Did you know this?
Is Your Garden Worth It? With conflicting information and research on the subject, online estate agency Hatched add to the conversation, and help to answer this question.
The research looked at numerous factor, including: typical garden use; just how important gardens are to modern-day homeowners; and to see whether having a garden adds any value onto your home.
Using live ‘For Sale’ ads on the Hatched.co.uk, the house listings were analysed to see if having a garden significantly improved a property’s value or not.
Using this methodology, the results suggest that house prices do indeed have a much higher average value when a property has a garden. Properties in the capital, for example, were worth 9 per cent more with an outdoor space.
In Preston, however, this increase was even more significant. Out of the 31 current live ads, the average property value sits at just over the £100k mark (£106,127). Of these, the average cost with a garden equals £121,664, compared to just £84,615 without (£37,049 difference). Properties, therefore, were worth a staggering 44 per cent more with the addition of a garden.
There was one minor anomaly, however… Properties in Manchester seemed to have a better average value without a garden, but this was only marginally (just a 1.7 per cent difference).
The research also found that:
Garden Size:
· Gardens appear to be getting smaller (average size of 16.8m2 in 1983, compared to 14m2 in 2015), and this trend is expected to continue
· As such, speculation that the size of an average garden at the end of 2018 (next year) might measure just 12.6 metres squared
Garden Use:
· The majority (32.68 per cent, around a third) of people admitted that they only use their garden around 20 times per year (equating to just once or twice a month)
· More than one in ten people (12.18 per cent), however, said that they use their garden more than once a week
· The main reasons that people want a garden include: for their children to enjoy (23 per cent); for pets (20.8 per cent); for socialising (18.04 per cent), for gardening or enjoying wildlife (18 per cent); and, in some cases, to enjoy the weather (14.4 per cent)
· A third (32.97 per cent) of those over 55 considered a garden as being ‘very important’, compared to only one in ten of under 35s (8.38 per cent)
· Overall, having a garden is ‘not a priority’ for those aged under 35 years-old
The full findings can be viewed here: https://www.hatched.co.uk/blog/140/is-your-garden-worth-it
Adam Day, managing director at Hatched, commented on the findings: “In the past, there has been lots of conflicting research on the subject. For example, an article last year claimed that a good garden can add up to 20 per cent more value to a property, whereas another stated that south-facing gardens carry a premium of just 0.37 per cent over those with north-facing plots, dispelling previous myths that south-facing means more for your cash.
“As such, we decided to look into the subject more closely, to see if we could find any correlation or trends in the value of our current live property ads and whether they had a garden or not.
“While many other factors may also come into account for property valuations and house prices, including (but not limited to): size; location; design; appliances; and so on, it was interesting to see that, on the whole, having a garden does make a positive difference.”
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