House prices in 'CB4 1', Cambridge

This article reveals price per square foot data and various charts to help you understand current housing market in 'CB4 1' (Cambridge) - statistics were last calculated on 16 October 2024.

Defining 'CB4 1'

This analysis is limited to properties whose postcode starts with "CB4 1", this is also called the postcode sector. There are no official postcode sector names so I've just labelled it CB4 1, Cambridge. 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 CB4 1 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 July 2024, 56, Alice Bell Close, Cambridge, CB4 1YF sold for £560,000. Given the internal area of 1,087 square feet recorded on the EPC, the price per sqft is £560,000 ÷ 1,087 sqft = £515.

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 CB4 1 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 'CB4 1' vs 'CB4'

The chart above is called a histogram, it helps you see the distribution of house price per sqft in CB4 1 To make this chart we put all the sales data into a series of £ per sqft 'buckets' (e.g. £529 to £557, £557 to £585, £585 to £613 etc...) we then count the number of sales with within in each bucket and plot the results. The histogram is based on 310 sales that took place in CB4 1, Cambridge 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 CB4 1, Cambridge. Notably, only 25% of properties that sold recently were valued at more than £604 sqft. For anything to be valued more than this means it has to be more desireable than the clear majority of CB4 1 homes.

Box plot of £ per sqft for CB4 1

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. Cambridge. The chart above shows a boxplot for 'CB4 1' as well as the 'CB4' 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 'CB4 1' is £523.
  • 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 310 transactions in CB4 1, Cambridge half were sold for between £466 and £604 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; 310 for CB4 1, Cambridge.

    • Property price map for Cambridge

    Have a look at the interactive price map I created for myself. Use it to explore 'CB4 1' house prices all the way down to individual property plots.

    Property price heatmap for Cambridge
    House price map for Cambridge

    Cambridge 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 CB4 1 (Cambridge) compared with the wider postcode district of CB4. You can extrapolate from this based on your own views on future interest rates, inflation and other factors.

    House price index for CB4 1

    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 'CB4 1' property prices over the last 20 years. The index is calculated from the average price paid per sqft for property in CB4 1 and is set to 100 in 2004. I'm comparing the trends for CB4 1,Cambridge with the wider postcode district of CB4 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 Cambridge 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 CB4 1
    CB4 1 sector CB4 district
    Nominal Real Nominal Real
    20 yr per annum 4.1% 1.4% 4.3% 1.6%
    20 yr total 121.6% 31.2% 130.4% 36.5%
    10 yr per annum 2.8% 0.0% 3.4% 0.6%
    10 yr total 32.0% 0.2% 39.2% 5.7%
    5 yr per annum 2.6% -1.4% 2.7% -1.3%
    5 yr total 13.6% -7.0% 14.5% -6.3%
    1 yr per annum -1.3% -5.2% -0.6% -4.6%
    1 yr total -1.3% -5.2% -0.6% -4.6%

    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, CB4 district have seen a 1.6% annual change when adjusted for inflation. This translates to a total change of 36.5% in real terms.
    • Over the past 5 years, CB4 district have seen a -1.3% annual change when adjusted for inflation. This translates to a total change of -6.3% in real terms.

    Most recent CB4 1 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
    Green End Road, Cambridge, CB4 1R 89 sqm £490 23
    Milton Road, Cambridge, CB4 1X 140 sqm £466 18
    High Street, Cambridge, CB4 1N 72 sqm £567 15
    Haig Court, Cambridge, CB4 1T 50 sqm £294 13
    Scholars Walk, Cambridge, CB4 1D 95 sqm £427 12
    Union Lane, Cambridge, CB4 1Q 92 sqm £495 11
    Blackthorn Close, Cambridge, CB4 1F 52 sqm £475 11
    Longworth Avenue, Cambridge, CB4 1G 117 sqm £433 11

    Search for your street here.

    Nearby geographies

    The table below shows how 'CB4 1' compares to the other postcode sectors in CB4.

    Sector Lower quartile Median Upper quartile Sales in last 2yr
    CB5 8 Cambridge £417 sqft £485 sqft £563 sqft 259
    CB4 3 Cambridge £467 sqft £541 sqft £618 sqft 209
    CB4 2 Cambridge £376 sqft £432 sqft £503 sqft 218
    CB4 1 Cambridge £466 sqft £523 sqft £604 sqft 310
    CB24 6 Milton £416 sqft £471 sqft £516 sqft 85
    CB1 3 Cambridge £486 sqft £553 sqft £627 sqft 399
    CB1 2 Cambridge £557 sqft £639 sqft £690 sqft 181
    CB1 1 Cambridge £550 sqft £615 sqft £714 sqft 57

    Raw data

    Our analysis of CB4 1 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
    56, Alice Bell Close, Cambridge £560,000
    Jul-2024
    		 1,087 515
    42, Belvoir Rd, Cambridge £910,000
    Jul-2024
    		 1,248 728
    5, Elizabeth Way, Cambridge £810,000
    Jul-2024
    		 2,378 340

    See the entire list of all sales in CB4 1 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.