The humble two-up two-down is as quintessentially British as cricket or Dr Who. Britain’s enduring love affair with townhouse dates back to the 17th century and shows no sign of abating.
Recent research shows that these period beauties have outperformed every other property type in the last decade, with average growth of 3.05% across the country, according to research by Proportunity.
Vadim Toader, founder and CEO of Proportunity, said: “The 2010s were marked by the after-effects of the financial crisis, and then by Brexit uncertainty. Despite these headwinds, we have largely seen growth across the board but the clear winner is terraced housing, or more specifically, terraced homes in London, with buyers likely attracted to their historic characteristics and charm, as well as their limited supply.”
Terraced homeowners have seen the highest house price growth over the past decade, according to the new research, with terraced housing being the best performing housing type across the whole of England and Wales.
Proportunity analysed the changing price per square metre of all properties sold in England and Wales since 2010. From this they calculated the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for each property type by region, and also at an England and Wales-wide level.
Despite recent stagnation, Greater London was home to the highest performing property types in all but one category over the past decade. The capital’s flats, terraced and semi-detached houses all outperformed their counterparts in other regions, with growth of 4.93%, 5.07%, and 4.33% respectively.
However, owners of detached houses in the East of England saw only a marginally higher growth: 3.07% compared to 3.06% in London.
Across all of England and Wales, the top performing property type was terraced houses, with an average growth of 3.05%. Semi-detached houses had growth of 2.9% on average, with flats seeing growth of 2.35%. The slowest growing property type was detached houses, with annual growth rates of 2.33% since 2010.
Flats in the North East performed the worst of any regional property type, with an average decrease in price of 0.5%. Flats in Yorkshire and The Humber, and the North West also lost value over the decade, with 0.12% and 0.04% decreases annually respectively.
While supply of terraced homes is limited, housebuilders are building less flats than they did at the start of the decade. In 2001, flats accounted for a quarter of all new homes built, rising to almost half by 2005. By the start of 2010, the number of flats being built had fallen back to around a third.
In 2018-19 houses made up 78% of all new build completions – the highest number for nearly 20 years. Help to Buy probably have a hand in a wave of flats flooding the market, but Britain’s devotion to the traditional family home has proved unwavering.
