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

Lichfield is the dearest at £310,000 and Newcastle-under-Lyme the cheapest at £200,500: the same budget buys 1.5 times as much home by price at one end of Staffordshire as at the other.

The marker on each bar is the middle asking price of the new homes for sale there today. In 8 of the 8 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.

470 new homes are for sale across Staffordshire today. Lichfield has the most (131), then Stafford (110).

Price per square foot takes the size of the home out of the comparison. It runs from £232 in Newcastle-under-Lyme to £321 in Lichfield.

Sales for every thousand households show how often homes change hands, which is how much choice a buyer has in a year. Lichfield is the busiest (29) and Stafford the quietest (26), 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 East Staffordshire, 4% of the homes sold in the last twelve months were sold new, the highest share in Staffordshire; in Cannock Chase it was 0%. New sales reach the register later than resales, so the latest months undercount them.

Sold prices rose 0.9% in the middle council area of Staffordshire over the last year. Newcastle-under-Lyme moved most (up 2.8%) and Lichfield least (up 0.0%).

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 3.6%, led by Staffordshire Moorlands (up 7.0%).

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

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

Being ten miles closer to Birmingham costs about £21 more per square foot across Staffordshire, a clear pattern: on a home of a thousand square feet that is about £21,000.

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

In Staffordshire, 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 Lichfield average the highest in Staffordshire (49.0) and those of Tamworth the lowest (41.3).

Results do not follow distance to Birmingham: 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. Tamworth is the most built up (2,549 people per square kilometre) and Staffordshire Moorlands the least (166).

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

Areas towards the top right have the most children and the largest households: East Staffordshire, Tamworth and Cannock Chase lead for residents under fifteen. Towards the bottom left are the areas with more single people and couples.

In the middle council area of Staffordshire, 14% of households rent privately. Cheaper areas loosely have more renters.

Newcastle-under-Lyme, Tamworth and Cannock Chase have the highest walk scores in Staffordshire. 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 Newcastle-under-Lyme, 19% have none, the most in Staffordshire. Areas towards the bottom right are where daily life depends least on driving.

A band D home pays £2,376 a year in Cannock Chase, the most in Staffordshire, and £2,301 in Tamworth, the least: a difference of £75 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 92 crimes for every thousand residents in Newcastle-under-Lyme over the last year held, and 62 in South Staffordshire. 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.