Has anyone attempted to produce a contour map of UK residential property prices? (A few years ago The Economist produced contours of office rents across Greater London). At present we have the very coarse scale 10-region data put out by the nationwide or halifax figures, and we have the very fine scale detail provided, postcode by postcode, by e.g. upmystreet.com.
What might be interesting would be to take a 'standard' property, say the ubiquitous 2 recep-3 bed 1950s semi,l assume d-glazing and a driveway but no garage, so further standardising this type of house, and plot its price by contour, say at £50,000 intervals from £50,000 (any left anywhere at that price?) up to the dizzy heights of London where they probably might get close to £500,000 there.
Also interesting to redo this periodically, and watch the price mountain grow its countours out north and west from London over time, also threatening to topple over south and east into France. Do sites like upmystreet give access to old prices, years ago, so this could be done? Are there sites that show this already? And if such a map did exist, might it actually have a deleterious social efect by pinpointing, for the wealthy, mobile, and keen-for-a-bargain, house-traders exactly where the remaining 'hollows' of bargain prices were to be found, so these could be snapped up before the locals got a chance?
Finally, we might get different results if we took the 'cheapest house' on offer (i.e. not a flat or mobile home) and mapped those countours over time. I've kept a note of the cheapest house on offer in the local Southampton property paper, and it contradicts all the stories about property prices still somewhat rising - in fact the suggestion from this is that house prices in Soton are about the same or even maybe 2-3% lower, than 13 months ago. Maybe its just the Soton economy is doing worse than the rest of the UK....all a bit iffy, especially if you're having to move every few years in the course of your career.
Hillary Shaw, Southampton
|