Best places to live in Essex: house prices and data by area

Epping Forest is the dearest at £515,000 and Tendring the cheapest at £272,750: the same budget buys 1.9 times as much home by price at one end of Essex as at the other.

The marker on each bar is the middle asking price of the new homes for sale there today. In 10 of the 10 council areas with enough new homes to compare, new homes are asking more than the homes sold around them: a new home is often larger or a different kind, so the gap is not the new-build premium on its own.

527 new homes are for sale across Essex today. Braintree has the most (142), then Uttlesford (115).

In the middle council area of Essex, homes sold new went for 48% more than resales over the last twelve months.

The gap is widest in Braintree (73% more) and narrowest in Uttlesford (20% more). It compares every new home with every resale, whatever their size and kind, so read it as the price of buying new there, not as a like-for-like premium.

Price per square foot takes the size of the home out of the comparison. It runs from £304 in Tendring to £518 in Epping Forest.

Sales for every thousand households show how often homes change hands, which is how much choice a buyer has in a year. Brentwood is the busiest (32) and Harlow the quietest (23), around a middle of 28.

A busy market is a sign of both supply and demand: more homes are coming up, and more buyers are competing for them.

In Uttlesford, 7% of the homes sold in the last twelve months were sold new, the highest share in Essex; in Rochford it was 0%. New sales reach the register later than resales, so the latest months undercount them.

Sold prices fell 0.8% in the middle council area of Essex over the last year. Castle Point moved most (up 2.8%) and Tendring least (down 3.3%).

The mix of homes sold changes from year to year, so a single council area can swing for that reason alone; read the pattern across the areas more than any one bar.

Over three years the middle council area's sold prices were flat, led by Brentwood (up 9.3%).

Over three years the dearer council areas of Essex have clearly grown faster than the cheaper ones, widening the gap between them.

Council areas closer to central London have clearly seen more growth over three years than those further out.

Being ten miles closer to central London costs about £41 more per square foot across Essex, a clear pattern: on a home of a thousand square feet that is about £41,000.

The further a council area is from central London, the more of its workers clearly drive to work.

In Essex, house prices do not follow school outcomes from one council area to the next: there are well-judged schools in cheaper areas as well as dearer ones.

A council area is large: the school a home is offered depends on its own address, so check the schools around a development before relying on this.

Attainment 8 is a pupil's score across eight GCSE subjects. The secondary schools of Chelmsford average the highest in Essex (54.1) and those of Tendring the lowest (38.3).

Results do not follow distance to central London: there is no trade here between results and a short journey in.

Density says what kind of place an area is: how close the homes, shops, schools and stations sit. Harlow is the most built up (3,056 people per square kilometre) and Uttlesford the least (142).

Age and income are not linked across Essex: there are younger and older areas at every level of income.

Areas towards the top right have the most children and the largest households: Harlow, Basildon and Uttlesford lead for residents under fifteen. Towards the bottom left are the areas with more single people and couples.

In the middle council area of Essex, 15% of households rent privately. Cheaper areas loosely have more renters.

Castle Point, Harlow and Colchester have the highest walk scores in Essex. Denser areas are clearly more walkable, because more is close by; an area above the line is easier on foot than its density alone would suggest.

Another way to see how easy it is to get about is how many households manage without a car. In Harlow, 22% have none, the most in Essex. Areas towards the bottom right are where daily life depends least on driving.

A band D home pays £2,363 a year in Rochford, the most in Essex, and £2,258 in Brentwood, the least: a difference of £105 every year for the same band.

A new home is banded when it is finished, so ask the builder which band each plot is expected to fall in.

Police recorded 120 crimes for every thousand residents in Harlow over the last year held, and 53 in Maldon. City centres record more because of the people who visit them, not only those who live there, and a council area's figure hides wide differences between its streets.