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There is a London junction where late-night gay bars twinkle in the shadow of a mosque, while dirty old warehouses stare down luxury flats. Hippy houseboats float on the canal below while the A10’s traffic churns over the bridge. Is it Hoxton, Haggerston or Shoreditch? Here on Kingsland Road is a nexus not just of demographics but also of London postcodes; the place where N1, E8 and E2 all meet, bringing their boroughs of Islington, Hackney and Tower Hamlets with them. And for some residents, it really matters which side of this junction your bread is buttered.
I remember when a group of homeowners on this border successfully campaigned to have their postcode changed from an east London one to a north London one, some years ago when the cultural capital of New Labour’s Islington added a hefty premium to house values. I laugh to remember it now, because east London is becoming so desirable that the owners might end up campaigning to hand back their N1 and retrieve their E8. (It is reminiscent of when residents of the Wirral, embarrassed to have the L postcode of nearby Liverpool, had their campaigning efforts vindicated when the Post Office upgraded them to the CH of upmarket Cheshire instead.)
Ah, postcode snobbery! New research from estate agent Savills would suggest that postcode snobbery is real — they can almost prove it with data. In itself, a postcode should be meaningless outside of its coding system, but the signifier has become as crucial as the thing signified. In and around Birmingham, for example, homes have a B postcode. But the subdivision of B94, with picturesque villages such as Hockley Heath, Earlswood and Tanworth in Arden, has an average house price of triple those of the rest of Birmingham. B94 is even 40 per cent more expensive, on average, than B93, which is just next door.
“We can identify those postcode districts which carry the biggest premium over their postcode area. And that, in turn, allows us to identify some of the most prized parts of the country,” says Lucian Cook, head of residential research at Savills. “Twenty-eight of the postcode districts in our top 30 carried an average house price at least double that of the postal town with which they are associated.”
The phenomenon spreads across Britain, with the second-biggest price hike coming in Scotland. The Kirkcaldy postcode stretches from the Forth Road Bridge all the way up the coast to St Andrews but, to paraphrase George Orwell, some KYs are more equal than others. KY9, where wealthier Scots enjoy golfing and sailing in coastal villages such as Elie and Earlsferry, has what Savills describes as a “190 per cent postcode premium” over the rest of the area, though St Andrews — KY16 — comes in close at 141 per cent.
Others in the top 30 include Sandbanks in Dorset (BH13), beating greater Bournemouth by 134 per cent, and the Fowey estuary (PL23), having a 124 per cent hold over the rest of the Plymouth postcode. Similarly, Henley-on-Thames (RG9) has a 113 per cent premium on lesser parts of Reading. Aldeburgh, Ambleside and Barnard Castle all make the top 30 too, suggesting a huge value being placed on being beside a lake, the sea — or a place to test your eyesight by driving through lockdown. Oh, I jest.
Still, given that Birmingham has topped the list, it’s a shame Savills doesn’t yet have the exact data for what comedian Joe Lycett did to his part of town. He recently spent four years going undercover to organise a Gay Pride event near his home in Kings Heath, having heard that LGBT-friendly areas — seen as vibrant, arty and culturally rich — are now associated with higher property values. His “brazen attempt to further gentrify the area”, as he put it, seems to have worked, though word from local estate agents remains anecdotal.
NW3 is a desirable London postcode because of Hampstead’s unique housing stock, vast green hills and intellectual history — so NW3, just three characters, has become a shorthand for all of that. When a friend of mine bought a modest new-build flat in the postcode’s furthest reaches, with a 24-hour shooting arcade behind it and a dirty main road in front, the postcode gave her hope. Until it was suggested the new flats would actually be given an NW6 postcode — quelle horreur — and trouble ensued.
Another friend remembers starting work at an upper-class magazine and being asked, “Are you a Swunner?” What could this new colleague mean? Ohhh — do you live in SW1, the high-end south-west London postcode that includes Buckingham Palace.
The love of a postcode in itself is real, though. I grew up near York and remember being livid when the YO1 postcode of our suburban village was, perfectly sensibly, updated to YO10, leaving the number one spot to indicate only the city centre. It dinted my childhood pride in our village as the centre of the known York universe.
Clearly, a lot of this comes down to snobbery, pure and simple — but the word snobbery suggests something foolish. If the end result of postcode snobbery means we gain unearned tax-free profit when selling our homes, or pay lower car insurance premiums, then who among us can resist?
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