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

Sefton is the dearest at £230,000 and Liverpool the cheapest at £190,000: the same budget buys 1.2 times as much home by price at one end of Merseyside as at the other.

Price per square foot takes the size of the home out of the comparison. It runs from £216 in Knowsley to £233 in Wirral.

Sales for every thousand households show how often homes change hands, which is how much choice a buyer has in a year. Wirral is the busiest (26) and Liverpool the quietest (18), around a middle of 24.

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

In Sefton, 1% of the homes sold in the last twelve months were sold new, the highest share in Merseyside; in St. Helens it was 0%. New sales reach the register later than resales, so the latest months undercount them.

Sold prices rose 0.7% in the middle council area of Merseyside over the last year. Wirral moved most (up 6.2%) and Knowsley least (down 2.6%).

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 rose 9.3%, led by Liverpool (up 16.6%).

Over three years dearer and cheaper council areas of Merseyside have grown at much the same pace, so the gaps between them have held.

Council areas further from Manchester have loosely seen more growth over three years than those close in.

Unusually, council areas further from Manchester sell for more per square foot: about £10 more for every ten miles out, a clear pattern.

Unusually, council areas further from Manchester have clearly fewer workers driving to work.

Council areas with more schools judged good or better are clearly dearer: every ten points more goes with about £39,000 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 Wirral average the highest in Merseyside (46.8) and those of Knowsley the lowest (36.5).

Results do not follow distance to Manchester: 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. Liverpool is the most built up (4,346 people per square kilometre) and St. Helens the least (1,344).

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

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

In the middle council area of Merseyside, 18% of households rent privately. The share renting has little to do with price here.

Liverpool, Wirral and Sefton have the highest walk scores in Merseyside. 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 Liverpool, 40% have none, the most in Merseyside. Areas towards the bottom right are where daily life depends least on driving.

A band D home pays £2,674 a year in Liverpool, the most in Merseyside, and £2,403 in St. Helens, the least: a difference of £270 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 142 crimes for every thousand residents in Liverpool over the last year held, and 81 in Wirral. 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.