Revealed: the best places to live for young professionals

Desirable: properties like this one in Hove are making the town near Brighton a hit among young professionals
Hannah Al-Othman17 June 2016

More than three quarters of the most desirable places to live in the country for young professionals are in London, new figures have revealed.

London postcodes take 16 of the spots in the top 20 list compiled by Lloyds Bank, which is based on land registry figures of property sales.

Half of the top 20 spots have an SW London postcode, including Wandsworth, Wimbledon, Streatham, Battersea, Balham and Clapham.

The three most expensive areas for young professionals are all in the capital and all command an average house price in excess of £1 million - Hampstead, where the average price is £1,318,492; Paddington, where it is £1,220,198; and Fulham, with a typical home there costing £1,088,131.

The cheapest of the top 16 London postcode areas was Streatham, where average house prices were £434,237, which came in fifth on the list.

However, it was the south coastal town of Hove that took the top spot for numbers of young professionals buying homes across England and Wales, at an average cost of £352,718.

Lloyds said that for the second year in a row, the BN3 postcode, which covers Hove, was identified as the most popular place for young professionals to buy a home.

Its near neighbour Brighton, with average prices of £358,821, was the only other town outside of London to make the top ten.

Lloyds' review looked at Land Registry house sales in the year to February 2016 and also used analysis of different sectors of the population by marketing consultancy CACI to make the findings.

Mike Songer, mortgage director at Lloyds Bank, said: "Young professionals tend to have a professional or University qualification, are in well paid jobs and enjoy an urban lifestyle without the hustle and bustle of living in the city centre.

"Our research shows that aspiring young urbanites choose to settle in areas which give them the best of both worlds - attractive suburbs offering good amenities and quality of life, which are within easy reach of a larger city centre - and in many cases they are prepared to pay a premium to live there.

"With a third of London's population in the 25 to 44 age group it is not surprising many of the most popular areas with this group are in the capital."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in