DIY property-based rich list

Submitted by finbarcullen on 8 September, 2008 - 12:36.

I recently took another look at an article from The Times (and other newspapers) from February 2007, which listed “The top 200 most expensive streets in Britain” (well, England & Wales). The list appears to have originated with mouseprice, but they no longer publish a top 200. I have been using the Royal Mail website (www.royalmail.com) to get postcodes for the addresses (libraries have postcode directories), and of course, once I started rummaging, I started to find addresses with even higher house prices.

While this is a rather slow way to build up a list, it is a handy way of identifying local pockets of (probable) wealth. Of course, not all properties in the postcode area will necessarily be worth the c £1.5 million plus that some are listed as being, but this can be a useful starting point.

I have found some more recent lists with fewer (e.g. Times, etc., 19th February 2008), but this top 200 is well worth a look. Of course, some of the (average) house prices had gone down during the intervening year. This list is great for London, and some other parts of the south east of England, but is of limited use for other parts of the UK. However, there are other ways of building such a list for other regions.

www.mouseprice.net Check out the Mouseprice articles - most expensive street rankings 2008. Mouseprice most expensive street rankings 2007, plus ten regional lists with top 20

www.zoopla.co.uk As Howard has just pointed out, Zoopla publishes lists for England, Wales & Scotland. I am not sure how recent Zoopla’s figures are, but the inclusion of Scotland is a bonus.

www.ourproperty.co.uk has a very handy feature that fits in nicely with this kind of research – “The 10 most expensive roads in” any town you want to know about. Click on the link for “House Price Statistics” at the bottom of the page, choose your town, and away you go.

The websites of estate agents are a great way of picking specific addresses, particularly when you use something like www.primelocation.com, which lists specific properties offered by various agencies - search by location and price, and you can even sign up for email alerts for future notifications.

Once you have your list you can run a simple query (in Access, or other database applications) to check if you have any addresses in those postcodes on your database of supporters.

Do let me know how you get on, if you try this out.

Finbar Cullen
ResearchPlus

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Zoopla figures for Scotland

I had a quick look at the Zoopla data for Scotland and it appears to be pretty uptodate and recent. The same postcodes in Edinburgh tend to dominate the highest value streets in Scotland. But the area I live in is much further down the wealth stakes in Edinburgh terms, yet is a favourite for doorstep fundraising. It's not always the wealthiest areas that bear the greatest fruit! Research consistently shows that poorer areas proportionately are more generous, although the level of donations secured will undoubtedly be lower. Depends upon whether you are aiming for quality or volume I suppose.

And there are other reasons why less wealthy areas might be more productive for door to door work (some of which I learned in my mis-spent youth as a political canvasser). One is the density of housing - high value houses tend to come with great big drives and disconcerting sensor lighting, involving a lot of walking between each prospect. Council and new build estates are much more cheek by jowl and therefore more ground can be covered and more prospects reached.

Also, you will get more people in and more people likely to open the door in such areas than in the highest value areas - not sure why but that tends to be the experience. It's why political parties in by elections will always put teams of people out in estates to knock doors and use the telephone for higher value areas and hard to reach ones.

But this Zoopla info could be really useful, particularly as it does provide local authority breakdowns as well. I know - from looking at my own area for nosiness sake! - that it also shows the market gain or decrease on particular streets and areas so again a useful tool for determining which areas hurting the most in terms of the credit crunch and perhaps less likely to be fruitful for a campaign. All good stuff.

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