A PENTHOUSE apartment on Southend seafront has been sold for more than £2million - making it the town's most expensive home ever.

The plush apartment, located on the top floor of the new Chapman Sands development on Chalkwell Esplanade, has been snapped up by a mystery buyer and highlights the massive increase in property prices around the town.

Yvonne Healy, director of Dedman Residential Property, which is handling the sale of all eight apartments which make up the luxury development, said: "We have already sold four of them. They have all been bought by people from the Southend area. The penthouse was sold for in excess of £2million, but we are not revealing the name of the buyer or the actual price.

"We are certain this is the highest price ever paid for a property in the borough and it is certainly the highest for an apartment.

"We have just completed on the Old Vicarage in Bournes Green Chase, which is a large Victorian house in four acres of ground and that did not make £2million."

Ms Healy said the eight properties in the four-storey block had only been marketed with one advertisement in the Echo's sister paper, the Southend Standard, with prices starting from around £900,000.

"It may seem a high price for an apartment on the seafront, but these have been built to a high standard and they have a stunning view across the estuary.

"Chapman Sands was built by a Shoebury-based company Elmore Construction and it is really spectacular."

Dedmans will now be marketing the remaining four apartments across a wider area, but Ms Healy said she expected the remaining ones would be bought by people from the Southend district.

She added: "It seems apartments on the seafront are an expanding market with people happy to pay prices for top quality property."