, to bring up as many large country properties as you can.
This will also, of course, bring up a large number of unwanted addresses. I.e. anyone on your database living in Manor Road, Castle Street, Park Hill, and so on, but it will also bring up (if they are on your database!) various large country properties.
After that – it's up to you!
Another way to identify wealthy prospects is to identify 'wealthy postcodes' - areas with expensive properties - and look for people on your database who live at those postcodes.
Of course, living in an expensive property is no guarantee of wealth. If some old biddy has lived in the family home for 50 or 60 years, the value of the property will have shot up since it was bought, even though she herself may have little money. But she may still be worth cultivating - after all, she can't take it with her, can she? Have a word with your legacy department to consider how best to approach her.
So, how do you identify the wealthy postcodes?
1. Mouseprice.com 200 Most Expensive Streets
In February 2007, the property website mouseprice.com produced a list of the 200 most expensive streets (published online by the Daily Mail) based upon information from the Land Registry.
Then you simply run a query using the two search terms (the street name and the postcode prefix) to bring up all the people on your database who live in that particular street. This is, of course, very time consuming, but it is a tried and tested method of identifying prospects. Do keep track of the streets/postcodes you have checked (on a spreadsheet, for example) so that you know where you have searched and so avoid searching for the same street twice.
2. EuroDirect's Millionaire Neighbourhood Report.
The Millionaire Neighbourhood Report is compiled from EuroDirect's 'Millionaire's Club' database, which has been built from the capture of over 12 million shareholder records from the registers of FT Top 500 companies. By calculating the value of shares held in every company for each individual investor, EuroDirect claims to be able to identify over six million affluent investors and over 50,000 millionaires.
The following report provides a list of millionaires by postcode prefix - EH4, NW3, KT22, etc.
First, go to the Property Market Analysis page of mouseprice.com.
Select the postcode area that you want (e.g. NW), and then the individual postcode prefix (e.g. NW3). Then scroll down to NW3 Property Hotspots and select the link for street rankings for NW3.
This will bring up a list of the top 20 streets ranked by average property price.
Then it's a case of searching for the relevant streets & postcode prefixes on your database.
This facility can also be used to identify the property hotspots for any part of the country, if you wish to identify prospects by region.
3. Estate agents' websites.
Many estate agents allow one to search for properties by price (e.g. £1,000,000+ or £10,000,000+). Simply do a search for the most expensive properties and make a note of the postcodes. E.g. Primelocation.
The National Association of Estate Agents' website is also a useful search resource and allows one to search for estate agents by region.
If you already know the postcode of a prospect and want to know what their property is worth, try searching for it on HousePricemaps or Hometrack. Many websites offer this service, but these are my favourites.