House prices in CB (Cambridge)

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

Defining postcode area 'CB'

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

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Price per square metre

Knowing the average house price in CB 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, 61, Hauxton Road, Cambridge, CB22 5HJ sold for £750,000. Given the internal area of 155 square metres recorded on the EPC, the price per sqm is £750,000 ÷ 155 sqm = £4,838.

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 CB 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 CB

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 CB To make this chart we put all the sales data into a series of £ per sqm 'buckets' (e.g. £4,700 to £5,000, £5,000 to £5,300, £5,300 to £5,600 etc...) we then count the number of sales with within in each bucket and plot the results. The histogram is based on 3,361 sales that took place in CB 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 CB, Cambridge. Notably, only 25% of properties that sold recently were valued at more than £5,280 sqm. For anything to be valued more than this means it has to be more desireable than the clear majority of CB homes.

Box plot of £ per sqm for CB

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. CB. The chart above shows a boxplot for 'CB' 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 'CB' is £4,290.
  • 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 3,361 sales in CB half were sold for between £3,490 and £5,280 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 Cambridge

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

    Property price choropleth for Cambridge
    Property price choropleth for Cambridge

    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 CB 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 CB

    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 'CB' property prices over the last 20 years. The index is calculated from the average price paid per sqm for property in CB and is set to 100 in 2004. The chart compares trends for Flats vs Houses in CB. 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 CB
    Flats Houses
    Nominal Real Nominal Real
    20 yr per annum 3.0% 0.4% 3.9% 1.2%
    20 yr total 81.4% 7.5% 114.6% 27.1%
    10 yr per annum 3.2% 0.4% 4.0% 1.1%
    10 yr total 36.5% 3.6% 47.5% 12.0%
    5 yr per annum 2.9% -1.2% 3.5% -0.6%
    5 yr total 15.1% -5.8% 18.6% -2.9%
    1 yr per annum 3.2% -0.9% -1.4% -5.4%
    1 yr total 3.2% -0.9% -1.4% -5.4%

    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, Flats have seen a 0.4% annual change when adjusted for inflation. This translates to a total change of 7.5% in real terms.
    • Over the past 5 years, Flats have seen a -1.2% annual change when adjusted for inflation. This translates to a total change of -5.8% in real terms.

    Nearby geographies

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

    Area Lower quartile Median Upper quartile Sales in last 1yr
    SG- Stevenage £3,750 sqm £4,460 sqm £5,250 sqm 3,572
    PE- Peterborough £2,240 sqm £2,780 sqm £3,360 sqm 8,550
    IP- Ipswich £2,630 sqm £3,160 sqm £3,750 sqm 5,616
    CO- Colchester £2,880 sqm £3,510 sqm £4,120 sqm 4,140
    CM- Chelmsford £3,760 sqm £4,420 sqm £5,130 sqm 5,731
    CB- Cambridge £3,490 sqm £4,290 sqm £5,280 sqm 3,361

    Raw data

    Our analysis of CB 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
    61, Hauxton Rd, £750,000
    Sep-2024
    		 155 4,838
    22, Petworth St, £420,000
    Sep-2024
    		 63 6,666
    20, Beechwood Close, £320,000
    Sep-2024
    		 67 4,776

    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.