House prices in AL3 (St Albans)

This article shows price per square metre data and various charts to help you understand the housing market in AL3 - stats were last calculated on 03 December 2024.

Defining 'AL3'

This analysis is limited to properties whose postcode starts with "AL3", this is also called the postcode district. There are no official postcode district names so I've just labelled it AL3, 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 AL3 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 October 2024, 2 Newmarket Court, Goldsmith Way, St Albans, AL3 5LN sold for £840,000. Given the internal area of 136 square metres recorded on the EPC, the price per sqm is £840,000 ÷ 136 sqm = £6,176.

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 AL3 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 AL3

The chart above is called a histogram, it helps you see the distribution of house price per sqm in AL3 To make this chart we put all the sales data into a series of £ per sqm 'buckets' (e.g. £6,700 to £7,000, £7,000 to £7,300, £7,300 to £7,600 etc...) we then count the number of sales with within in each bucket and plot the results. The histogram is based on 612 sales that took place in AL3, in the last 24 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 AL3, St Albans. Notably, only 25% of properties that sold recently were valued at more than £7,850 sqm. For anything to be valued more than this means it has to be more desireable than the clear majority of AL3 homes.

Box plot of £ per sqm for AL3

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. St Albans. The chart above shows a boxplot for 'AL3' as well as the 'AL' postcode area.

  • 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 'AL3' is £6,300.
  • 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 612 transactions in AL3, St Albans half were sold for between £5,330 and £7,850 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 transactions the box plot is based on; 612 for AL3, St Albans.

    • Property price map for St Albans

    Have a look at the interactive price map I created for myself. Use it to explore 'AL3' house prices all the way down to individual property plots.

    Property price heatmap for St Albans
    House price map for St Albans

    Will AL3 house prices drop in 2025?

    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 AL3 (St Albans) compared with the wider postcode area 'AL'. You can extrapolate from this based on your own views on future interest rates, inflation and other factors.

    House price index for AL3

    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 'AL3' property prices over the last 20 years. The index is calculated from the average price paid per sqm for property in AL3 and is set to 100 in 2004. The chart compares trends for AL3, St Albans against those of the broader postcode area 'AL'. What is more interesting is to look at the difference between flats and houses, even those in the same area follow a very different trend, to get a robust enough sample size to see this we need to zoom out and look at house price trends for the entire St Albans local authority.

    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 AL3
    AL area AL3 district
    Nominal Real Nominal Real
    20 yr per annum 3.9% 1.3% 4.3% 1.6%
    20 yr total 116.7% 28.3% 131.0% 36.9%
    10 yr per annum 3.5% 0.7% 3.7% 0.9%
    10 yr total 41.1% 7.1% 44.1% 9.4%
    5 yr per annum 2.5% -1.5% 3.5% -0.6%
    5 yr total 13.2% -7.4% 18.5% -3.0%
    1 yr per annum -1.6% -5.5% 2.5% -1.6%
    1 yr total -1.6% -5.5% 2.5% -1.6%

    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, AL3 district have seen a 1.6% annual change when adjusted for inflation. This translates to a total change of 36.9% in real terms.
    • Over the past 5 years, AL3 district have seen a -0.6% annual change when adjusted for inflation. This translates to a total change of -3.0% in real terms.

    Most recent AL3 sales

    For the most recent sales activity, rather than a summarized average, it is better to see the underlying data. This is shown in the chart below, where blue dots represent individual sales, click on them to see details. If there is an obvious trend you should be able to spot it here amid the noise from outliers.

    Tip: hover over dots to see details

    Street level data

    Street Avg size Avg £sqm Recent sales
    Dalton Street, , AL3 5Q 75 sqm £8,327 23
    Cannon Street, , AL3 5J 92 sqm £7,408 21
    Bernard Street, , AL3 5Q 72 sqm £8,482 20
    Oster Street, , AL3 5J 69 sqm £7,817 20
    Kimberley Road, , AL3 5P 85 sqm £8,329 20
    Lower Dagnall Street, , AL3 4P 72 sqm £8,330 20
    Portland Street, , AL3 4R 64 sqm £8,898 17
    Goldsmith Way, , AL3 5L 120 sqm £6,540 17

    Search for your street here.

    Nearby geographies

    The table below shows how 'AL3' compares to the other postcode districts nearby 'AL3'.

    District Lower quartile Median Upper quartile Sales in last 2yr
    LU6 Dunstable £3,370 sqm £4,000 sqm £4,640 sqm 714
    LU1 Luton £2,840 sqm £3,470 sqm £4,020 sqm 734
    HP3 Hemel Hempstead £4,300 sqm £4,870 sqm £5,520 sqm 633
    HP2 Hemel Hempstead £3,820 sqm £4,380 sqm £5,050 sqm 711
    AL9 Brookmans Park £4,690 sqm £5,420 sqm £6,580 sqm 220
    AL8 Welwyn Garden City £5,060 sqm £5,670 sqm £6,690 sqm 232
    AL7 Welwyn Garden City £4,280 sqm £4,790 sqm £5,490 sqm 625
    AL6 Welwyn £4,690 sqm £5,400 sqm £6,020 sqm 229
    AL5 Harpenden £5,860 sqm £6,920 sqm £7,920 sqm 751
    AL4 St Albans £5,600 sqm £6,500 sqm £7,350 sqm 612

    Raw data

    Our analysis of AL3 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
    2 Newmarket Court, Goldsmith Way, £840,000
    Oct-2024
    		 136 6,176
    17, Fryth Mead, £1,000,000
    Oct-2024
    		 112 8,928
    24, Crecy Gardens, £950,000
    Oct-2024
    		 191 4,973

    See the entire list of all sales in AL3 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.