Students at Geelong’s Scared Heart College have shown that house prices are about 20 per cent lower on streets with silly names.
Students at Geelong’s Scared Heart College have shown that house prices are significantly lower on streets with silly names than they are on nearby streets with less embarrassing titles.
Members of the school’s Bradbury Club, in which students conduct long-term science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) projects, conducted the work with the help of the school’s head of science, Dr Adam Cole.
The students identified 27 Victorian streets with silly names, including Butts Road, Wanke Road, Belcher Street, and Fanny Street. They then used Google Maps to identify adjacent streets with more regular names.
The students studied property prices over the last 47 years with the help of the Australian Bureau of Statistics and a Melbourne real estate agency.
The students found that property prices in streets with silly names were approximately 20 per cent lower than in streets with regular names – which equates to about $140,000 on the median price of a Melbourne house.
As well as examining the hard data, the students conducted surveys about attitudes to silly street names. One-third of those surveyed said they would not be happy to live on a street with an embarrassing name.
Dr Cole told ABC radio that people who feel embarrassed to live on streets with silly names would not bid for those properties, thereby lowering demand.
The ‘silly name effect’ was more pronounced in Melbourne, compared with regional towns, which Dr Cole attributed to greater choice being available.
So if you’ve been squeezed out of the property market, put your pride aside, and go and take a look at that house on Bogan Street.
