My brother lives at 35 Parson Lane, yet the next-door neighbor is at number 25. My last house was number 10, the next-door neighbor was at number 12. Why all the number skipping? Why not just go in numerical order starting with 1, then 2, etc.
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There are a whole different bunch of numbering systems used in different places. Some older places in the UK that still have original housing might simply have been numbered in the order they were built. This can lead to weird numbers. But it’s not that common. Much more common would be like 10 being next to 12. In the UK, we tend to have all the consecutive odd numbers on one side of the street and the even numbers on the other.
There may also be some gaps where the plot of land has another use. One of the streets I lived in had a bunch of short rows of 4 houses that ran parallel to each other. One row had 2, 4, 6, 8. The next was 12, 14, 16, 18. The reason is that there were a block of garages at the end of each row, so the garages counted as plot 10, 20, etc.
In the US, it’s more common to number each block, and then the houses within it. You can have the 100 block, where the houses count from 100 upwards. Say you only get to house 150, and then there’s a new block. The next block will start at 200, so 152-198 are missing.
Or, you could have a proportional system where 150 is halfway along the block and 198 is at the end. Here, the numbers will just jump up. But it means that if a plot gets split in two, it’s easier to give the new plot a number.
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