Celebrity former homeowners increase value
June 15, 2007 by admin
Filed under News, News-Mortgages
Discovering that a famous or infamous person used to live in your house can add around ten per cent to the property value.
That is according to new research by family and social history website Ancestry.co.uk, which is also reporting a boom in people interested in finding out about their past.
This is in no small part down to a desire to increase the value of their property, with 21 per cent citing this as the reason.
Famous former residents make a house more saleable and recent success stories have seen the former home of playwright Noel Coward and Doctor Who writer Terry Nation generate huge interest and get snapped up very quickly.
“If your home has been lived in by a famous former occupant it will inevitably increase the publicity of the property and therefore the saleability,” said Michael Fiddes, head of national estate agency Strutt and Parker.
“Whilst it is hard to say exactly how much value this would add to a property, it can be anything up to ten per cent.”
Many people will be completely unaware that they live in a property that was once the home of someone famous but a few intriguing abodes have yet to be discovered.
The house where David Bowie was brought up in Bromley remains a mystery, as does John Lennon’s Blackpool property and Bob Dylan’s Crouch End house.
