You know, I sometimes worry that my mental map of London’s property prices might be a bit simplistic. Okay, I know Bloomsbury, say, is more expensive than Barking. But which is better value? Where are you getting more for your money?
Well – enquiring minds need worry no longer, because housing analyst Neal Hudson, who used to work at Savills before he went rogue*, has just published this rather lovely map. It shows property prices per square foot in every London postcode: not the area ones, like N1 or E17, but the individual locations.
And it demonstrates, among other things, that, measured purely on the basis of size, homes in Barking are much better value than those in Bloomsbury. So as long as you’re not worried about location or facilities or that sort of thing, Barking is definitely better.
Bloomsbury and Barking, labelled to enable direct comparions. Sort of.
The map only shows postcodes inside Greater London (which, oddly, means that some homes in London E4, which are technically in Essex, aren’t included). As a result, you can see exactly how arbitrary the city boundaries are in a few places:
On this version I’ve labelled some of the contiguous suburbs that fall outside the city boundaries.
You can also see the surprisingly big areas of the city that done include any homes. In the centre, this is because of parks, or the offices of the City; but further out there’s a surprisng amount of industrial land (in the dark greys that mean “built up”) or open space (in the light grey that mean, well, not).
As to the prices themselves – as you’d expect, they’re highest in the centre. But the most expensive areas, in burning hot whites and yellows, also spread to the west into Kensington and Chelsea, and north into Hampstead.
The cheapest, meanwhile, are generally to be found to by the Thames to the east, especially in the boroughs of Barking and Bexley. In fact, the map shows at a glance many of the prejudices that have been built into London’s social geography for decades. North is more expensive than south; west more than east.
Probably the single most striking thing about the map is the way it highlights the way the character of the river changes as you travel across London. In the West, where the Thames is narrow, pretty and easily crossed, the most expensive properties are those by the river. In the east, where it’s wide, industrial and unbridged, it’s the cheapest.
The unadulterated version. Image: Getty.
Anyway, there’s no doubt loads more interesting stuff to find in here, if you’re minded to spend an hour looking (not least, the relative price in your own area). So why not play with the big version of the map on Hudson’s own website. You can also follow him on Twitter, and should, because he posts lovely maps like this surprisingly often.
*Freelance.
Jonn Elledge is the editor of CityMetric. He is on Twitter as @jonnelledge and also has a Facebook page now for some reason.
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