House prices in AL (St Albans)

This article shows price per square metre data and various charts to help you understand the housing market in AL - stats were last calculated on 01 November 2024.

Defining postcode area 'AL'

This analysis is limited to properties whose postcode starts with "AL", this is also called the postcode area. There are no official postcode area names so I've just labelled it AL, St Albans. It is shown in red on the map below.

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Price per square metre

Knowing the average house price in AL is not much use. However, knowing average price per square metre can be quite useful. Price per sqm allows some comparison between properties of different size. We define price per square metre as the sold price divided by the internal area of a property:

£ per sqm = price ÷ internal area

For example in September 2024, 53, Sweet Briar, St Albans, AL7 3DU sold for £382,500. Given the internal area of 85 square metres recorded on the EPC, the price per sqm is £382,500 ÷ 85 sqm = £4,500.

England & Wales have been officially metric since 1965. However house price per square foot is prefered by some estate agents and those of sufficiently advanced age ;-). It is a huge pain to code the automatic conversion for square meters to square feet for all the graphs and charts on AL and elsewhere. All the conditionals turn my tidy code for into spaghetti. I will get around to it at some point, but for now you can just divide everything by 10 in your head, move a decimal place and you'll be close enough. If you want to be more precise 1 sqm = 10.76391 sqft.

Distribution of £ per sqm for houses vs flats in AL

Tip: click on the legend labels to show/hide different property types.

The chart above is called a histogram, it helps you see the distribution of house price per sqm in AL To make this chart we put all the sales data into a series of £ per sqm 'buckets' (e.g. £6,150 to £6,500, £6,500 to £6,850, £6,850 to £7,200 etc...) we then count the number of sales with within in each bucket and plot the results. The histogram is based on 1,895 sales that took place in AL in the last 12 months.

Generate a custom histogram like the one above but based on your own criteria.

You can see the spread of prices above. This is because although internal area is a key factor in determining valuation, it is not the only factor. Many factors other than size affect desirability; these factors could be condition, aspect, garden size, negotiating power of the vendor etc.

The spread of prices will give you a feel of the typical range to expect in AL, St Albans. Notably, only 25% of properties that sold recently were valued at more than £7,100 sqm. For anything to be valued more than this means it has to be more desireable than the clear majority of AL homes.

Box plot of £ per sqm for AL

Tip: click on the chart to see the values.

The chart above is called a boxplot (or a box-and-whisker plot). Box plots, like histograms, are used to graphically represent the distribution of data, showing the central tendency, spread of the distribution. In the context of £ per square metre property price distributions, box plots represent the variation in property prices within a geographic area e.g. AL. The chart above shows a boxplot for 'AL' broken down by property type (Flats, Semi-detached, Detached and Terraced). Almost everywhere houses command higher prices per square metre than flats, and detached houses most of all.

  • Median: The horizontal line inside the box represents the median (£ per square meter). This is the midpoint of the data, meaning 50% of the prices are below this value, and 50% are above. The middle price per square metre in 'AL' is £5,850.
  • Interquartile Range (IQR): The box spans from the 25th percentile (Q1) to the 75th percentile (Q3). This is the range where the middle 50% of the data lies, giving a good indication of the typical price spread. Of the 1,895 sales in AL half were sold for between £4,840 and £7,100 per square metre.
  • Whiskers: In our case, the whiskers extend from the 9th percentile (at the lower end) to the 91st percentile (at the upper end), This provides a slightly broader view of the distribution by including the middle 82% of records. The whiskers capture most of the variation but exclude extreme outliers caused by data errors in recording sold house prices or internal area.
  • 'n=' is the number of property sales the box is based on.

    • Property price map for St Albans

    Have a look at the interactive price map I created for myself. Use it to explore postcode area 'AL' house prices all the way down to individual property plots.

    Property price choropleth for St Albans
    Property price choropleth for St Albans

    Price trends

    I cannot tell what house prices will do in the future and don't believe anyone who says they can. However we can plot price trends, I have done this in the chart below for AL split by property type. You can extrapolate from this based on your own views on future interest rates, inflation and other factors.

    House price index for AL

    Tip: click on the legend items to show/hide different lines

    Download house price index as CSV (premium users only).

    The chart above shows changes in 'AL' property prices over the last 20 years. The index is calculated from the average price paid per sqm for property in AL and is set to 100 in 2004. The chart compares trends for Flats vs Houses in AL. You can see how different they are. Keep this in mind when you see any price index that doesn't provide this breakdown.

    The dashed lines show nominal house price changes, the solid lines show the same data adjusted for inflation. Economists call this the 'real' price change. You have to take inflation into account when comparing prices over time. It's calculated using the formula:

    Real Rate of Return = (1 + Nominal Rate) ÷ (1 + Inflation Rate) – 1
    In this formula, the nominal rate is the rate of change before any adjustments, and the inflation rate is taken from the Consumer Price Index. The real rate of return is a more accurate measure of change in value, because £1 today does not have the same buying power as £1 in the past. For example, if a savings account pays an interest rate of 3% per year and the inflation rate is 5% per year, the real rate of return is -2%. This means that the investment's value is shrinking by 2% each year.

    Historic returns for AL
    Flats Houses
    Nominal Real Nominal Real
    20 yr per annum 3.0% 0.3% 4.3% 1.6%
    20 yr total 80.4% 6.8% 130.2% 36.4%
    10 yr per annum 2.9% 0.1% 3.7% 0.8%
    10 yr total 33.0% 1.0% 43.2% 8.8%
    5 yr per annum 1.3% -2.7% 2.9% -1.1%
    5 yr total 6.6% -12.7% 15.6% -5.4%
    1 yr per annum 0.1% -3.9% -2.7% -6.6%
    1 yr total 0.1% -3.9% -2.7% -6.6%

    This table complements the house price index chart above, presenting the data in a more detailed format. It breaks down the information into 20-year, 10-year, 5-year, and 1-year periods, further categorized by property type. For each period, we display both a per annum rate of change and a total rate of change.

    The total rate of change represents the overall change over the entire period. The formula for total return is:

    Total return = (Index at end of period ÷ Index at start of period) - 1

    The per annum rate of change is the annualized rate of change over the period. This is equivalent to the annual bank savings rate you would need to achieve the same total return over the given period. This annualized return is also known as the Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR). The formula for CAGR is:

    CAGR = (1 + Total return) ^ (1 ÷ Number of years) - 1

    Some specific examples:

    • Over the past 20 years, Houses have seen a 1.6% annual change when adjusted for inflation. This translates to a total change of 36.4% in real terms.
    • Over the past 5 years, Flats have seen a -2.7% annual change when adjusted for inflation. This translates to a total change of -12.7% in real terms.

    Nearby geographies

    The table below shows how 'AL' compares to the other postcode areas nearby 'AL'.

    Area Lower quartile Median Upper quartile Sales in last 1yr
    WD- Watford £4,810 sqm £5,580 sqm £6,400 sqm 1,987
    SG- Stevenage £3,750 sqm £4,460 sqm £5,250 sqm 3,572
    LU- Luton £3,290 sqm £3,860 sqm £4,420 sqm 2,559
    HP- Hemel Hempstead £4,110 sqm £4,830 sqm £5,700 sqm 4,099
    EN- Enfield £4,510 sqm £5,260 sqm £6,180 sqm 2,457
    AL- St Albans £4,840 sqm £5,850 sqm £7,100 sqm 1,895

    Raw data

    Our analysis of AL is derived from what is essentially a big table of sold prices from Land Registry with added property size information. Below are three rows from this table to give you an idea.

    Address Paid sqm £/sqm
    53, Sweet Briar, £382,500
    Sep-2024
    		 85 4,500
    14, Elizabeth Court, £418,000
    Sep-2024
    		 63 6,634
    Flat 8 Loyd Court, 63, Russet Drive, £340,000
    Sep-2024
    		 76 4,473

    Search the entire list of all sales here.

    About

    I created HouseMetric because I wanted to see this data and analysis myself, I also wanted to teach myself to build a website. Please give me feedback or spread the word about it. I'm constantly tinkering and adding more stuff to it.