Cheltenham & Gloucester – Battle of the Postcodes

I was asked last week if postcodes make a difference to property values. Well in swanky West London, the difference between SW3 and SW10 can make values drop or rise by thousands, even millions of pounds. However, in Cheltenham and Gloucester, we don’t have many Russian Oligarchs and Saudi Prince’s buying our properties. However, after doing some investigating, I did find out some interesting info.

The main postcode areas of Gloucester are GL1, GL2 and GL3 with Cheltenham’s main postcode areas being GL51, GL52 and GL53. The postcode with the best performing housing market over the last 12 months has been the GL52 postcode with the area to the East of Cheltenham going North, passing the Racecourse onto Bishop’s Cleeve with average values rising by 6.7%%. However, in a very close second and third come GL2 and GL3 with rises of 5.46% and 5.21% respectively in the same 12 month period with GL1 and GL51 seeing more modest, yet healthy rises of 4.49% and 4.4% - whilst the worst performing area is GL53 with a rise of only 2.74% in the last 12 months. Over the last 5 years, values in all of the six postcode areas have been much tighter with the best performing areas being GL1 and GL3 at 14.2%, all the other postcodes come in between 13.3% and 13.8%.  I think you would agree that this is a much closer spread than short term gains over the last 12 months.

However, property values are only half the story when it comes to property investment. The average yields tell a slightly different story. The best performing postcodes for yields are the respective town centres of GL1 in Gloucester at 6.74% and GL51 Cheltenham’s town centre at 6.4%.  Then there is a second tier of yields with GL52, GL2 and GL3 having respective yields of 4.6%, 4.5% and 4.3% per year.  However, it is of no surprise that GL53, with its’ rural nature has low yields of only 3.1% per year.

Therefore, if you are considering buying a property for investment in the near future I am always happy to give you my considered opinion on which property to buy (or not as the case may be) to give you what you want from your investment (yield, capital growth or a bit of both). If you are a landlord, new or old, pop in and see us at our office's in either Cheltenham or Gloucester for a chat or email me direct on neil.west@belvoir.co.uk