Should you put your house on the races?
With this week’s Grand National sure to see some big wins for punters, come Saturday evening, racegoers in the black may be interested to know where they will get the best property for their money near the UK’s greatest racecourses.
Hatched has analysed house prices around ten top racecourses across the UK to investigate if close proximity to a racecourse increases the value of a home compared with the wider local area.
Of the ten racecourses featured, there is generally a positive impact on house prices, with seven of the ten showing higher house prices in the vicinity of the racecourse compared with the wider local area.
Properties close to Ascot Racecourse enjoy average prices of over 35% higher than the £497,431 average in the Windsor & Maidenhead area, whilst another of the Queen’s favourite racecourses, Epsom, shows house prices on the fringes of the venue over 32% higher than the £428,448 average in the wider area.
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The dark horse of this study was Haydock, which enjoys average property prices 44% higher than the wider St. Helen’s area average of £131,050.
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At the other end of the scale was Chester, where average home prices were 44% lower near the racecourse, compared with the Chester area as a whole. Aintree (17% lower) and Doncaster (11% lower) were the other racecourses found to be detrimental to a home’s value, revealing a North-South divide only bucked by Haydock and York.
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When looking at price changes over the past five years the Grand National’s venue, Aintree (-5%) and nearby Haydock (-7%), are the only racecourses to see local property prices fall, far outstripping the average price changes for the wider Seaton (-1%) and St. Helen’s (+1%) areas respectively.
Perhaps, unsurprisingly, the property hotspots of Ascot (+41%) and Epsom (+41%) vastly outperformed the local areas Windsor & Maidenhead (32%) and Epsom (33%).
Adam Day, managing director at Hatched, says: “As well as providing a reflection of the nationwide property market, we’ve found here that the more upmarket and select a racecourse, the higher the property prices and rises, as the case has been with Ascot, Epsom and Newmarket.”