House prices in DH4 (Houghton Le Spring)

Price per square metre data and charts to help you understand the housing market in DH4 - stats were last calculated on 01 December 2025.

Defining 'DH4'

This analysis is limited to properties whose postcode starts with "DH4", this is also called the postcode district. There are no official postcode district names so I've just labelled it DH4, Houghton Le Spring. It is shown in red on the map below.

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Price per square metre

Knowing the average house price in DH4 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 2025, 6, Hedley Close, Houghton Le Spring, DH4 6GT sold for £214,000. Given the internal area of 106 square metres recorded on the EPC, the price per sqm is £214,000 ÷ 106 sqm = £2,018.

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 DH4 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 DH4

The chart above is called a histogram, it helps you see the distribution of house price per sqm in DH4 To make this chart we put all the sales data into a series of £ per sqm 'buckets' (e.g. £1,900 to £2,000, £2,000 to £2,100, £2,100 to £2,200 etc...) we then count the number of sales with within in each bucket and plot the results. The histogram is based on 1,002 sales that took place in DH4, 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 DH4, Houghton Le Spring. Notably, only 25% of properties that sold recently were valued at more than £2,310 sqm. For anything to be valued more than this means it has to be more desireable than the clear majority of DH4 homes.

Box plot of £ per sqm for DH4

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. Houghton Le Spring. The chart above shows a boxplot for 'DH4' as well as the 'DH' 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 'DH4' is £1,810.
  • 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 1,002 transactions in DH4, Houghton Le Spring half were sold for between £1,110 and £2,310 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; 1,002 for DH4, Houghton Le Spring.

    • Property price map for Houghton Le Spring

    Have a look at the interactive price map I created for myself. Use it to explore 'DH4' house prices all the way down to individual property plots.

    Property price heatmap for Houghton Le Spring
    House price map for Houghton Le Spring

    Will DH4 house prices drop in 2025?

    House prices in DH4 grew 7.9% in the last year, 3.8% after inflation. Whether or not this trend will continue depends on many factors, such as wage growth, net migration, interest rates and the level of house building. No one can predict these things with certainty however we can plot the historic trends in house prices in DH4 (Houghton Le Spring) compared with the wider postcode area 'DH'.You can extrapolate from this based on your own views.

    House price index for DH4

    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 'DH4' property prices over the last 20 years. The index is calculated from the average price paid per sqm for property in DH4 and is set to 100 in 2004. The chart compares trends for DH4, Houghton Le Spring against those of the broader postcode area 'DH'. 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 Sunderland 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 DH4
    DH area DH4 district
    Nominal Real Nominal Real
    20 yr per annum 1.4% -1.4% 1.3% -1.4%
    20 yr total 31.4% -23.8% 30.3% -24.5%
    10 yr per annum 2.8% -0.3% 2.6% -0.5%
    10 yr total 32.1% -3.0% 28.9% -5.4%
    5 yr per annum 4.6% 0.1% 3.5% -1.0%
    5 yr total 25.3% 0.5% 18.8% -4.8%
    1 yr per annum 7.1% 3.1% 7.9% 3.8%
    1 yr total 7.1% 3.1% 7.9% 3.8%

    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, DH area have seen a -1.4% annual change when adjusted for inflation. This translates to a total change of -23.8% in real terms.
    • Over the past 5 years, DH4 district have seen a -1.0% annual change when adjusted for inflation. This translates to a total change of -4.8% in real terms.

    Most recent DH4 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
    Whitworth Park Drive, , DH4 6G 111 sqm £2,061 23
    Chalk Hill Road, , DH4 6N 83 sqm £2,193 20
    Weymouth Drive, , DH4 7T 132 sqm £2,541 19
    Woodland View, , DH4 6R 81 sqm £1,122 17
    Whitefield Crescent, , DH4 7Q 85 sqm £1,980 17
    Brinkburn Crescent, , DH4 5H 82 sqm £1,353 16
    Abbey Drive, , DH4 5L 83 sqm £1,201 16
    Harwood Drive, , DH4 5N 85 sqm £1,767 14

    Search for your street here.

    Nearby geographies

    The table below shows how 'DH4' compares to the other postcode districts nearby 'DH4'.

    District Lower quartile Median Upper quartile Sales in last 2yr
    SR4 Sunderland £1,040 sqm £1,380 sqm £1,900 sqm 1,084
    SR3 Sunderland £1,360 sqm £1,850 sqm £2,370 sqm 901
    NE38 Washington £1,350 sqm £2,010 sqm £2,540 sqm 607
    DH9 Stanley £760 sqm £1,130 sqm £1,620 sqm 1,123
    DH8 Consett £1,120 sqm £1,630 sqm £2,150 sqm 1,254
    DH7 Sacriston £1,120 sqm £1,630 sqm £2,180 sqm 1,188
    DH6 Bowburn £980 sqm £1,510 sqm £2,100 sqm 1,232
    DH5 Hetton Le Hole £850 sqm £1,440 sqm £2,050 sqm 682
    DH4 Houghton Le Spring £1,110 sqm £1,810 sqm £2,310 sqm 1,002
    DH3 Birtley £1,380 sqm £1,970 sqm £2,490 sqm 858

    Raw data

    Our analysis of DH4 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
    6, Hedley Close, £214,000
    Oct-2025
    		 106 2,018
    11, Chingford Close, £180,000
    Oct-2025
    		 70 2,571
    24, Wingate Grange, £240,000
    Oct-2025
    		 116 2,068

    See the entire list of all sales in DH4 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.