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The profile of wealth is a fairly good gauge of the day-to-day reality of residents in terms of the local housing market. The government has drawn attention to the large numbers of people in the country who are ‘JAM’s or ‘just about managing’. This chart shows the profile of our area based on their socio-demographic profile.

The property market fluctuates on a seasonal basis, and this is particularly the case for sales rates. This chart shows how the market has changed over the course of the last few months. The mix of property types doesn’t present any great surprises, but it’s interesting to see the month-on-month changes visualised.

Over the last ten years, the total rate of price growth for flats has been 59.4 per cent, compared with 34.8 per cent for houses.

Over the last twelve months we’ve seen pretty strong performance in the local market. We wanted to see how the market has performed over time, so we indexed the values at the start of the period. Property data updates quite slowly, so we’ve estimated the last 3 months.

In this chart we’ve compared sales levels for flats and houses in the last few quarters. Instead of looking at absolute numbers, we’ve indexed the rates. This means that flats and houses start at 100 at the start of the period and you can see how they’ve changed since, on an equal basis.

The number of people living in homes in the local area tells us a lot about the character of our market. Areas with lots of smaller households tend to be dominated by either the very young or very old. Homes with more people tend to be dominated by families and this is the case for most housing markets around the country.

The average rate of house price growth in Maidstone & Barming is a very enviable 9.4 per cent per year

We were interested to look at the starting prices of the top 1% of properties in the local market. This chart displays the main house types side-by-side so you can see how they sit relative to one another.

We wanted to show you the price movements of the top 5% of properties in the local market. This chart displays the main house types side-by-side so you can see how they sit relative to one another, and how they have changed over time.

The most common type of property is a 3 bed semi. In fact, this type of property makes up 22.8 per cent of all homes in the area.

The property market fluctuates on a seasonal basis, and this is particularly the case for sales rates. This chart shows how the market has changed over the course of the last few months. The most recent periods are estimates based on the previous year’s pattern. The mix of property types doesn’t present any great surprises, but it’s interesting to see the month-on-month changes visualised.

Measuring how far people travel to work might seem a little obscure but it actually offers a particularly good insight into the character of any local housing market. For example, areas where people travel long distances tend to be commuter towns which really come alive at the weekends but are quieter in the week. Areas where most people work locally will have a stronger community feel day-to-day.