Top performing property types of the decade revealed

Terraced homeowners in London have seen the highest price growth of any property type across the whole of England and Wales over the past decade, according to new research by Proportunity.

The PropTech startup, which provides Help to Buy-style equity loans, analysed the price change per square metre of all properties sold in England and Wales since 2010 to calculate the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for each property type by region.

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 4.29%, 5.07% and 4.33% respectively.

However, owners of detached houses in the East of England saw only a marginally higher growth at 3.07% compared to 3.06% in London.

The top performing property type across all of England and Wales was terraced houses, with an average growth of 3.05%. Semi-detached homes had growth of 2.9% on average, with flats witnessing growth of 2.35%.

The slowest growing property type, meanwhile, was detached houses, with annual growth rates of 2.33% since 2010.

At the other end of the spectrum, 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 annual decreases of 0.12% and 0.04% respectively.

“The 2010s were marked by the after-effects of the financial crisis, and then by Brexit uncertainty,” Vadim Toader, founder and chief executive officer of Proportunity, says.

“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, compared to new builds.”

However, Toader says despite their popularity, terraced houses are out of reach for many first-time buyers in the capital, with Help to Buy restricted to new-builds only – which are typically flats or semi-detached or detached houses.

The table below shows the compound annual growth for each property type per region: