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

Kensington and Chelsea is the dearest at £1,125,000 and Barking and Dagenham the cheapest at £385,000: the same budget buys 2.9 times as much home by price at one end of London as at the other.

The marker on each bar is the middle asking price of the new homes for sale there today. In 14 of the 24 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.

844 new homes are for sale across London today. Greenwich has the most (120), then Barnet (72).

In the middle council area of London, homes sold new went for 24% more than resales over the last twelve months.

The gap is widest in Hammersmith and Fulham (89% more) and narrowest in Redbridge (45% 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 £453 in Barking and Dagenham 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. Richmond upon Thames is the busiest (26) and Brent the quietest (11), around a middle of 17.

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 London; in Kingston upon Thames it was 0%. New sales reach the register later than resales, so the latest months undercount them.

Sold prices were flat in the middle council area of London over the last year. Redbridge moved most (up 4.4%) 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 were flat, led by Hillingdon (up 11.4%).

Over three years the cheaper council areas of 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 £430 more per square foot across London, a clear pattern: on a home of a thousand square feet that is about £430,000.

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

Council areas with more schools judged good or better are loosely dearer: every ten points more goes with about £160,000 on the middle sold price. The schools do not cause all of that; both follow the same households.

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 Kingston upon Thames average the highest in London (60.8) 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 Bromley the least (2,198).

Age and income are not linked across 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: Barking and Dagenham, Redbridge and Enfield lead for residents under fifteen. Towards the bottom left are the areas with more single people and couples.

In the middle council area of London, 31% of households rent privately. Dearer areas clearly 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 London. 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 City of London, 77% have none, the most in London. Areas towards the bottom right are where daily life depends least on driving.

A band D home pays £2,609 a year in Kingston upon Thames, the most in London, and £1,028 in Wandsworth, the least: a difference of £1,581 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 73 in Richmond upon Thames. 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.