Forget the detached house price boom, this is the property type to have performed best in the last decade

The latest research by Birmingham estate and lettings agent, Barrows and Forrester, reveals that terraced houses are the best property investment in the UK after experiencing stronger price growth than any other type of home over the past decade.

The UK housing market has boomed. Surging demand has been met by dwindling supply to push house prices to record highs. During this boom, one common narrative has been an increasing buyer desire for larger, more spacious homes. As such, many industry commentators have reported that detached homes are the most influential driving force behind recent market success and that demand and value for detached properties is outperforming any other type of home.

However, Barrows and Forrester has analysed the past ten years of British house price data and discovered that detached homes are not in fact the market leaders on a long-term basis.

Between 2011 and 2021, the average annual rate of price growth for a detached home in Great Britain was 4.41%. This means that detached homes have enjoyed more growth than flats (4.10%), but have been outperformed by both semi-detached homes, with 4.57% growth, and terraced homes with the highest overall growth of 4.70% over the ten-year period.

By breaking the data down to a local level, Barrows and Forrester has also been able to shed light on what types of property have enjoyed the biggest average annual price growth in the various regions of Great Britain.

Detached homes have seen the highest growth of any property type in Scotland (3.21%), North East England (2.17%), and Yorkshire & Humber (3.54%).

But Semi-detached homes have led the way in six British regions between 2011 and 2021, including the West Midlands (4.38%), North West England (4.17%), South East England (5.24%), South West England (4.33%), Wales (3.82%), and the East of England (5.34%).

Terraced houses have seen the strongest average annual growth among all property types in the East Midlands (4.82%), London (6.59%), and the West Midlands (4.38%).

Meanwhile, despite enjoying overall average growth of 4.10% across Britain, flats have not led the way in any specific regions. In fact, price growth for flats has consistently ranked bottom across the board in every part of the nation.

Managing Director of Barrows and Forrester, James Forrester, commented:

“There is no doubt that detached homes have enjoyed a significant increase in demand over the past 18-months or so but, semi-detached and terraced homes have long been the most popular types of home and this data proves that the recent boom for detached homes has not been enough to move it higher than the number three spot.

But the biggest takeaway from this should be a celebration of how diverse our housing market is. The real winner of this story is not terraced homes, it’s the UK housing market. Price growth has been consistently positive for all types of homes over the past decade and ranking the performance of each leaves us with less than 1% separating them all.”