Welcome to 2027: putting Emoov’s house price prediction tool to the test

The mad scientists at Emoov have come up with an algorithm to predict house prices in the future (Image: amazingmikael)

The Ideal Homes Show is the trade show for those selling homewares and interiors. The products on offer range from sunflower-splashed gardening clogs to indoor single-person saunas and neon pink water features.

This year’s pièce de résistance is a rotating home designed and built by none other than Amazing Spaces presenter George Clarke. The vertically rotating property is a four ‘room’ home all in the space of one nifty cube which spins according to whether you want to use the dining table for eating, watching television or sleeping.

Amazing as it was, floating in dry ice and strobe lighting like something from a rather frightening concept of a future where we all live in pods, this wasn’t the piece of kit we wanted to test out.

Pushing past the long queues of people waiting outside the contemporary cottage show home and dodging those dipping their fingers in hot tubs, Emoov’s House Price of the Future tool beckoned. The tool, which generates a valuation based on average house price data according to any given postcode, claims to offer an insight into the future value of your home.

Into the lab

The only estate agents represented at the show, dressed up in lab coats and silly glasses for the day, Emoov claims a ‘unique and complex algorithm’ lies behind the final valuation. Gimmicks and mad scientists aside, we put some of our favourite Ham & High postcodes to the test to see what the crystal ball holds for them in the next five to ten years based on current trends.

Hampstead

Over the last five years, Zoopla’s price tool estimates that the average price paid for a semi-detached property in Hampstead was £3,192,503. Emoov expects this figure to stay stable at £3,111,406 in 2022. Ten years into the future, however, house hunters will be looking at £4,388,848 for an NW3 property.

Highgate

For a similar property in Highgate, N6, Zoopla’s tool put prices at £1,792,183. Emoov’s tool puts the price in 2022 at £1,730,171. A relatively stable price then, but how about in the next ten years? By 2027 we’re looking at £2,118,814, rather a dramatic jump and a figure that’ll make househunters woozy.

Crouch End

Lastly, we tested the algorithm on semi-detached homes in Crouch End. The average price paid in the last five years for a semi-detached property in N8 was £1,041,132 according to Zoopla. In five years the price will rise to £1,730,171, and in ten years will leap from the original figure to over the two million threshold at £2,118,814.

Results

So what were the surprise takeaways from Emoov’s gadget? Hampstead is predicted torise steadily with a price increase of 38 per cent between now and 2027, and a greater increase of 41 per cent between 2022 and 2027. The biggest shock is that property prices are predicted to hit the same mark in Highgate and Crouch End come 2022. Property in Highgate currently averages around £750,000 more.

Under the microscope

N8 and N6 are both predicted to have price rises of 25 per cent between 2022 and 2027. Between now and 2027 that’s an 18 per cent price increase for Highgate and a staggering 104 per cent increase for Crouch End. Last week the Sunday Times put Highgate above Hampstead in its list of the top places to live in the country. Clearly, they missed out on the juicier apples of Crouch End, the place to buy up now before it’s too late.

Looking at those price hikes might make property hunters wish that it was all a bit of bunkum, but scepticism aside Emoov’s estimations didn’t stray far from current trends. The verdict of the experts is in, the results have been calculated and the algorithm has spoken, prices in north London postcodes are on the rise, but then you don’t need to be Einstein to have figured that out.

Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? You Hampstead are fair so true, but the young Crouch End is gaining on you.

Here are the numbers broken down based on values for semi-detached properties:

Hampstead:

Average price paid in the last five years: £3,192,503

Price in 2022: £3,111,406

Price in 2027: £4,388,848

Ten year increase: 38 per cent

Highgate:

Average price paid in the last five years: £1,792,183

Price in 2022: £1,730,171

Price in 2027: £2,118,814

Ten year increase: 18 per cent

Crouch End:

Average price paid in the last five years: £1,041,132

Price in 2022: £1,730,171

Price in 2027: £2,118,814

Ten year increase: 104 per cent