Unspeakably lucky
Living in an unpronounceable town can put thousands on value of home
WE MAY smile at the quirky names of some of the UK’s least pronounceable towns and villages… but locals are enjoying the last laugh with bumper house prices, new research reveals.
On average property prices in the top ten most oddly named villages and towns is 20 per cent higher than homes in their local district.
The average for a property in the Hampshire village of Beaulieu (pronounced Bew-lee) is £605,181, almost 80 per cent more than for homes across the New Forest.
Buyers in the village of Ballachulish (Ball-a-hoolish) spend an average £247,221, almost 50 per cent more than the £168,705 across the Highlands, while in Quernmore (Kwor-mer) homes go for £235,367, more than 45 per cent higher than Lancaster as a whole.
For Bicester (Bister) in Oxfordshire and Northern Ireland’s Omagh (Oh-muh), the difference is more than 20 per cent compared with the rest of the district. In the Dorset village of Rampisham (Ran-som) it’s nearly 15 per cent, and just over 13 per cent for Frome (Froom) in Somerset. In Woolfardisworthy, Devon, the £240,387 average price is nearly three per cent higher.
The study, by estate agent comparison site GetAgent, compared prices in ten of the most difficult-to-pronounce places with those of surrounding areas. The Land Registry House Price Index and property prices on the Propdex and PropertyData sites were used to compile the figures.
GetAgent spokesman Colby Short said: ‘We’re talking about some very nice places, so you would expect a certain level of buoyancy. But it’s clear that hard-to-pronounce villages and towns are often head and shoulders above the rest.’
But there are exceptions. Prices in Ynysybwl (An-is-abull) in Mid Glamorgan are two per cent below the area average and homes in Godmanchester (pronounced by some locals as Gumster) in Cambridgeshire are a huge 53 per cent less.