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

Cotswold is the dearest at £425,000 and Plymouth the cheapest at £227,500: the same budget buys 1.9 times as much home by price at one end of South West as at the other.

The marker on each bar is the middle asking price of the new homes for sale there today. In 26 of the 26 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.

1,809 new homes are for sale across South West today. Wiltshire has the most (253), then Somerset (185).

In the middle council area of South West, homes sold new went for 26% more than resales over the last twelve months.

The gap is widest in Bath and North East Somerset (69% more) and narrowest in Bristol (3% 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 £253 in Plymouth to £408 in Bath and North East Somerset.

Sales for every thousand households show how often homes change hands, which is how much choice a buyer has in a year. Tewkesbury is the busiest (32) and Mid Devon the quietest (23), 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 West Devon, 5% of the homes sold in the last twelve months were sold new, the highest share in South West; in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole it was 0%. New sales reach the register later than resales, so the latest months undercount them.

Sold prices fell 1.5% in the middle council area of South West over the last year. Stroud moved most (up 3.1%) and Mid Devon least (down 7.5%).

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 3.6%, led by Cheltenham (up 4.5%).

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

Council areas closer to Bristol have loosely seen more growth over three years than those further out.

Being ten miles closer to Bristol costs about £7 more per square foot across South West, a clear pattern: on a home of a thousand square feet that is about £7,000.

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

Council areas with more schools judged good or better are loosely dearer: every ten points more goes with about £24,000 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 Gloucester average the highest in South West (54.9) and those of Torridge the lowest (42.2).

Results do not follow distance to Bristol: 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. Bristol is the most built up (4,308 people per square kilometre) and West Devon the least (49).

Younger council areas in South West are loosely better off, which is common where a city draws working-age people. Areas above the line earn more than their age alone would suggest.

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

In the middle council area of South West, 19% of households rent privately. The share renting has little to do with price here.

Bristol, Exeter and Cheltenham have the highest walk scores in South West. 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 Bristol, 26% have none, the most in South West. Areas towards the bottom right are where daily life depends least on driving.

A band D home pays £2,765 a year in Dorset, the most in South West, and £2,341 in Tewkesbury, the least: a difference of £424 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 151 crimes for every thousand residents in Bristol over the last year held, and 16 in Forest of Dean. 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.