House prices in 'BB3 0', Lower Darwen

This article reveals price per square metre data and various charts to help you understand current housing market in 'BB3 0' (Lower Darwen, Darwen) - statistics were last calculated on 16 October 2024.

Defining 'BB3 0'

This analysis is limited to properties whose postcode starts with "BB3 0", this is also called the postcode sector. There are no official postcode sector names so I've just labelled it BB3 0, Lower Darwen. 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 sector, or you can use the search form below.

Price per square metre

Knowing the average house price in BB3 0 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 August 2024, 26, Dover Street, Lower Darwen, BB3 0QA sold for £105,000. Given the internal area of 58 square metres recorded on the EPC, the price per sqm is £105,000 ÷ 58 sqm = £1,810.

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 BB3 0 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 'BB3 0' vs 'BB3'

The chart above is called a histogram, it helps you see the distribution of house price per sqm in BB3 0 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 230 sales that took place in BB3 0, Lower Darwen, Darwen 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 BB3 0, Lower Darwen. Notably, only 25% of properties that sold recently were valued at more than £2,300 sqm. For anything to be valued more than this means it has to be more desireable than the clear majority of BB3 0 homes.

Box plot of £ per sqm for BB3 0

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. Lower Darwen. The chart above shows a boxplot for 'BB3 0' as well as the 'BB3' postcode district.

  • 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 'BB3 0' is £1,490.
  • 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 230 transactions in BB3 0, Lower Darwen half were sold for between £1,120 and £2,300 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; 230 for BB3 0, Lower Darwen.

    • Property price map for Lower Darwen

    Have a look at the interactive price map I created for myself. Use it to explore 'BB3 0' house prices all the way down to individual property plots.

    Property price heatmap for Lower Darwen
    House price map for Lower Darwen

    Lower Darwen house price forecasting

    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 BB3 0 (Lower Darwen) compared with the wider postcode district of BB3. You can extrapolate from this based on your own views on future interest rates, inflation and other factors.

    House price index for BB3 0

    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 'BB3 0' property prices over the last 20 years. The index is calculated from the average price paid per sqm for property in BB3 0 and is set to 100 in 2004. I'm comparing the trends for BB3 0,Lower Darwen with the wider postcode district of BB3 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 Blackburn with Darwen 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 BB3 0
    BB3 0 sector BB3 district
    Nominal Real Nominal Real
    20 yr per annum 2.6% -0.1% 3.0% 0.4%
    20 yr total 65.7% -1.8% 82.0% 7.8%
    10 yr per annum 2.9% 0.1% 3.2% 0.4%
    10 yr total 32.6% 0.7% 37.1% 4.1%
    5 yr per annum 3.4% -0.7% 4.0% -0.1%
    5 yr total 18.2% -3.2% 21.6% -0.4%
    1 yr per annum -7.1% -10.8% -6.0% -9.7%
    1 yr total -7.1% -10.8% -6.0% -9.7%

    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, BB3 district have seen a 0.4% annual change when adjusted for inflation. This translates to a total change of 7.8% in real terms.
    • Over the past 5 years, BB3 district have seen a -0.1% annual change when adjusted for inflation. This translates to a total change of -0.4% in real terms.

    Most recent BB3 0 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
    Blackburn Road, Lower Darwen, BB3 0A 93 sqm £1,043 19
    Olive Lane, Lower Darwen, BB3 0E 76 sqm £996 16
    Sandy Lane, Lower Darwen, BB3 0P 97 sqm £1,651 16
    Aintree Drive, Lower Darwen, BB3 0Q 74 sqm £2,409 14
    Lynwood Avenue, Lower Darwen, BB3 0J 88 sqm £1,140 14
    Delphinium Way, Lower Darwen, BB3 0S 79 sqm £2,277 14
    Birch Hall Avenue, Lower Darwen, BB3 0J 76 sqm £1,486 13
    Milking Lane, Lower Darwen, BB3 0R 106 sqm £2,057 13

    Search for your street here.

    Nearby geographies

    The table below shows how 'BB3 0' compares to the other postcode sectors in BB3.

    Sector Lower quartile Median Upper quartile Sales in last 2yr
    PR6 8 Brinscall £2,370 sqm £2,740 sqm £3,230 sqm 155
    BL7 8 Belmont £1,560 sqm £2,500 sqm £3,270 sqm 16
    BB3 3 Darwen £1,240 sqm £1,940 sqm £2,570 sqm 388
    BB3 2 Darwen £1,100 sqm £1,490 sqm £1,980 sqm 286
    BB3 1 Darwen £970 sqm £1,260 sqm £1,700 sqm 217
    BB3 0 Lower Darwen £1,120 sqm £1,490 sqm £2,300 sqm 230
    BB2 5 Blackburn £2,180 sqm £2,450 sqm £2,620 sqm 258
    BB2 4 Blackburn £940 sqm £1,320 sqm £2,080 sqm 398
    BB2 3 Blackburn £1,010 sqm £1,500 sqm £1,960 sqm 201
    BB1 2 Blackburn £1,230 sqm £1,560 sqm £2,010 sqm 172

    Raw data

    Our analysis of BB3 0 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
    26, Dover St, Lower Darwen, Darwen £105,000
    Aug-2024
    		 58 1,810
    2, Grenada Close, Lower Darwen, Darwen £255,000
    Aug-2024
    		 106 2,405
    591, Blackburn Rd, Lower Darwen, Darwen £99,950
    Aug-2024
    		 71 1,407

    See the entire list of all sales in BB3 0 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.