The UK housing market is undeniably turbulent at the moment as the sellers-market atmosphere has pushed house prices to an all-time high, rising at the fastest pace since 2005.
With this in mind, Homedit.com wanted to find out just how much property prices can be affected by desirable features around the UK. They decided to look into south-facing gardens, as these are often seen as desirable due to the amount of sun they receive which is important both for the greenery and peoples’ enjoyment of their own outside area.
To do so, Homedit.com looked into properties currently listed on Zoopla which advertise their south-facing gardens, and compared their prices to other properties in the surrounding area to discover in which area of the UK a south-facing garden could add the most value to your property.
The highlights:
- Properties with a south-facing garden on the Isle of Wight showed the largest increase – up 212.2% (+£527,000) on those without.
- The area with the smallest price increase is South Ayrshire in Scotland where properties with a south-facing garden are 26.8% cheaper than the average property (-£40,000).
- The region in England with the largest increase is the North West, and the smallest increase is the West Midlands.
The North East
All 12 LAUs* for the North East were analysed as part of this study. The results are as follows:
|
|
North East district |
Average price increase of property with south-facing garden (£) |
Average price increase of property with south-facing garden (%) |
|
#1 |
Darlington |
+£142,061.67 |
101.9% |
|
#2 |
County Durham |
+£113,807.47 |
100.1% |
|
#3 |
Sunderland |
+£103,195.43 |
81.4% |
|
#4 |
Newcastle upon Tyne |
+£103,709.64 |
60.5% |
|
#5 |
Gateshead |
+£59,747.07 |
42.6% |
|
#6 |
North Tyneside |
+£75,559.26 |
42.1% |
|
#7 |
South Tyneside |
+£56,198.04 |
39.1% |
|
#8 |
Stockton-on-Tees |
+£54,483.18 |
38.0% |
|
#9 |
Hartlepool |
+£41,152.11 |
34.6% |
|
#10 |
Northumberland |
+£57,394.27 |
33.2% |
|
#11 |
Middlesbrough |
+£28,270.52 |
23.2% |
|
#12 |
Redcar and Cleveland |
+£21,278.20 |
15.6% |
Homedit.com found that Darlington is the area in the North East with the largest increase in property prices for homes with a south-facing garden. In Darlington, the average property price is £139,400, but houses advertised with south-facing gardens sold for a median price of £281,500 – an increase of a whopping 101.9% (+£142,000).
On the other hand, properties in Redcar and Cleveland with a south-facing garden only sold for 15.6% above the area’s average (+£21,300).
The best regions in England for south-facing gardens
|
|
Region |
Average region property price |
Average price increase of property with south-facing garden (£) |
Average price increase of property with south-facing garden (%) |
|
#1 |
North West |
£196,750.67 |
£303,994.20 |
56.5% |
|
#2 |
Yorkshire & the Humber |
£190,972.15 |
£289,202.11 |
53.7% |
|
#3 |
North East |
£142,330.89 |
£213,735.63 |
51.0% |
|
#4 |
East Midlands |
£224,330.07 |
£330,182.78 |
50.1% |
|
#5 |
South East |
£363,104.90 |
£521,376.79 |
45.7% |
|
#6 |
East of England |
£337,133.97 |
£480,437.35 |
42.4% |
|
#7 |
South West |
£288,424.47 |
£401,659.57 |
40.7% |
|
#8 |
London |
£554,642.76 |
£761,730.36 |
36.1% |
|
#9 |
West Midlands |
£253,214.35 |
£338,163.33 |
34.9% |
Homedit.com can reveal that the region with the most profitable properties with south-facing gardens is the North West of England. The average price of a property in the North West is £196,800, and the average median price of properties with south-facing gardens is £304,000, so houses with a south-facing garden in the North West show an average increase of 56.5%.
The region with the least profitable properties with south-facing gardens in England is the West Midlands. The average price of a property in the West Midlands is £253,200, and the average median price of properties with south-facing gardens is £338,200, so houses with a south-facing garden in the West Midlands show an average increase of 34.9%.
Despite ranking ninth for percentage increase, the area which has the highest average price increase is London where a property with a south-facing garden could increase your value by an impressive +£207,000.
For more information, please see Homedit’s blog post here: https://www.homedit.com/south-facing-garden-increase-property-value/
Methodology:
- Homedit.com wanted to find out just how much value a south-facing garden could add to a property’s value, and whether it was worth more, or less, in certain areas of the UK.
- To do so, they extracted data from Zoopla. They used the criteria ‘for sale’ (including all property types), keyword: ‘south facing garden’, and searched in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
- Next, data was collected from the ONS to find the average price of houses sold in each local administrative unit (LAU) in the UK.
- The Zoopla data was then organised by LAU using a geospatial join between scraped data and shapefile of LAU using coordinated fields (latitude and longitude) to give an accurate comparison to the Eurostat data.
- A threshold of 10 properties for sale meeting the original criteria was used to avoid inaccuracies in the data, meaning some LAUs had to be omitted from this study.
- A median price for houses with a south-facing garden was calculated for each LAU, which was compared to each LAU’s average price of all houses sold in order to calculate a percentage increase, or decrease, of houses with a south-facing garden.
*Some areas had to be excluded from the findings due to insufficient data which may have led to an inaccurate comparison.