Nightmare on UK's Elm Streets as 666 propeties sold in 10 years
Posted 31 October 2016 by
Ben SalisburyLiving on Elm Street certainly seems to be a nightmare for homeowners according to new research conducted by online estate agents HouseSimple.com, as more than half (57%) of the 79 Elm Streets listed in the UK have seen no property sales since last Halloween.
If you happen to live on Elm Street you may not want to read this. When HouseSimple.com delved a little deeper into the figures, it unearthed a chilling statistic. Over the past decade, there have been 666 – the Number of the Beast – property sales on UK Elm Streets. If that doesn’t make you want to put the ‘for sale’ sign up straight away, I don’t know what would!
For Halloween, HouseSimple.com looked at the number of house sales on all Elm Streets across the UK over the past 12 months, five and ten years, and it appears homeowners do have a nightmare selling their properties, or maybe they are too scared to sell.
One in ten Elm Streets seem to have been afflicted with the curse of sharing the same name as the 1984 slasher movie, as there have been no registered sales in 10 years on Elm Streets in Manchester, Rossendale, Belfast, Glasgow, Ellesmere Port, Coatbridge, Birkenhead and London.
Also, average property prices on Elm Streets across the country, at £180,114, are almost a fifth lower (18%) than the UK average of £218,964 according to Land Registry figures. Maybe buyers have been spooked by the infamous name – after all, who would want Freddie Krueger as a neighbour.
Alex Gosling, CEO of online estate agents HouseSimple.com said: “It sounds like a horror movie sequel, but for hundreds of homeowners, the curse of Elm Street could actually be a grim reality. No sales since last Halloween on more than half the 79 Elm Streets we found suggests there’s more going on than subsidence to scare buyers away.
“And we nearly leapt out of our skin when we discovered the number of sales on UK’s Elm Streets in the past decade was the devil’s number. It’s enough to send a shiver down the spine.
“Fortunately not everyone is spooked by Halloween and with Elm Street prices below the UK average, I’m sure there are plenty of buyers who would snap up the chance to live on such an infamously named street. They just wouldn’t want Mr F Krueger living next door.”