The value of housing design and layout

4.0
Table 4.1: Residual value per
area of land
36
RESEARCH RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Research results and
discussion
4.1 Commercial value
With such a small sample, the headline results were inevitably inconclusive
inasmuch as they neither prove nor disprove that innovative design and layout
improve developer value. The methodology piloted in this report is itself a significant
contribution to understanding values.
Of the four locations studied, three exemplar schemes yielded higher residual values
than the conventional schemes and one yielded poorer residual values to the
developer. In this one case, the difference in the residual value per hectare of land
was less than 5%. Only in one scheme (Surbiton exemplar) was there a clear and
definitively enhanced added value in the exemplar scheme. Here, residual value was
enhanced by more than 15% over and above the standard scheme. In the
exemplars at Bishop’s Stortford and Chelmsford, both schemes’ values appeared to
be enhanced by the nature of their design (by 7.5% and 10.3% respectively).
Scheme Location Residual value per: Difference to matched
Hectare Acre pair in same location
A Surbiton – exemplar £12.4m £5.0m +15.3%
B Surbiton – conventional £10.7m £4.3m –13.3%
C Bishop’s Stortford – exemplar £4.6m £1.9m +7.5%
D Bishop’s Stortford – conventional £4.3m £1.7m –6.9%
E Chelmsford – exemplar £3.8m £1.6m +10.3%
F Chelmsford – conventional £3.5m £1.4m –9.3%
G Aylesbury – exemplar £3.5m £1.4m –4.7%
H Aylesbury – conventional £3.7m £1.5m +5.0%
Source: FPDSavills
The following commentary provides some analysis as to what might be behind
these differences in residual values.
4.2 Scheme characteristics
The tables in Appendix 3 contain the detailed characteristics of all the sites which help to
explain the different schemes’ performances. The differences between all the schemes
are many, sometimes subtle and certainly varied. Not all of the exemplar examples are by
any means similar, and even the standard examples vary from each other substantially.
4.2.1 Site size
Determining the size of each site in the study proved to be one of the most
challenging aspects of this work. It would appear that the method by which
T H E V A L U E O F H O U S I N G D E S I G N A N D L A Y O U T