It was once home to literary and artistic greats including Oscar Wilde, but now Tite Street in west London has a new claim to fame after a British mortgage lender named it the most expensive street in England and Wales. Halifax, part of Lloyds Banking Group, says the average house price on the street – which is in Chelsea, and lined with red-brick mansion blocks, set between the banks of the River Thames to the south and Kings Road to the north – is £28.9 million, or about €34 million.
Wilde was the street’s most famous resident, reaching the height of his fame while living at No 34, where he wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest. Other notable residents included the American artists James McNeill Whistler and John Singer Sargent.
On November 27th, 1974, the IRA carried out two bomb attacks in Tite Street. A small bomb that exploded in a postbox was followed by a larger one that went off behind a hedge, injuring 20, including six police officers and two ambulance workers. Twenty years later, Diana, Princess of Wales posed for a portrait at No 33.
Halifax says the 10 priciest streets in England and Wales in 2021 were all in the English capital, mainly in Westminster or the borough of Kensington and Chelsea. But you do not need to spend close to £30 million to own a slice of this prime real estate: a two-bedroom flat on Tite Street is currently for sale and has been reduced to £1.65 million, or about €1.95 million, according to property website Rightmove.
Its £28.9 million average property price actually 5 per cent lower than the £30.5 million, or €35.9 million, recorded for the most expensive street a year ago, Avenue Road, in St John’s Wood in London.
Halifax adds that desirable roads outside the city have seen prices increase at a faster rate. London has typically not experienced the same property boom as other English and Welsh regions this year, as pandemic-fuelled desires for a new lifestyle led many to quit big cities for homes elsewhere with more space and bigger gardens.
Halifax says its latest data is based on transactions between January 2016 and September 2021 recorded on the UK’s Land Registry database and compiled from more than 1.78 million postcodes. Only locations where there have been at least two transactions over the period are included. – Guardian
