On the one hand, I have loved living in terrace houses – feeling closer to your neighbours as you are very subtly reminded of their existence as you hear a door close, or muted conversations or the occasional argument. On the other hand, sometimes it would be nice not to hear quite as much from your neighbours. I am aware that detached houses are more sought after than semi-detached ones and semis more sought after than terraces; not only are there the clear advantages of space but also the simple engineering fact that a house that shares a wall with another should come with some discount as there are fewer unique bricks.

But how much more do people pay for their detached houses versus other types? This is a simple question answered through our combined dataset. The median average (the middle value) adjusted price for a terrace house is £234k, a semi £272k and a detached house is £404k; moreover, for a flat it is £195k. That is 74% more for a detached house compared to a terraced one; however, part of these differences will also come from differences in size. Thus, the below graph controls for this by controlling for the size of the property (as discussed in our introduction).

As can be seen, in general, terrace houses are cheaper than semis and semis are cheaper than detached properties. Importantly, the premium is much larger for detached properties than semi-detached. For example, if we took a 100 square meter property, the estimate is that this would cost £296k for a terrace property, £325k for a semi and £382k for a detached; that is a difference of 10% between a terrace and semi and 30% between a terrace and a detached of the same size. Also interesting (to me at least) is that the size of semi-detached properties is very similar to that of terraced properties (remember the range along which the lines are drawn along the horizontal axes presents 90% of the observations – as discussed in our introduction) but detached properties can be much larger than both of these.

Flats tend to be similar in price (compared to size) to an average of both terrace and semi-detached houses. We know that we pay more per square meter for smaller properties (as discussed in this Chapter [link to chapter – or room? – 2]) and flats are smaller properties. Beyond this, they do not fit into as clean an analysis as that of the clear ordering between terraces, semis and detached, but they follow a broadly consistent story.

Finally, it is also interesting to note that the premium one pays for a semi or detached property is approximately the same regardless of size, especially for the premium of a semi compared to a terrace property. This is evidenced by the way that the lines are close to parallel to one another, that is, they have a similar slope with the semi-detached line just shifted upwards. This suggests that it is a general thing for all properties of this type, not something which becomes more important for bigger properties.

To detach or not to detach? It depends how much you are willing to pay to have that relative distance from your neighbours, but the premiums are clearly there in the data.

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