The combined wealth of real estate’s top 250 investors has topped £300 billion for the first time in 13 years, according to the Estates Gazette Rich List.

The total wealth of the list’s top 250 investors comes in at £306 billion, representing a 40% increase on last year’s total of £218.3 billion.

The list was compiled by Dr Philip Beresford and features a whopping 60 billionaires this year. In 2009, the list included just nine investors with a property wealth of more than £1 billion.

Spanish billionaire Amancio Ortega, owner of fashion business Inditex, tops the list with a fortune of £45.7 billion.

Meanwhile Wang Jianlin, a Chinese developer, takes second place with £22.6bn.

Third place is taken by the Bertarelli family with property wealth of just over £10bn.

Beresford, who also compiles the Sunday Times Rich List, commented: “The amount of wealth on the list shows the extraordinary attraction of the London commercial and residential market to overseas billionaires.”

Just 16 of the list’s 250 entrants are women and Noella Pio-Kivlehan, Estates Gazette Rich List Editor, said throughout the 13-year history of the Right List, women have been under-represented.

“It shows that it is still difficult for women to be more entrepreneurial. We can only hope that this will change in the coming years,” she said.

The list also draws attention to the philanthropic efforts of property tycoons, revealing that forty of the most philanthropic in the sector gave more than £400m to charity this year.

The biggest donor by value was Ernesto Bertarelli, who gave away £67m of his fortune, and the biggest by proportion of wealth was Sir Martin Laing, who donated some 18% (£24m) of his total wealth to charitable causes.