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

Rushcliffe is the dearest at £325,000 and Mansfield the cheapest at £195,000: the same budget buys 1.7 times as much home by price at one end of Nottinghamshire 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 7 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.

757 new homes are for sale across Nottinghamshire today. Rushcliffe has the most (234), then Newark and Sherwood (124).

In the middle council area of Nottinghamshire, homes sold new went for 46% more than resales over the last twelve months.

The gap is widest in Mansfield (76% more) and narrowest in Newark and Sherwood (25% 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 £215 in Mansfield to £321 in Rushcliffe.

Sales for every thousand households show how often homes change hands, which is how much choice a buyer has in a year. Rushcliffe is the busiest (32) and Mansfield the quietest (25), 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 Ashfield, 6% of the homes sold in the last twelve months were sold new, the highest share in Nottinghamshire; in Broxtowe it was 1%. New sales reach the register later than resales, so the latest months undercount them.

Sold prices fell 1.2% in the middle council area of Nottinghamshire over the last year. Bassetlaw moved most (up 2.8%) and Rushcliffe least (down 5.2%).

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 0.8%, led by Mansfield (up 8.3%).

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

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

Being ten miles closer to Nottingham costs about £34 more per square foot across Nottinghamshire, a clear pattern: on a home of a thousand square feet that is about £34,000.

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

Council areas with more schools judged good or better are clearly dearer: every ten points more goes with about £29,000 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 Rushcliffe average the highest in Nottinghamshire (54.1) and those of Ashfield the lowest (41.6).

Results are clearly higher closer to Nottingham.

Density says what kind of place an area is: how close the homes, shops, schools and stations sit. Mansfield is the most built up (1,440 people per square kilometre) and Bassetlaw the least (185).

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

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

In the middle council area of Nottinghamshire, 16% of households rent privately. Cheaper areas clearly have more renters.

Broxtowe, Gedling and Mansfield have the highest walk scores in Nottinghamshire. 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 Mansfield, 22% have none, the most in Nottinghamshire. Areas towards the bottom right are where daily life depends least on driving.

A band D home pays £2,682 a year in Newark and Sherwood, the most in Nottinghamshire, and £2,600 in Mansfield, the least: a difference of £82 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 122 crimes for every thousand residents in Mansfield over the last year held, and 59 in Rushcliffe. 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.