REVEALED: The UK’s Happiest Street Names Boosting Your Home’s Value By THOUSANDS
When house hunting, most of us don’t pay much attention to the road name; in fact, 92% of Brits state that they aren’t concerned with the street name of their next potential home. However, Bankrate.com/uk has discovered that this seemingly small feature can have a significant effect on the value of your house!
After analysing thousands of road names in the UK, Bankrate has found that houses on a ‘happy’ street can increase your home’s value by an astonishing average of £24,830.86!
The happy road name with the highest added value is chipper - this can potentially add £56,571 to your home’s selling price, and is most popular in Wiltshire, South West England. This is followed by pretty, which boosts your home’s value by £44,918 on average and is most popular in the East of England!
Other names that can increase your property’s value and the area they are most frequently found in are as follows:
- Gay: £40,293 (South West)
- Pleasure: £39,029 (South East)
- Dancers: £32,029 (East of England)
- Beam: £30,623 (North West and North East)
- Heaven: £29,273 (London)
- Merry: £27,619 (East and West Midlands)
BankRate also discovered that hope is the most popular happy street name. Hope makes an appearance in 216 roads in the UK and increases property prices by £20,434 on average.
In second place is summer which is included in 127 different streets across England and Wales, closely followed by sunny which is found in 126 roads in the country!
The 10 most popular happy road names are as follows:
- Hope - 216
- Summer - 127
- Sunny - 126
- Love - 123
- Pleasant - 118
- Paradise - 109
- Angel - 90
- Bright - 65
- Rainbow - 48
- Flower - 31
Interestingly, Bankrate found that the North West is the happiest region – with 237 positive road names!
This is followed by Yorkshire and The Humber (199), South East (175), South West (157) and East of England (139).
Following this information, Florence Codjoe, personal finance expert at Bankrate, has provided some comments on the reason as to why this may be the case, and how you can change your street name:
“Largely due to the widespread disruption caused by COVID-19, the property market is in a turbulent state. Despite uncertainty, there is positive news - those living on a street with a happy name have something to smile about in these tough times.
“Road names, which include positive words such as hope and love really do boost the value of properties within that respective street. Although some happy words have more of a favourable effect on price than others, an attractive and positive road name only adds to the desirability of a property.
“After analysing the findings, Bankrate researched government guidelines and can provide tips on how residents can change their street name, potentially adding thousands to their home’s value!
“Different cities and counties across the country have a number of rules as to how to go about a street name change, so make sure to check with your local council to find the exact procedure suitable for you. However, there are some general tips and procedures
“The council will consider requests from residents, but there must be a good reason; if you do believe you have one, this is the perfect opportunity to up the value of your street! A handful of council guidelines state that one good reason includes a group of residents being unhappy with the street name. This is most likely the option you will go for if you’re opting for a ‘happy’ street name change!
“It is a very time-consuming process so it can be difficult to get approved, as it isn’t just the council’s decision, but Royal Mail are asked for their position and whether they agree it is necessary.
“You must also ensure you obtain permission from the majority of residents on your street, so gathering enough signatures is essential. You can start by building a good case and having a solid street name that is sure to get your neighbours on board. Something like, Love Lane or Hope Avenue, might fare well amongst the residents. If the neighbours and council agree then you are on the way to a successful street name change!”
Methodology
Bankrate used an online thesaurus to gather as many synonyms of “happy” or other words associated with positivity as we could. After amassing a list of 120 or so words, the team then entered the names onto Streetlist.co.uk to find if there were indeed streets with those words in their names, and where they were located.
After finding the average house price on that street, we went on to find the average house price within that postcode using Zoopla. After this, we used the average value of a home on each ‘happy’ street to determine how much they increase the value of your home in comparison to the average house price in that postcode. Regional Price Variation was accounted for.
Bankrate only included streets where the ‘happy’ word stood alone eg. not using ‘Brightlingsea’ only ‘Bright’.
Due to Scotland having a significantly smaller number of ‘happy’ road names it is included in a separate database, along with the regional breakdown, please see this Dropbox link to view.
All additional data from the survey can be found on the blog: https://www.bankrate.com/uk/mortgages/happy-streets/
We really hope you find this release useful. If you do end up using it, we would very much appreciate a link to https://www.bankrate.com/uk/ who commissioned the data. A link credit allows us to keep supplying you with future content that you may find useful. Thanks very much!
