Most expensive street names in the UK

It's not just the location of a property that dictates its price - even the name of the street plays a part!

What’s in a name?

When you go looking to buy a property, there are many things you want to take account of. Are there enough bedrooms? What are the transport links like? Are there the right local amenities, schools, parks to meet your requirements?

However, most of us don’t take much notice of the actual street name. That might be a mistake, as new research has shown.

Hills and Lanes

A study by property website Zoopla has found that the highest valued properties in the UK are found on streets with ‘Hill’ in the name, where the average price is a whopping £341,466 – well over 50% more expensive than the average price of a property in the UK, which stands at £218,705 according to Zoopla’s Zed Index.

Being based at the top of the hill was desirable back in the medieval days for tactical reasons, and clearly even in the 21st Century it holds a certain allure!

However, you can also expect your home to be worth in excess of £300,000 if you live on a ‘Lane’. According to Zoopla’s research, homes on Lanes are worth an average of an impressive £328,378.

Other names making up the top five include Mews (£294,869), Park (£283,069) and Green (£269,861).

Nabbing a bargain

However, if you fancy nabbing a bargain, buying a property on a ‘Street’ might be a good idea – the average property found on roads with that name cost just £155,515, less than half what you would be forking out to buy on a Hill!

Another budget street name to look out for is ‘Terrace’, which boasts an average value of £156,387, while ‘Crescent’ (£176,942), ‘Court’ (£178,488) and ‘View’ (£184,546) also present some cracking opportunities to snap up a brilliant deal on a property.

Oh how common...

So why is there such a big difference in price between the various street names? One theory is that streets with more exclusive and rare names will be worth more, while the common street names don’t really add to their locale’s attractiveness.

However, the results from Zoopla don’t completely support this. For example, while Mews and Hill are two of the least common location names within the top 20 that Zoopla has compiled, with 4,825 and 6,838 streets respectively, Lane – with an average value of a monster £328,378 remember – is the fifth most common, with 45,058 separate streets carrying the word as part of their name.

Just to reinforce that this theory doesn’t really hold weight, the least common of the top 20 street names, ‘Square’, with just 3,859 streets, boasts an average value of £220,485, barely above the national average.

Indeed, even the most common street name, Road, is worth more on average at £232,391, despite the fact there are more than 144,322 separate Roads in the UK.

Most common street names

What’s in a name?

As with so much of the housing market, my own view is that it comes down to perception, and that streets with names like ‘Lane’ or ‘Hill’ or ‘Mews’ simply sound nicer, and perhaps a bit more posh, irrespective of how common the name may actually be.

Zoopla has put together a great example which I think supports this theory. Two of the most common complete street names in the UK are Church Lane (1,5147 different streets) and Church Street (1,404 different streets). There’s very little difference in the number of streets with each name, and yet there is £164,000 difference between the average values of the property on each.

Should you live on a Church Street, you are looking at an average property value of £230,588. Yet if you live on Church Lane, that valuation rockets to £364,635!

What do you think? Why do you believe there are such variances in the value of the properties on the various street names?

Doing your homework

Of course, all of this could be complete coincidence.

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After all, it’s those local features that play a far bigger part in dictating the value of a home – and just how desirable it is to you – than the name of the street it’s located on.

Whatever the name, it’s essential when looking to buy a house that you pick one that not only meets your requirements internally, but externally too. One site that I absolutely love when it comes to this is Upmystreet.com.

All you have to do is put in the relevant postcode or street name and you get all sorts of information on the local area and the people who live there, right down to what newspaper they are most likely to buy (the Daily Mirror in my neighbourhood, apparently).

You can compare the results of the local schools, how far away the local train stations are, even the average council tax and recent crime figures.

It’s a fantastic resource, and I wouldn’t dream of buying a property, whether it was called Hill, Lane, Mews or just Street, without using this site to do some homework on the location beforehand.

More: House prices are invincible | Fix your mortgage at the cheapest rate in 7 years

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