The street where homes cost £7m!

by John Fitzsimons on 11 March 2010  |  13 comments
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Find out which street is home to the most expensive properties in the UK.

Recently, Mouseprice.com has published its latest report on the most expensive streets in England & Wales, and some of the figures are positively eye-watering.

The domination of Kensington & Chelsea

It will likely come as no surprise that the 20 most expensive streets to live in England and Wales are all found within Greater London.

However, it is a particular corner of London that dominates – the borough of Kensington and Chelsea, boasting a whopping 12 of the top 20 streets.

The prices involved are staggering. Topping the table, for the second year in a row, is Chester Square, where the average property is worth a frankly unbelievable £6,596,000. That represents a jump of a whopping £300,000 over the past year alone!

The last property sold on the street went for just shy of £7m, while 2008 saw four sales of between £12.2 million and £19.7 million.

Somewhat surprisingly, Chester Street didn’t even appear in the list before 2008!

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The rest of the country

So how do the rest of the country compare? The table below details the average house price based on the top 10 streets in each region.

While the ranking order of the regions remains unchanged from last year, the performance of the regions has not been so consistent. Despite the nine straight months of house price growth reported by the various indices over most of 2009, three of the ten regions nonetheless reported house price falls.

The South West, West Midlands and Yorkshire & the Humber all saw falls in the average house price based on their most expensive streets, albeit by varying degrees – the shift in the South West was marginal.

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What makes a 5* address?

The one thing this study shows us is that, recession or not, if you want to buy a top-end property, in most areas of England & Wales you are going to have to hand over more than a million pounds.

House prices may have experienced a rocky couple of years, but they are still seriously expensive if you are buying in a flash postcode.

So just why are these streets so desirable?

With Chester Street, there is a history of famous residents, from the author Mary Shelley to Margaret Thatcher and the current Chelsea owner, Roman Abramovich, as well as its location in the City of Westminster making it attractive to the great and the good.

But what about those expensive streets across the rest of the nation?

• We all love a swimming pool, apparently. Some of the top streets in the East region, the North West and the South West all boast a number of properties with their own swimming pools.
• A nice view makes a difference. In the East, a number of the priciest streets are surrounded by picturesque fields.
• Accessibility is a significant factor. The most popular postcode in the East region, AL5,has great links to notonly the M25 and London, but also Luton airport. The top postcode in the North West, WA15,is also highlighted as great for commuters as it has easy access to A roads and the M56.
• History adds a few quid to the value of the home. The top street in the East Midlands, The Ridgeway, is built on the grounds of an old Roman Villa and now boasts four listed buildings. Meanwhile, in the South East, the most expensive location, Virginia Water, is part of the Wentworth Estate, and has featured in the Harry Potter films.
• The combination of the sea, lots of green spaces and large, detached properties is the perfect combination – Poole accounts for a staggering seven of the top 10 streets in the South West region. In Wales, the top street - Llys Helyg Drive – boasts beaches at the end of the gardens!
• Stick to the city suburbs. In the West Midlands, the postcode B74, representing Sutton Coldfield and Little Aston accounts for seven of the top ten streets, as it is so close to Birmingham itself. Elsewhere, in the North East, many of the top streets are located in suburbs to the north of Newcastle City centre. In Yorkshire & the Humber, the majority of expensive streets are found in Leeds’ northern suburbs.

Prettiest over priciest

Of course, for most of us such homes are little more than a pipedream. Thankfully though, buying somewhere pretty may work out substantially cheaper.

This week marks the conclusion of the first ever Google Street View Awards, with The Shambles in York taking the prize as the most picturesque street in Britain. Local property is available at an average of £186,086, according to Zoopla.

A home on second placed Royal Crescent in Bath will set you back £512,977, while third placed Grey Street in Newcastle will cost around £346,636.

Frankly, I’d always prefer to be surrounded by lovely views than the rich and famous!

More: Make money from falling house prices! | Need to rent out your home? Tell your lender!

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