House prices in 'CM20 3', Harlow

This article reveals price per square foot data and various charts to help you understand current housing market in 'CM20 3' (Harlow) - statistics were last calculated on 16 October 2024.

Defining 'CM20 3'

This analysis is limited to properties whose postcode starts with "CM20 3", this is also called the postcode sector. There are no official postcode sector names so I've just labelled it CM20 3, Harlow. It is shown in red on the map below.

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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 CM20 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 July 2024, 37, Green Hills, Harlow, CM20 3SX sold for £308,000. Given the internal area of 850 square feet recorded on the EPC, the price per sqft is £308,000 ÷ 850 sqft = £362.

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 CM20 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 'CM20 3' vs 'CM20'

The chart above is called a histogram, it helps you see the distribution of house price per sqft in CM20 3 To make this chart we put all the sales data into a series of £ per sqft 'buckets' (e.g. £311 to £325, £325 to £339, £339 to £353 etc...) we then count the number of sales with within in each bucket and plot the results. The histogram is based on 200 sales that took place in CM20 3, Harlow 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 CM20 3, Harlow. Notably, only 25% of properties that sold recently were valued at more than £392 sqft. For anything to be valued more than this means it has to be more desireable than the clear majority of CM20 3 homes.

Box plot of £ per sqft for CM20 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. Harlow. The chart above shows a boxplot for 'CM20 3' as well as the 'CM20' 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 'CM20 3' is £353.
  • 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 200 transactions in CM20 3, Harlow half were sold for between £309 and £392 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; 200 for CM20 3, Harlow.

    • Property price map for Harlow

    Have a look at the interactive price map I created for myself. Use it to explore 'CM20 3' house prices all the way down to individual property plots.

    Property price heatmap for Harlow
    House price map for Harlow

    Harlow 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 CM20 3 (Harlow) compared with the wider postcode district of CM20. You can extrapolate from this based on your own views on future interest rates, inflation and other factors.

    House price index for CM20 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 'CM20 3' property prices over the last 20 years. The index is calculated from the average price paid per sqft for property in CM20 3 and is set to 100 in 2004. I'm comparing the trends for CM20 3,Harlow with the wider postcode district of CM20 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 Harlow 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 CM20 3
    CM20 3 sector CM20 district
    Nominal Real Nominal Real
    20 yr per annum 4.0% 1.3% 3.8% 1.1%
    20 yr total 119.5% 30.0% 112.0% 25.6%
    10 yr per annum 5.4% 2.6% 4.9% 2.1%
    10 yr total 69.5% 28.7% 61.4% 22.5%
    5 yr per annum 3.1% -0.9% 2.9% -1.1%
    5 yr total 16.6% -4.5% 15.4% -5.6%
    1 yr per annum 3.7% -0.5% 2.9% -1.2%
    1 yr total 3.7% -0.5% 2.9% -1.2%

    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, CM20 district have seen a 1.1% annual change when adjusted for inflation. This translates to a total change of 25.6% in real terms.
    • Over the past 5 years, CM20 district have seen a -1.1% annual change when adjusted for inflation. This translates to a total change of -5.6% in real terms.

    Most recent CM20 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
    Halling Hill, Harlow, CM20 3J 74 sqm £363 38
    Ladyshot, Harlow, CM20 3E 82 sqm £324 31
    Long Ley, Harlow, CM20 3N 78 sqm £367 30
    The Downs, Harlow, CM20 3R 83 sqm £343 24
    Felmongers, Harlow, CM20 3D 90 sqm £361 23
    The Dashes, Harlow, CM20 3R 76 sqm £331 20
    The Hides, Harlow, CM20 3Q 76 sqm £322 18
    Pittmans Field, Harlow, CM20 3L 84 sqm £333 14

    Search for your street here.

    Nearby geographies

    The table below shows how 'CM20 3' compares to the other postcode sectors in CM20.

    Sector Lower quartile Median Upper quartile Sales in last 2yr
    CM20 3 Harlow £309 sqft £353 sqft £392 sqft 200
    CM20 2 Harlow £328 sqft £369 sqft £434 sqft 233
    CM20 1 Harlow £326 sqft £362 sqft £403 sqft 232
    CM19 4 Harlow £317 sqft £359 sqft £400 sqft 177
    CM18 6 Harlow £319 sqft £362 sqft £398 sqft 213
    CM17 9 Church Langley £377 sqft £430 sqft £496 sqft 382
    CM17 0 Harlow £365 sqft £411 sqft £448 sqft 159

    Raw data

    Our analysis of CM20 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
    37, Green Hills, Harlow £308,000
    Jul-2024
    		 850 362
    41, Long Ley, Harlow £315,000
    Jul-2024
    		 775 406
    16, Arkwrights, Harlow £365,000
    Jun-2024
    		 1,033 353

    See the entire list of all sales in CM20 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.