House prices in CM5 (Ongar)

This article shows price per square metre data and various charts to help you understand the housing market in CM5 - stats were last calculated on 01 November 2024.

Defining 'CM5'

This analysis is limited to properties whose postcode starts with "CM5", this is also called the postcode district. There are no official postcode district names so I've just labelled it CM5, Ongar. It is shown in red on the map below.

Want to change geography?

You can click on the map above to change to a neighbouring district, or you can use the search form below.

Price per square metre

Knowing the average house price in CM5 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, 19, Moreton Road, Ongar, CM5 0AP sold for £550,000. Given the internal area of 91 square metres recorded on the EPC, the price per sqm is £550,000 ÷ 91 sqm = £6,043.

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 CM5 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 CM5

The chart above is called a histogram, it helps you see the distribution of house price per sqm in CM5 To make this chart we put all the sales data into a series of £ per sqm 'buckets' (e.g. £5,250 to £5,500, £5,500 to £5,750, £5,750 to £6,000 etc...) we then count the number of sales with within in each bucket and plot the results. The histogram is based on 223 sales that took place in CM5, 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 CM5, Ongar. Notably, only 25% of properties that sold recently were valued at more than £5,850 sqm. For anything to be valued more than this means it has to be more desireable than the clear majority of CM5 homes.

Box plot of £ per sqm for CM5

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. Ongar. The chart above shows a boxplot for 'CM5' as well as the 'CM' 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 'CM5' is £5,030.

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 223 transactions in CM5, Ongar half were sold for between £4,350 and £5,850 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; 223 for CM5, Ongar.

Property price map for Ongar

Have a look at the interactive price map I created for myself. Use it to explore 'CM5' house prices all the way down to individual property plots.

Property price heatmap for Ongar
House price map for Ongar

Will CM5 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 CM5 (Ongar) compared with the wider postcode area 'CM'. You can extrapolate from this based on your own views on future interest rates, inflation and other factors.

House price index for CM5

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 'CM5' property prices over the last 20 years. The index is calculated from the average price paid per sqm for property in CM5 and is set to 100 in 2004. The chart compares trends for CM5, Ongar against those of the broader postcode area 'CM'. 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 Epping Forest 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 CM5

	CM area		CM5 district
	Nominal	Real	Nominal	Real
20 yr per annum	3.4%	0.7%	3.7%	1.0%
20 yr total	93.3%	14.5%	107.2%	22.8%
10 yr per annum	3.8%	1.0%	4.1%	1.3%
10 yr total	44.8%	9.9%	50.1%	13.9%
5 yr per annum	2.2%	-1.8%	3.1%	-1.0%
5 yr total	11.6%	-8.6%	16.2%	-4.9%
1 yr per annum	-1.9%	-5.9%	5.3%	1.1%
1 yr total	-1.9%	-5.9%	5.3%	1.1%

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, CM area have seen a 0.7% annual change when adjusted for inflation. This translates to a total change of 14.5% in real terms.
Over the past 5 years, CM area have seen a -1.8% annual change when adjusted for inflation. This translates to a total change of -8.6% in real terms.

Most recent CM5 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
High Street, , CM5 9F	75 sqm	£4,294	31
Queensway, , CM5 0B	83 sqm	£4,464	18
Cloverly Road, , CM5 9B	86 sqm	£4,954	15
Moreton Road, , CM5 0A	92 sqm	£4,574	15
High Street, , CM5 9D	57 sqm	£4,915	13
The Gables, , CM5 0G	98 sqm	£5,563	12
Great Stony Park, , CM5 0T	114 sqm	£5,182	11
Cripsey Avenue, , CM5 0A	86 sqm	£4,364	11

Search for your street here.

Nearby geographies

The table below shows how 'CM5' compares to the other postcode districts nearby 'CM5'.

District	Lower quartile	Median	Upper quartile	Sales in last 2yr
RM4 Abridge	£4,620 sqm	£5,330 sqm	£6,710 sqm	87
CM9 Heybridge	£3,600 sqm	£4,210 sqm	£4,790 sqm	813
CM8 Witham	£3,380 sqm	£3,880 sqm	£4,520 sqm	990
CM77 Great Notley	£3,740 sqm	£4,200 sqm	£4,700 sqm	316
CM7 Braintree	£3,270 sqm	£3,860 sqm	£4,420 sqm	1,187
CM6 Dunmow	£3,780 sqm	£4,360 sqm	£4,940 sqm	759
CM5 Ongar	£4,350 sqm	£5,030 sqm	£5,850 sqm	223
CM4 Ingatestone	£4,920 sqm	£5,630 sqm	£6,730 sqm	229
CM3 South Woodham Ferrers	£3,910 sqm	£4,510 sqm	£5,090 sqm	1,175
CM24 Stansted	£3,940 sqm	£4,570 sqm	£5,090 sqm	171

Raw data

Our analysis of CM5 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
19, Moreton Rd,	£550,000 Sep-2024	91	6,043
Spencers House, King St,	£2,050,000 Sep-2024	399	5,137
11, Elstar Rd,	£610,000 Sep-2024	83	7,349

See the entire list of all sales in CM5 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.