News flash: Houses on the numerous Mulholland Drives throughout the United States are worth 235 percent more than the national average. Meanwhile, houses on the literally thousands of Main Streets list for 58 percent less.
We still wouldn’t move in.
Despite the often random nature by which streets get their names, there seems to be a vague correlation between street name and real estate value, according to a study recently published by the New York Times. Excluding mega apartments in places like New York City (which seem to create their own rules as they go), their analysis of several years’ worth of real estate listings yielded some surprising conclusions: names trump numbers, lanes trump streets, and it’s the weirdo names that win out over ordinary ones.
“Imagine that one of us (Spencer) lives on 10th Street and the other (Stan) lives on Elm Street,” the article reads. “With only this information, we can guess that Stan’s house is probably worth more than Spencer’s. On average, homes on named streets are 2 percent more valuable than those on numbered streets.”
The correlation isn’t a direct causality. Names can actually indicate a host of underlying factors to the urban planning-savvy. “Street” and “Avenue,” for example, were customary in the 1950s. Logically then, you can assume a house on Fictional Avenue is older than one on Fictional Way or Fictional Circle, which were likely established in the 1980s. And the high cost of a home on a street named “Lake” is a no-brainer: There’s probably a body of water nearby.
To calculate that average value of a home on your street against the national average, plug it into the Times’ interactive infographic. To calculate your porn star alias, combine the name of your first pet with the street you grew up on.
Names can’t tell you everything, of course; superseding these generalizations are the particular politics and history of any given community. The study says nothing of what happens to streets that have been renamed after celebrities and politicians, for example or how to parse crime rates. And you know what Stan won’t tell you? Elm Street is a total nightmare.