Kensington and Chelsea named most expensive place to buy property in Britain with one square metre costing £12,000

On average, a square metre of property in the West London borough will cost £11, 625, almost six times the national average of £2,033

Alexandra Sims
Tuesday 23 June 2015 15:32 BST
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Kensington and Chelsea is the only area in Britain with an average price per square metre above £10,000
Kensington and Chelsea is the only area in Britain with an average price per square metre above £10,000 (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

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Kensington and Chelsea has been named the most expensive place buy a home in Britain, with £12,000 buying just one square metre of property in the borough.

A report from Halifax calculates that on average a square metre of home in the west London borough will cost £11,625, almost six times the national average of £2,033.

This makes the borough the only area in Britain with an average price per square metre above £10,000. Westminster, which has the second highest property prices stand at £9,571 per square meter.

Unsurprisingly, the 10 most expensive areas to buy are all located in London with Camden, Hammersmith and Fulham, Islington, Wandsworth, Hackney and Tower Hamlets making it into the top 10.

Beyond southern England , Altrincham in Cheshire is the most expensive town, with properties priced on average at £2,446 per square metre. Solihull, Warwick, Leamington Spa, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Harrogate and York were also among the most expensive towns to buy property in outside the capital.

The 10 boroughs with the highest price per square metre are also the boroughs that have seen the greatest increase over the last 20 years.

Hackney, East London has experienced the highest rise in price per square metre, increasing by 773 per cent since 1995
Hackney, East London has experienced the highest rise in price per square metre, increasing by 773 per cent since 1995 (Getty)

Hackney in east London has experienced the highest rise, with price per square metre increasing by 773 per cent in the borough since 1995, twice the London average of 388 per cent.

On average the price per square metre in Britain has increased by 227 per cent over the last 20 years rising from £621 in 1995 to £2,033 in 2015.

Even in the last five years, Greater London has experienced substantially faster growth than anywhere else in the country with an average increase of 45 per cent. Halifax calucalted that across the country In comparison UK average growth of 18 per cent since 2005.

Halifax said that across the country, house prices per square metre have surged by 18 per cent since 2010.

Blackpool, Lancashire is one of the cheapest places to buy property in Britain
Blackpool, Lancashire is one of the cheapest places to buy property in Britain

At the other end of the scale, homebuyers who want to get more space for their money should look to the Welsh towns of Aberdare and Metrthur, Wishaw and Airdrie in Scotland or Accrington and Blackpool in Lancashire, which have some of the lowest prices per square metre.

Aberdare is Britain's cheapest town for property, with the average square metre costing £910.

The report, complied by Halifax, was calculated by examining average house prices across 331 town and dividing these by typical property size to get the average metre squared.

Craig McKinlay, mortgages director at Halifax, said: "House price per square metre is a useful measure for house price comparison because it helps to adjust for differences in the size and type of properties between locations."

"Parts of central London are substantially more expensive than anywhere else in the country.”

"Nonetheless, there are a number of notable pockets outside the south of England where property prices are also high price per square metre."

"There has been a clear widening in the gap between southern England, particularly London, and the rest of the country over the past 20 years - a trend that has continued during the last five years."

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