House prices in BL3 (Bolton)

This article shows price per square metre data and various charts to help you understand the housing market in BL3 - stats were last calculated on 03 December 2024.

Defining 'BL3'

This analysis is limited to properties whose postcode starts with "BL3", this is also called the postcode district. There are no official postcode district names so I've just labelled it BL3, Bolton. It is shown in red on the map below.

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Price per square metre

Knowing the average house price in BL3 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, 1, Helmsdale Avenue, Bolton, BL3 4NZ sold for £349,995. Given the internal area of 105 square metres recorded on the EPC, the price per sqm is £349,995 ÷ 105 sqm = £3,333.

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 BL3 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 BL3

The chart above is called a histogram, it helps you see the distribution of house price per sqm in BL3 To make this chart we put all the sales data into a series of £ per sqm 'buckets' (e.g. £2,350 to £2,500, £2,500 to £2,650, £2,650 to £2,800 etc...) we then count the number of sales with within in each bucket and plot the results. The histogram is based on 1,093 sales that took place in BL3, 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 BL3, Bolton. Notably, only 25% of properties that sold recently were valued at more than £2,570 sqm. For anything to be valued more than this means it has to be more desireable than the clear majority of BL3 homes.

Box plot of £ per sqm for BL3

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. Bolton. The chart above shows a boxplot for 'BL3' as well as the 'BL' 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 'BL3' is £1,970.
  • 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 1,093 transactions in BL3, Bolton half were sold for between £1,500 and £2,570 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; 1,093 for BL3, Bolton.

    • Property price map for Bolton

    Have a look at the interactive price map I created for myself. Use it to explore 'BL3' house prices all the way down to individual property plots.

    Property price heatmap for Bolton
    House price map for Bolton

    Will BL3 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 BL3 (Bolton) compared with the wider postcode area 'BL'. You can extrapolate from this based on your own views on future interest rates, inflation and other factors.

    House price index for BL3

    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 'BL3' property prices over the last 20 years. The index is calculated from the average price paid per sqm for property in BL3 and is set to 100 in 2004. The chart compares trends for BL3, Bolton against those of the broader postcode area 'BL'. 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 Bolton 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 BL3
    BL area BL3 district
    Nominal Real Nominal Real
    20 yr per annum 3.8% 1.1% 4.3% 1.6%
    20 yr total 111.7% 25.4% 130.0% 36.2%
    10 yr per annum 5.0% 2.2% 5.6% 2.7%
    10 yr total 63.4% 24.1% 72.5% 31.0%
    5 yr per annum 6.1% 1.9% 7.5% 3.3%
    5 yr total 34.4% 10.0% 43.9% 17.7%
    1 yr per annum 5.2% 1.0% 6.8% 2.6%
    1 yr total 5.2% 1.0% 6.8% 2.6%

    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, BL3 district have seen a 1.6% annual change when adjusted for inflation. This translates to a total change of 36.2% in real terms.
    • Over the past 5 years, BL3 district have seen a 3.3% annual change when adjusted for inflation. This translates to a total change of 17.7% in real terms.

    Most recent BL3 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
    Nelson Street, , BL3 2E 53 sqm £2,347 34
    Deane Church Lane, , BL3 4E 97 sqm £1,399 27
    Hulton Lane, , BL3 4L 88 sqm £1,808 24
    Sapling Road, , BL3 3Q 79 sqm £1,699 20
    Bradford Road, , BL3 2H 102 sqm £1,582 19
    Ellesmere Road, , BL3 3J 70 sqm £2,002 18
    Churchill Drive, , BL3 1P 81 sqm £2,833 17
    Sunningdale Court, , BL3 1L 61 sqm £1,784 17

    Search for your street here.

    Nearby geographies

    The table below shows how 'BL3' compares to the other postcode districts nearby 'BL3'.

    District Lower quartile Median Upper quartile Sales in last 2yr
    M26 Radcliffe £1,650 sqm £2,140 sqm £2,770 sqm 815
    BL9 Bury £1,780 sqm £2,330 sqm £2,920 sqm 1,138
    BL8 Bury £2,130 sqm £2,760 sqm £3,440 sqm 835
    BL7 Bromley Cross £2,380 sqm £2,870 sqm £3,420 sqm 418
    BL6 Horwich £1,950 sqm £2,510 sqm £3,190 sqm 808
    BL5 Westhoughton £1,970 sqm £2,520 sqm £3,190 sqm 795
    BL4 Farnworth £1,560 sqm £1,950 sqm £2,390 sqm 670
    BL3 Bolton £1,500 sqm £1,970 sqm £2,570 sqm 1,093
    BL2 Bolton £1,610 sqm £2,220 sqm £2,880 sqm 1,033
    BL1 Bolton £1,530 sqm £1,970 sqm £2,610 sqm 1,565

    Raw data

    Our analysis of BL3 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, Helmsdale Avenue, £349,995
    Oct-2024
    		 105 3,333
    128, Hawthorne Rd, £136,000
    Oct-2024
    		 78 1,743
    116, Sapling Rd, £142,500
    Oct-2024
    		 82 1,737

    See the entire list of all sales in BL3 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.