The street where homes cost £6.4m

If you want to buy a home on Victoria Road, it will cost you an absolute fortune!

When I bought my home, I was very much in the bargain basement area of the market. As a first-time buyer, with only a journalist’s salary, the options were not exactly plentiful. I had to make sure my money went a long way.

Yet I retain a weird fascination with the other end of the housing market, where the great and the good spend a not-so-small fortune on a home.

And according to a new survey, the cost of buying in these mega-expensive streets is on the rise.

Living next door to Dustin Hoffman

This year’s survey of the most expensive streets in England and Wales from Mouseprice.co.uk has found that Victoria Road in Kensington, London, is officially the dearest place to nab a home, with an average house price of a whopping £6.42m.

And interestingly this represents a pretty significant jump in the value of homes on the road in the past 12 months. In the last survey, Victoria Road made it into the top 10 in tenth position, with an average value of a little over £5m. So how on earth has the street jumped to the top of the tree, and by £1.42m in value?

It’s all down to the methodology Mouseprice uses, a big part of which comes down to data on prices paid most recently for properties on each street, taken from the Land Registry. And last year one property on Victoria Road was sold for an incredible price of more than £11m.

The street clearly has its charms – Dustin Hoffman lives there – and its proximity to the Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Palace and Hyde Park all help its attractiveness. But don’t bet against it topping the table again next year – an eight bedroom property is currently for sale on the street with Knight Frank, and with an asking price of an eye-watering £13m!

The domination of Kensington

Here are the top 20 most expensive streets in England and Wales.

Ingram Avenue retains second spot, and has now been there for the last three surveys. Its average value has also risen by the best part of £400,000 since last year. There is currently a property on the market on Ingram Avenue with a guide price of just shy of £6m. The street is very close to Hampstead Heath and Primrose Hill.

Chester Square, in third place, finished top last year. Its fall can be partly attributed to ‘bargain’ sales in the past twelve months of £3.5m and £3.8m. However, the street clearly has some appeal – back in December, a property on the street sold for £10m! Residents of Chester Square have included Margaret Thatcher, Roman Abramovich and Mary Shelley.

Of the top 20 streets, 14 of them are found within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, up from 12 last year. Barnet is the second most popular borough, with four streets making the list.

The regions

Of course, there’s nothing that shocking about Kensington being one of the most expensive places to live. Let’s take a look at how the various regions of England and Wales have performed compared to last year.

Just two regions have seen the average price of their high-end property fall in the last year, while Yorkshire & Humber has seen marginal movement. For the rest of England and Wales, the most expensive properties have enjoyed a buoyant 12 months. Clearly, while the majority of the UK housing market saw a fairly mediocre 2010, the top end had a far better time of things.

This is likely due to the fact that the factors which have held back most of the property market - poor accessibility to mortgages, fears over job stability, immobile housing chains - are not so significant at the very top of the market.

The secret ingredients

So what makes these addresses so special? Why are people willing to shell out such frankly ridiculous sums for them? I’ve gone through some of the top streets from each region to put together the list below of features that make them stand out from the bog-standard streets.

• Astons Road, the most expensive street in the East region, is nicknamed ‘Millionaire’s Row for Indians’, such is its popularity among the Indian community. So try to spot an area that is particularly enticing for a certain section of the populace!
• What have the Romans ever done for us? The Ridgeway is the East Midlands’ most expensive street, and has been for the last five years. It’s built on what used to be a Roman villa, and includes four listed buildings.
• Commuting matters. The most expensive streets all tend to enjoy excellent access links to major motorways and cities.
• Celebrity is expensive. Victoria Roadboasts one of the great actors of the past thirty years,and Virginia Waters, an area which dominates the South East’s top 10, hasfeatured in the Harry Potter films.
• If you can find a home within walking distance of the first tee, it can only help – the top streets in Wales, the West Midlands, the South East, London and Yorkshire & the Humber are all found within short distances of quality golf clubs.

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