In an often unpredictable housing market, a reported 15% of homeowners are opting to improve their property as opposed to upping sticks. As well as creating nicer surroundings, refurbishing different areas of a home can add significant value, but what is the true return on investment?
Self-storage experts Safestore have taken a look at the landscape of homeownership to find the most popular areas of the home people improve, and the number of homes in the UK that offer these amenities.
- Our research finds that 1 in 4 Newcastle properties on Zoopla are open-plan, with 8% having an extension or listed as ‘refurbished’.
- Compared to other parts of the UK, Newcastle has a below average number of properties with lofts (14%).
- A 4-bed in Newcastle is only £20,000 higher in value than the average UK 1-bed but is a massive 78% higher than properties with 3 bedrooms in the same city.
As the country’s second most populous city, Birmingham’s housing market is huge and ever-developing.
- The research shows that you are more likely to find a property with a loft in Birmingham than all of the UK cities we studied, with 28% of homes mentioning one in their listing.
- They were, however, below average for listings advertised as either refurbished (7%) or open-plan (23%).
- If you’re buying a house in Birmingham, you can expect to pay over 30% more for a 2-bed than a single bedroom property, and almost 50% more for a 4-bed than a property with 3.
Bristol has been revered for some years now as an on-trend place to live, work and buy a property.
- Our study shows that over a third of properties are listed as being ‘open-plan’, less than only London and nearby city, Cardiff.
- The research also shows that you are more likely to have a loft in Bristol than any other city, with 37% of properties listing the feature.
- On average, an additional bedroom can increase a Cardiff home’s worth by 33%, showing the true value of upscaling your property.
Cardiff has gone under massive redevelopments in recent years, with new properties and other facilities popping up all over the Welsh capital.
- In Cardiff, you are more likely to find an open plan property in your searches than anywhere else in the country bar London. A huge 42% of listings in Cardiff contain this feature, with other high performing amenities being a loft (29%) and a wet room (5%).
- A 1-bed in Cardiff is priced at around £124,000 and rises to £186,000 for two-beds, an increase of nearly 50%.
- In the Scottish capital, there are a higher percentage of properties for sale that advertise an extension (17%) than any other city in our research.
- Other suggestions of trends include a higher number of open-plan properties (32%) and refurbished homes (8%).
- Having an additional bedroom can add significant value to your home, and having 2 instead of one bolsters the sale price by 42% on average.
- We’ve found that the proportion of property listings in Glasgow detailing ‘solar panels’ is 5 times higher than the UK average. This could be partly due to the government-backed initiative that assisted the funding of solar panels in Scotland up until 2010, but shows that Glasgow is ahead of the trend when it comes to the environment.
- Properties in Glasgow, on average, rise by 47% for every additional bedroom, with the most lucrative upgrade found between 3 and 4 bedrooms where the value rises 70%.
It was reported earlier this year that the property market in Leeds was outperforming the capital, with rising sales and prices on the incline.
- Our research has found that a higher proportion of home listings in Leeds advertise ‘Smart home’ features as part of the amenities. Smart is an increasingly popular aspect of homeownership and while 3% of all listings may seem small, it’s above the UK average as well as the capital.
- Other notable findings are that over 1 in 6 homes contain an extension, as well as 20% including loft’s in their description.
- The average 1 bed in Leeds costs just short of £94,000 which rises over 38% in value when we look solely at the values of 2-bed homes.
In a hugely changeable market, property owners in the capital often prefer to renovate their homes to improve their surroundings or boost the sell-on value later down the line.
- Of all the cities we analysed, none had a higher rate of open-plan properties than London (44%).
- London also ranked highest for refurbished properties (16%). This could be partly due to the staggering number of new builds that become available every year in the capital.
- According to averages on Zoopla, London properties shoot up by nearly 50% when looking at 2 bedroom properties instead of those with just one.
- We crawled every property listing on Zoopla in the Manchester area and found that a quarter of homes are described as ‘open plan’ with 1 in 10 advertising a loft as one of their amenities.
- Compared to other UK cities, Manchester scored above the national average for properties containing ‘smart technology’ (2.07%).
- You can be expected to pay, on average, 67% more for a 4-bed property than a 3 bed in Manchester, which might go some lengths to justify that extension you’re planning.
To find out how your city compares, view the full study by Safestore here.