House prices in SE23 (London)

This article shows price per square metre data and various charts to help you understand the housing market in SE23 - stats were last calculated on 16 October 2024.

Defining 'SE23'

This analysis is limited to properties whose postcode starts with "SE23", this is also called the postcode district. There are no official postcode district names so I've just labelled it SE23, London. 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 SE23 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 July 2024, 1, Wood Vale, London, SE23 3DS sold for £690,000. Given the internal area of 66 square metres recorded on the EPC, the price per sqm is £690,000 ÷ 66 sqm = £10,454.

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 SE23 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 SE23

The chart above is called a histogram, it helps you see the distribution of house price per sqm in SE23 To make this chart we put all the sales data into a series of £ per sqm 'buckets' (e.g. £6,250 to £6,500, £6,500 to £6,750, £6,750 to £7,000 etc...) we then count the number of sales with within in each bucket and plot the results. The histogram is based on 759 sales that took place in SE23, 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 SE23, London. Notably, only 25% of properties that sold recently were valued at more than £7,590 sqm. For anything to be valued more than this means it has to be more desireable than the clear majority of SE23 homes.


Box plot of £ per sqm for SE23

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. London. The chart above shows a boxplot for 'SE23' as well as the 'SE' 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 'SE23' is £6,640.
  • 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 759 transactions in SE23, London half were sold for between £5,680 and £7,590 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; 759 for SE23, London.
  • Property price map for London

    Have a look at the interactive price map I created for myself. Use it to explore 'SE23' house prices all the way down to individual property plots.

    Property price heatmap for London
    House price map for London

    Will SE23 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 SE23 (London) compared with the wider postcode area 'SE'. You can extrapolate from this based on your own views on future interest rates, inflation and other factors.


    House price index for SE23

    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 'SE23' property prices over the last 20 years. The index is calculated from the average price paid per sqm for property in SE23 and is set to 100 in 2004. The chart compares trends for SE23, London against those of the broader postcode area 'SE'. 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 Lewisham 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 SE23
    SE area SE23 district
    Nominal Real Nominal Real
    20 yr per annum 4.4% 1.7% 4.8% 2.1%
    20 yr total 138.0% 40.9% 154.7% 50.9%
    10 yr per annum 2.9% 0.1% 2.2% -0.6%
    10 yr total 33.4% 1.3% 24.2% -5.7%
    5 yr per annum 1.9% -2.1% 1.8% -2.2%
    5 yr total 10.1% -9.9% 9.2% -10.7%
    1 yr per annum 0.7% -3.3% -1.5% -5.4%
    1 yr total 0.7% -3.3% -1.5% -5.4%

    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, SE area have seen a 1.7% annual change when adjusted for inflation. This translates to a total change of 40.9% in real terms.
    • Over the past 5 years, SE23 district have seen a -2.2% annual change when adjusted for inflation. This translates to a total change of -10.7% in real terms.

    Most recent SE23 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
    Taymount Rise, , SE23 3U 65 sqm £6,213 46
    Wood Vale, , SE23 3D 80 sqm £6,629 32
    Devonshire Road, , SE23 3S 69 sqm £6,657 29
    Devonshire Road, , SE23 3T 85 sqm £6,903 29
    Woolstone Road, , SE23 2T 97 sqm £6,222 26
    Kilmorie Road, , SE23 2S 90 sqm £7,240 25
    Canonbie Road, , SE23 3A 131 sqm £7,229 24
    St German'S Road, , SE23 1R 68 sqm £6,407 23

    Search for your street here.

    Nearby geographies

    The table below shows how 'SE23' compares to the other postcode districts nearby 'SE23'.

    District Lower quartile Median Upper quartile Sales in last 2yr
    SE9 London £4,790 sqm £5,380 sqm £5,990 sqm 1,057
    SE8 London £5,710 sqm £6,750 sqm £7,500 sqm 390
    SE7 London £4,990 sqm £5,950 sqm £6,520 sqm 272
    SE6 London £4,720 sqm £5,540 sqm £6,320 sqm 905
    SE5 London £6,000 sqm £7,050 sqm £8,220 sqm 719
    SE4 London £6,380 sqm £7,150 sqm £8,020 sqm 557
    SE3 London £5,840 sqm £6,830 sqm £8,000 sqm 679
    SE28 London £4,060 sqm £4,770 sqm £5,460 sqm 296
    SE27 London £5,740 sqm £6,650 sqm £7,420 sqm 446
    SE26 London £5,240 sqm £6,060 sqm £6,960 sqm 605

    Raw data

    Our analysis of SE23 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, Wood Vale, £690,000
    Jul-2024
    66 10,454
    111, Perry Rise, £560,000
    Jul-2024
    94 5,957
    27a, Stanstead Rd, £400,000
    Jul-2024
    65 6,153

    See the entire list of all sales in SE23 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.