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

Kensington and Chelsea is the dearest at £1,125,000 and Newham the cheapest at £430,000: the same budget buys 2.6 times as much home by price at one end of Inner London as at the other.

The marker on each bar is the middle asking price of the new homes for sale there today. In 7 of the 9 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.

315 new homes are for sale across Inner London today. Southwark has the most (69), then Tower Hamlets (65).

In the middle council area of Inner London, homes sold new went for 36% more than resales over the last twelve months.

The gap is widest in Hammersmith and Fulham (89% more) and narrowest in Haringey (15% less). 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 £520 in Newham to £1,290 in Kensington and Chelsea.

Sales for every thousand households show how often homes change hands, which is how much choice a buyer has in a year. Wandsworth is the busiest (24) and Newham the quietest (11), around a middle of 15.

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

In Hackney, 5% of the homes sold in the last twelve months were sold new, the highest share in Inner London; in Southwark it was 0%. New sales reach the register later than resales, so the latest months undercount them.

Sold prices fell 1.1% in the middle council area of Inner London over the last year. Islington moved most (up 2.8%) and Westminster least (down 13.8%).

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 fell 5.0%, led by Lewisham (up 1.1%).

Over three years the cheaper council areas of Inner London have clearly grown faster than the dearer ones, closing some of the gap between them.

Council areas further from central London have clearly seen more growth over three years than those close in.

Being ten miles closer to central London costs about £920 more per square foot across Inner London, a clear pattern: on a home of a thousand square feet that is about £920,000.

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

In Inner London, 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 Hammersmith and Fulham average the highest in Inner London (56.7) and those of Lambeth the lowest (47.3).

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. Tower Hamlets is the most built up (15,705 people per square kilometre) and City of London the least (2,970).

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

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

In the middle council area of Inner London, 36% of households rent privately. Dearer areas loosely have more renters, as buying is further out of reach there.

City of London, Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea have the highest walk scores in Inner London. Density does not explain walkability here.

Another way to see how easy it is to get about is how many households manage without a car. In City of London, 77% have none, the most in Inner London. Areas towards the bottom right are where daily life depends least on driving.

A band D home pays £2,314 a year in Haringey, the most in Inner London, and £1,028 in Wandsworth, the least: a difference of £1,286 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 1114 crimes for every thousand residents in City of London over the last year held, and 100 in Wandsworth. 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.