Editor's Pick
Latest property hotspots revealed
From the places where house prices have risen the fastest to the most searched for locations, we round up the most desirable areas to buy a home
Slough saw the biggest rise in average property prices in the period between 2019 and 2022, according to analysis by Atlas Ceramics.
The average house price in 2019 was just £239,942, but this had risen by 44.75% to £434,312 in 2022 – the sixth most expensive area in the country.
According to the business, which used data from Rightmove and Zoopla to compile its lists, Slough is an attractive destination because of the number of jobs in the town, as there are more company HQs there than anywhere else outside of London.
Watford came second in the list of areas to have seen the strongest rises in property prices. The average house price in the town in 2019 was £276,465, but this rose 44.49% to £498,054 in 2022.
Biggest risers
The rest of the top 10 and the percentage increase in house prices between 2019 and 2022 are as follows:
- Slough – 44.75%
- Watford – 44.49%
- Southampton – 40.89%
- Birkenhead – 38.62%
- Manchester – 32.95%
- Bournemouth – 27.21%
- Swansea – 25.53%
- Leicester – 24.96%
- Plymouth – 24.27%
- Norwich – 23.64%
Most expensive places to buy a home
Unsurprisingly, London tops the list of most expensive places to buy a home, with average house prices hitting £682,174 in the capital.
In second place is Oxford where average property prices top half a million pounds. In fact, none of the top 10 areas with the highest house prices were in the North of England.
Below are the 10 most expensive locations and their average property prices in 2022:
- London – £682,174
- Oxford – £549,298
- Watford – £498,054
- Cambridge – £493,206
- Brighton – £462,869
- Slough – £434,312
- Poole – £424,635
- Reading – £401,637
- Bristiol – £378,344
- Bournemouth – £371,718
Most searched for locations
Atlas Ceramics also looked for the most searched for locations, by analysing Google search data. It looked at searches for homes in 2019/20 and compared that to 2020/21 to measure the change in popularity.
And the results revealed some interesting trends.
Warrington saw the greatest rise in searches, from 1,450 in 2019-2020 t0 3,300 in 2021-2022 – a rise of 127.59%.
Birkenhead in Merseyside saw the second greatest rise in searches at 125% between 2019/20 and 2020/21.
Sunderland, Middlesbrough and Huddersfield made up the top five.
