How the scores are built

The scores

Growth

12-month and 3-year price change, measured against the UK as a whole.

Momentum

Whether growth is speeding up or slowing: change in annualised growth, recent prices against the 12-month trend, and sales volumes year on year.

Rental

Typical gross yield and rent growth. Shown as unavailable until rent data is loaded for an area.

Liquidity

Sales volume and its trend; days on market once a listing feed is connected.

Market state

Growth and momentum together place an area in one of six states: Accelerating, Strong, Stable, Cooling, Weak or Stagnating. When a state changes we record the date and keep it. That record is public on the dashboard, so our calls can be checked later.

Noise, mix and incomplete months

Three things stand between raw sales data and a number worth publishing. Sales are registered up to three months after completion, so recent months are incomplete and are excluded entirely. A month with more detached houses than flats is not a price rise, so medians are taken per property type and combined with fixed national weights. And a single district's monthly median is noisy, so the index is a 12-month rolling mean.

An area needs 24 months of history, 150 sales in the last year, and sales in at least 10 of the last 12 months to be scored at all. Roughly a quarter of districts do not qualify, and we show nothing for them rather than something misleading.

Sources

Contains HM Land Registry data © Crown copyright and database right. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.