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

Broadland is the dearest at £305,000 and Great Yarmouth the cheapest at £221,000: the same budget buys 1.4 times as much home by price at one end of Norfolk as at the other.

The marker on each bar is the middle asking price of the new homes for sale there today. In 6 of the 6 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.

410 new homes are for sale across Norfolk today. South Norfolk has the most (122), then King's Lynn and West Norfolk (110).

In the middle council area of Norfolk, homes sold new went for 19% more than resales over the last twelve months.

The gap is widest in Great Yarmouth (27% more) and narrowest in South Norfolk (4% 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 £247 in Great Yarmouth to £315 in Broadland.

Sales for every thousand households show how often homes change hands, which is how much choice a buyer has in a year. Broadland is the busiest (31) and Norwich the quietest (24), around a middle of 27.

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

In Breckland, 6% of the homes sold in the last twelve months were sold new, the highest share in Norfolk; in Norwich 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 Norfolk over the last year. Broadland moved most (up 1.7%) and Breckland least (down 3.7%).

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 4.7%, led by Norwich (down 0.6%).

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

There is no clear pattern between distance to central London and growth over three years: places close in and far out have moved alike.

Distance to central London does not explain prices in Norfolk: council areas near and far sell for much the same per square foot, so something else (the coast, a second city, the countryside) is setting them.

How many people drive to work has little to do with distance to central London here.

In Norfolk, 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 South Norfolk average the highest in Norfolk (49.7) and those of King's Lynn and West Norfolk the lowest (42.6).

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. Norwich is the most built up (3,688 people per square kilometre) and North Norfolk the least (107).

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

Areas towards the top right have the most children and the largest households: South Norfolk, Great Yarmouth and Breckland lead for residents under fifteen. Towards the bottom left are the areas with more single people and couples.

In the middle council area of Norfolk, 18% of households rent privately. Cheaper areas clearly have more renters.

Norwich, Great Yarmouth and Broadland have the highest walk scores in Norfolk. 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 Norwich, 33% have none, the most in Norfolk. Areas towards the bottom right are where daily life depends least on driving.

A band D home pays £2,503 a year in Norwich, the most in Norfolk, and £2,414 in Great Yarmouth, the least: a difference of £89 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 127 crimes for every thousand residents in Norwich over the last year held, and 41 in Broadland. 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.