House prices in 'BB3 3', Darwen

This article reveals price per square foot data and various charts to help you understand current housing market in 'BB3 3' (Darwen) - statistics were last calculated on 16 October 2024.

Defining 'BB3 3'

This analysis is limited to properties whose postcode starts with "BB3 3", this is also called the postcode sector. There are no official postcode sector names so I've just labelled it BB3 3, 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 foot

Knowing the average house price in BB3 3 is not much use. However, knowing average price per square foot can be quite useful. Price per sqft allows some comparison between properties of different size. We define price per square foot as the sold price divided by the internal area of a property:

£ per sqft = price ÷ internal area

For example in June 2024, 6, Lawson Court, Darwen, BB3 3FD sold for £69,000. Given the internal area of 516 square feet recorded on the EPC, the price per sqft is £69,000 ÷ 516 sqft = £133.

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 3 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 sqft for 'BB3 3' vs 'BB3'

The chart above is called a histogram, it helps you see the distribution of house price per sqft in BB3 3 To make this chart we put all the sales data into a series of £ per sqft 'buckets' (e.g. £176 to £185, £185 to £195, £195 to £204 etc...) we then count the number of sales with within in each bucket and plot the results. The histogram is based on 399 sales that took place in BB3 3, 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 3, Darwen. Notably, only 25% of properties that sold recently were valued at more than £213 sqft. For anything to be valued more than this means it has to be more desireable than the clear majority of BB3 3 homes.

Box plot of £ per sqft for BB3 3

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 foot property price distributions, box plots represent the variation in property prices within a geographic area e.g. Darwen. The chart above shows a boxplot for 'BB3 3' 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 foot in 'BB3 3' is £150.
  • 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 399 transactions in BB3 3, Darwen half were sold for between £95 and £213 per square foot.
  • 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; 399 for BB3 3, Darwen.

    • Property price map for Darwen

    Have a look at the interactive price map I created for myself. Use it to explore 'BB3 3' house prices all the way down to individual property plots.

    Property price heatmap for Darwen
    House price map for Darwen

    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 3 (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 3

    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 3' property prices over the last 20 years. The index is calculated from the average price paid per sqft for property in BB3 3 and is set to 100 in 2004. I'm comparing the trends for BB3 3,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 3
    BB3 3 sector BB3 district
    Nominal Real Nominal Real
    20 yr per annum 3.4% 0.7% 3.0% 0.4%
    20 yr total 94.6% 15.3% 82.3% 8.0%
    10 yr per annum 3.5% 0.7% 3.2% 0.4%
    10 yr total 40.9% 7.0% 37.3% 4.2%
    5 yr per annum 3.9% -0.2% 4.0% -0.1%
    5 yr total 20.9% -1.1% 21.6% -0.5%
    1 yr per annum -7.0% -10.8% -5.4% -9.2%
    1 yr total -7.0% -10.8% -5.4% -9.2%

    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 3 sector have seen a 0.7% annual change when adjusted for inflation. This translates to a total change of 15.3% in real terms.
    • Over the past 5 years, BB3 3 sector have seen a -0.2% annual change when adjusted for inflation. This translates to a total change of -1.1% in real terms.

    Most recent BB3 3 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 £sqft Recent sales
    Marsh House Lane, Darwen, BB3 3S 74 sqm £155 23
    Perry Street, Darwen, BB3 3D 85 sqm £73 14
    Fitzgerald Drive, Darwen, BB3 3F 74 sqm £160 14
    Sandon Street, Darwen, BB3 3D 83 sqm £86 14
    London Terrace, Darwen, BB3 3D 91 sqm £78 13
    Avallon Way, Darwen, BB3 3J 78 sqm £151 13
    Olive Lane, Darwen, BB3 3D 89 sqm £86 12
    Anyon Street, Darwen, BB3 3A 82 sqm £98 12

    Search for your street here.

    Nearby geographies

    The table below shows how 'BB3 3' compares to the other postcode sectors in BB3.

    Sector Lower quartile Median Upper quartile Sales in last 2yr
    BL7 0 Turton £248 sqft £284 sqft £324 sqft 71
    BB4 4 Haslingden £197 sqft £249 sqft £301 sqft 143
    BB3 3 Darwen £95 sqft £150 sqft £213 sqft 399
    BB3 2 Darwen £102 sqft £138 sqft £181 sqft 293
    BB3 1 Darwen £90 sqft £117 sqft £157 sqft 221
    BB3 0 Lower Darwen £102 sqft £138 sqft £214 sqft 235
    BB1 2 Blackburn £114 sqft £145 sqft £188 sqft 176

    Raw data

    Our analysis of BB3 3 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 sqft £/sqft
    6, Lawson Court, Darwen £69,000
    Jun-2024
    		 516 133
    8, Victoria Buildings, Darwen £115,000
    Jun-2024
    		 753 152
    39, Blacksnape Rd, Darwen £237,500
    Jun-2024
    		 785 302

    See the entire list of all sales in BB3 3 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.