Expensive! That would be most people’s response when talking about the price of property in Chichester. I like to get a little more technical than that though, so I thought I’d delve into some recent research from Zoopla that looked at the varying price per square foot of property around the country.
Comparing the price per square foot in such a way gives a good barometer across different towns and cities without being influenced by the overall size of the area’s average property.
Here in Chichester the average price per square foot of property is £356. This in itself doesn’t give away much, but when we consider that the average price per square foot of property throughout the UK is £211, we can see that Chichester is 69% more expensive than the national average.
The gap between the most expensive area in the country (London’s Kensington & Chelsea – £1,328 per square foot) and the least expensive (Blaenau Gwent in Wales – £79 per square foot) is even more staggering though; whole houses in Wales are literally selling for the price of a London bedroom!
It’s no surprise that prices in London have risen the most in the past five years (up 54%), followed by the East of England (+38%) and the South-East of England (+36%). The North-East of England saw the lowest growth in the past five years, with average prices rising just 3%.
Closer to home we can see that Chichester is also more expensive than its seaside neighbour Bognor Regis, where the average price of property is “just” £277 per square foot. This still means Bognor Regis is more expensive than the UK average, but it suggests you can get around a third more “bricks for your buck” in Bognor Regis than you can in Chichester.
Whilst this is all very interesting, calculating the price per square foot can also be very useful when looking at properties for sale to assess whether you’re getting decent value or not. Consider St. Agnes Place in Chichester, where there are two apartments for sale in the same block. Both are similar in specification and offer two double bedrooms, however one is priced at £365,000 and the other £340,000.
The natural instinct therefore might be to plump for the “cheaper” of the two apartments, however if you factor in their sizes we see the former is actually £381 per square foot whilst the latter is £386 per square feet. Of course, when you consider the average flat in Chichester is priced at £350 per square foot you may wonder whether either is the right pick!
