Your move: new Monopoly board turns London areas with best five-year house price growth 'dark blue'

Property experts have shaken up the game's layout to help show first-time buyers the best locations to invest in — and brown Old Kent Road is now top of the list.
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Jess Denham5 September 2018

First-time buyers umming and ahhing over the best locations to buy in have been given an unconventional helping hand in the form of an updated Monopoly board.

Property experts have reordered the boardgame's classic layout, based on London property prices in the 1930s, to highlight the areas that have the best five-year house price growth now.

Locations savvy buyers should consider investing in have been turned dark blue — the most sought-after colour in the game.

GOING UP...

Despite being a groan-worthy brown in the original, Old Kent Road in south London is the hotspot players should be racing their top hats and Scottie dogs to today.

House prices in the south London area have risen by a massive 47 per cent since 2013, four times that of traditional big-hitter Mayfair, a brown when measured in today's house price growth.

Proportunity


Whitechapel Road in east London is also now dark blue thanks to 39 per cent house price growth, while Euston Road has shot up from a lowly light blue to a prized green after enjoying 28 per cent growth in five years.

GOING DOWN...

Posh Park Lane has been shunted down from dark blue to orange after more sluggish 11.5 per cent growth.

Nonetheless, you'd still need to pass Go a lot of times to afford a property here, with the average house price currently standing at £1,195,490.

THE BRAINS BEHIND IT

The reimagined board is based on data from first-time buyer mortgage lender Proportunity.

Their team analysed the five-year price growth of flats, excluding newbuilds, on each Monopoly street — or an address close by — to come up with the ranking.

13 'untapped' areas with average house prices under £500k

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The tech start-up claims to have developed artificial intelligence that can predict future house prices with 95 per cent accuracy.

Their model works by inputting information about a property and its surrounding area — including new homes set to be built nearby, schools, new shop and cafe openings, regeneration investment and more — to obtain data on where it would be most profitable for first-time buyers to invest.

WHERE'S ON THE UP?

Based on their insider info Whitehall, Euston Road and Great Malborough Street will experience the biggest house price growth over the next year, while Mayfair will continue to struggle.

Blue stops Pentonville Road and The Angel, both in the north London borough of Islington, will also turn brown.

Vadim Toader, co-founder and CEO, said: "By reordering the locations based on recent observed growth rather than existing property prices, our board shows where first-time buyers can be smart with their first investment.

"This ensures their money goes the furthest it possibly can, all the while giving them scope to move up the property ladder in the future."

Time to roll the dice...