Cambridge has developed quite a reputation in the past few years. No, not for the university (although I hear that it’s not a bad one), but for crazy high house prices. I guess that’s great if you already own a house here. But not so much if you have recently been looking to buy, thanks to this little fun fact: the fastest increase in average property price among any local authority in the country happened to be right here in Cambridge in 2017.

Yep, Cambridge tops the list with a 16% annual increase in property prices. And then there’s this. Right behind my place is the train station, outside which the tech giants are setting up, more and more people are moving in to this little “city” and demand pressures will likely continue pushing house prices higher and higher and…

So I pulled out data on property prices around my neighbourhood to see just how unrealistic a first time property buyer’s dreams have become. Because why just be poor when you can be poor and miserable?

I did this comparison for a small number of properties of various sizes scattered across different streets in my neighbourhood which were sold in the past one year and for which at least three data points over the last twenty years are available. I’ve left out apartments from this analysis since I was looking at “typical” family homes.

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