Leeds leads the northern cities – or does it?
by on 12th April 2017
As Leeds estate and letting agents, we posed a question status on our Facebook page asking this:
Out of four northern cities: Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle Upon Tyne, which city centre has the highest average property price?
Everybody, practically, went all Manc and opted for our drizzly Pennine neighbour.
But you know what?
They were wrong.
Wrong of course if you accept the opinion of the property portal prince Rightmove.
The real answer took everyone by surprise:
- Newcastle
- Manchester
- Leeds
- Liverpool
There is a golden property rule that the further you head north, the lower property prices become but that is clearly a simplistic assertion.
Edinburgh has prices to match many London boroughs and it obviously sits outside the M25.
Middlesbrough and Hull have lower than average property prices, but places like Whitby and York, both sort of in-between, have property microclimates that dwarf those two.
Newcastle may occupy top spot because, if you know the city, it’s quite built up and compact.
Space and land is arguably at a premium.
When supply falls, and demand increases, prices shoot up.
Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool have all got more expansive cityscapes, resulting in less expensive city properties.
Or that’s our theory.
Leaving the north east alone, city centre properties, near us, according to Rightmove data, sold for on average £153,000 in the past year.
Does that sound right or is Rightmove selecting a portion of our centre to cherry-pick data from?
More broadly, you can find this from their data:
“Most of the sales in Leeds over the past year were semi-detached properties which on average sold for £189,943. Terraced properties had an average sold price of £146,635 and detached properties averaged at £345,760.
Leeds, with an overall average price of £192,433 was more expensive than nearby Leeds City Centre (£152,527), but was cheaper than Chapel Allerton (£223,710) and Roundhay (£284,329).
In the past year house prices in Leeds were 6% up on the year before and 12% up on 2014 when they averaged at £171,504.”
which means in, a nutshell, that the city centre of Leeds is cheaper than the rest of the borough; almost £40,000 cheaper.
Adam Parkin, who runs Hogan’s Online Plus, has a wider property remit within Leeds.
West Yorkshire in fact.
Adam covers a population of 2.2 million and towns, cities, villages across the county.
Now what we intend to do in the weeks ahead, is look more closely at Leeds – those expensive suburbs like Chapel Allerton, Roundhay, Alwoodley and Headingley, to see not only what property price growth is in these areas, based on historical data, but also to compare these with desirable locations in Bradford, Wakefield, Huddersfield and the like.
We will also look at areas like Harehills, Seacroft, Gipton, Burmantofts and east Leeds generally and see how their property prices compare.
Watch this space.
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