Young professionals face £71,000 premium for home in property hotspots - report
Young professionals can expect to pay a £71,000 premium to live in the most popular property hotspots for their peer group, a report has found.
The findings, which cover England and Wales, show the average price of a home in the 20 most popular areas for young professionals is £71,158, or 13%, higher than average house prices in surrounding areas.
The figures, compiled by Lloyds Bank, show young professionals can expect to pay £735,874 for a home in an area popular with young urbanites, compared with £664,716 typically in the surrounding area.
Lloyds said for the third year in a row, the BN3 postcode area of Hove is the most sought-after location for young professionals buying a home in England and Wales.
It said that with neighbouring Brighton also making the top 20 list, the East Sussex coast continues to be a strong attraction for aspirational young people.
The Hove area, like some other young professional hotspots on the list, was found to be a cheaper place to buy a home than the surrounding area. Buyers there pay around £31,000 less for a property than a home in the surrounding area typically.
Of the top 20 areas with the highest concentrations of house sales to young professionals, 16 are in London, Lloyds found. They include Wandsworth, Wimbledon, Fulham, Battersea, Brixton - and Hampstead - the most expensive place for young professionals on the list - with a typical home there costing more than £1.3 million.
Away from London, the research found that young professionals in the North West of England pay a premium of £93,062 to live in leafy Didsbury compared with the surrounding Manchester area.
In the Cotham area of Bristol, buyers face paying an average premium of £108,591 compared with Bristol as a whole.
Other regional hotspots for young professionals include Jesmond in Newcastle, Broomhill and Fulwood in Sheffield, West Bridgford in Nottingham and the CF24 Cardiff Central postcode area in Cardiff.
Lloyds Bank mortgage products director Andrew Mason said: "Aspiring young professionals are typically well qualified, in well-paid jobs and tend to live in areas not far from the city centre where they work.
"These are also places where they can enjoy easy access to green space and a range of places to socialise. These buyers also don't appear to be put off by the significant premium in price to live in areas popular with young professionals."
The report was compiled using profiling of "young urbanite professionals" aged between 25 and 44 years old by CACI and Land Registry housing market figures.
