House prices in BA8 (Henstridge)

This article shows price per square metre data and various charts to help you understand the housing market in BA8 - stats were last calculated on 03 December 2024.

Defining 'BA8'

This analysis is limited to properties whose postcode starts with "BA8", this is also called the postcode district. There are no official postcode district names so I've just labelled it BA8, Henstridge. It is shown in red on the map below.

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Price per square metre

Knowing the average house price in BA8 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, 1, Bowden Road, Henstridge, BA8 0LB sold for £290,000. Given the internal area of 78 square metres recorded on the EPC, the price per sqm is £290,000 ÷ 78 sqm = £3,717.

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 BA8 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 BA8

The chart above is called a histogram, it helps you see the distribution of house price per sqm in BA8 To make this chart we put all the sales data into a series of £ per sqm 'buckets' (e.g. £2,800 to £3,000, £3,000 to £3,200, £3,200 to £3,400 etc...) we then count the number of sales with within in each bucket and plot the results. The histogram is based on 117 sales that took place in BA8, 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 BA8, Henstridge. Notably, only 25% of properties that sold recently were valued at more than £3,820 sqm. For anything to be valued more than this means it has to be more desireable than the clear majority of BA8 homes.

Box plot of £ per sqm for BA8

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. Henstridge. The chart above shows a boxplot for 'BA8' as well as the 'BA' 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 'BA8' is £3,330.
  • 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 117 transactions in BA8, Henstridge half were sold for between £2,810 and £3,820 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; 117 for BA8, Henstridge.

    • Property price map for Henstridge

    Have a look at the interactive price map I created for myself. Use it to explore 'BA8' house prices all the way down to individual property plots.

    Property price heatmap for Henstridge
    House price map for Henstridge

    Will BA8 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 BA8 (Henstridge) compared with the wider postcode area 'BA'. You can extrapolate from this based on your own views on future interest rates, inflation and other factors.

    House price index for BA8

    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 'BA8' property prices over the last 20 years. The index is calculated from the average price paid per sqm for property in BA8 and is set to 100 in 2004. The chart compares trends for BA8, Henstridge against those of the broader postcode area 'BA'. 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 Somerset 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 BA8
    BA area BA8 district
    Nominal Real Nominal Real
    20 yr per annum 3.1% 0.5% 3.4% 0.7%
    20 yr total 85.7% 10.0% 94.6% 15.2%
    10 yr per annum 4.0% 1.2% 4.4% 1.6%
    10 yr total 48.7% 12.9% 54.4% 17.2%
    5 yr per annum 4.0% -0.1% 5.5% 1.4%
    5 yr total 21.6% -0.5% 30.8% 7.1%
    1 yr per annum 0.1% -3.9% 2.4% -1.7%
    1 yr total 0.1% -3.9% 2.4% -1.7%

    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, BA8 district have seen a 0.7% annual change when adjusted for inflation. This translates to a total change of 15.2% in real terms.
    • Over the past 5 years, BA area have seen a -0.1% annual change when adjusted for inflation. This translates to a total change of -0.5% in real terms.

    Most recent BA8 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
    Bowden Road, , BA8 0L 116 sqm £2,809 10
    Old Station Gardens, , BA8 0P 117 sqm £3,442 10
    Townsend Green, , BA8 0T 53 sqm £2,948 9
    Slades Hill, , BA8 0H 102 sqm £3,348 8
    Yarn Barton, , BA8 0J 71 sqm £2,888 8
    Collingham Close, , BA8 0L 82 sqm £3,425 7
    West Street, , BA8 0L 94 sqm £3,515 7
    High Street, , BA8 0R 129 sqm £2,088 5

    Search for your street here.

    Nearby geographies

    The table below shows how 'BA8' compares to the other postcode districts nearby 'BA8'.

    District Lower quartile Median Upper quartile Sales in last 2yr
    SP8 Gillingham £2,690 sqm £3,300 sqm £3,820 sqm 444
    DT9 Sherborne £3,080 sqm £3,670 sqm £4,300 sqm 550
    DT10 Stalbridge £2,930 sqm £3,520 sqm £4,160 sqm 335
    BA9 Wincanton £2,670 sqm £3,290 sqm £3,850 sqm 191
    BA8 Henstridge £2,810 sqm £3,330 sqm £3,820 sqm 117
    BA7 Castle Cary £2,730 sqm £3,470 sqm £3,930 sqm 102
    BA6 Glastonbury £2,760 sqm £3,350 sqm £3,920 sqm 371
    BA5 Wells £3,100 sqm £3,690 sqm £4,200 sqm 581
    BA4 Shepton Mallet £2,700 sqm £3,310 sqm £3,840 sqm 382
    BA3 Midsomer Norton £2,990 sqm £3,450 sqm £3,930 sqm 775

    Raw data

    Our analysis of BA8 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
    1, Bowden Rd, £290,000
    Sep-2024
    		 78 3,717
    Clovelly, 10, Vine St, £337,500
    Sep-2024
    		 104 3,245
    15, Manor Close, £315,000
    Sep-2024
    		 103 3,058

    See the entire list of all sales in BA8 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.