Berkshire’s cheapest places to buy a home have been ranked by average house prices that also reveal the most sought-after towns.
House-hunters can see a vast difference in what they’ll need from the best bargain neighbourhoods to the most expensive in the region in the list below.
Spanning across Reading, Bracknell Forest, West Berkshire and Slough, prices for homes are compared by local authority areas.
Figures have been compiled by metal roofing manufacturer Cardinal Steels and Online Marketing Surgery for their House Price Report.
Experts used the House Price Index from the Office for National Statistics, comparing year-on-year averages between January 2023 to January 2024. It shows that the cheapest homes were in Reading, followed by Tilehurst with average prices of £331K and £337K respectively.
The most in-demand homes in the past year were in some of the cheapest neighbourhoods.
The highly populated areas of Berkshire are Reading with 350,000 residents, Bracknell (125,200), Newbury (44,171) and Wokingham with 185,000 residents.
The least populated areas in Berkshire are Hamstead Norreys with 879 residents, Bray (8,425), Charvil (3,163) and Ascot with 11,603 residents.
The most expensive area for properties is Ascot, with it’s Royal background and celebrity-studded neighbourhood. The average price to buy a house in the Ascot and Sunninghill area is £984,205.
The villages of Bisham and Charvil come in second and third spot respectively for the most expensive areas.
The average home in the village of Bray near Maidenhead will cost you £600,742, whilst properties in Ascot could set you back at £984,205.
A spokesman for the Online Marketing Survey said: “With constant inflation rises, the opportunity for first time buyers to get a mortgage offer that is affordable and reasonable is extremely difficult. This is leaving people either not moving out at all or paying to rent a place instead.”
Berkshire areas average house prices
Average House Price (January 2023 – January 2024)
Reading (RG1)
£331,913
Tilehurst (RG30)
£337,750
Bracknell (RG12)
£361,096
Newbury (RG14)
£382,663
Thatcham (RG19)
£385,921
Whitely (RG2)
£395,330
Colcot Row (RG31)
£425,567
Sandhurst (GU47)
£430,218
Woodley (RG5)
£445,630
Earley (RG6)
£487,603
Hampstead Norreys (RG18)
£487,955
Colnbrook (SL3)
£492,659
Hungerford (RG17)
£497,822
Binfield (RG42)
£506,403
Aldermaston (RG7)
£514,470
Winnersh (RG41)
£536,767
Crowthrone (RG45)
£552,641
Wokingham (RG40)
£579,531
Caversham (RG4)
£594,733
Bray (SL6)
£600,742
Chieveley (RG20)
£667,583
Charvil (RG10)
£686,816
Bisham (SL7)
£789,190
Ascot (SL5)
£984,205
House prices fell in all but six of London’s 33 local authority areas last year as the capital’s property was hit harder than any other region of the UK by soaring interest rates, new analysis reveals today.
The average London house price dropped by 5.2% in 2023, from £535,711 to £508,037, knocking £27,674 off the value of a typical home in the capital, according to latest Land Registry figures.
That compares with just 1% for the UK as a whole. But within that overall figure, the performance of individual boroughs varied enormously, according to data today compiled by agents Benham and Reeves. Prices fell in 26 boroughs and the City of London with the biggest declines seen in the most expensive neighbourhoods.
The biggest single fall was in Westminster, where the average cost of a home plummeted almost 21%to £877,733.
The loss in value in a single year, £232,015, is close to the average price of a home in many parts of the UK.
In Kensington and Chelsea, the average price fell by 17.4%, or £236,346, while the City of London saw reductions averaging 16.6%, equivalent to £160,221. In Hammersmith and Fulham house prices fell by 13.2%, or £101,522.
However, six boroughs did buck the overall trend to record small increases in prices over the course of a year marked by severe pressure on homeowners as they were forced to remortgage at far higher rates when fixed rate deals expired. Londoners have by far the biggest mortgages of any UK region with the average first time buyer home loan in the capital standing at £335,000.
Richmond upon Thames recorded the biggest rise in property prices with the average up 2% to £15,093.
It was followed by Camden on 1.6%, Newham with 1.1%, Islington (0.8%) and Hackney and Lewisham (both on 0.7%)
Benham and Reeves director, Marc von Grundherr, said: “With house prices cooling during the later stages of last year, it’s the London market that has naturally been hit the hardest given the far higher cost of homeownership, with all but a handful of boroughs experiencing a decline.
Largely speaking, this decline has been marginal in the grand scheme of things and the vast majority of boroughs have only seen slight corrections… However, the damage done across the prime market, in particular, has been far more pronounced, although the silver lining is, of course, that there’s never been a better time to buy at the very high-end of the London housing market.”
The figures came as latest data from property portal Rightmove showed prices starting to recover in the first few weeks of the year after mortgage rates fell sharply at the end of 2023 on hopes that the Bank of England will soon start lowering the cost of borrowing.
According to Rightmove, asking prices jumped 2.8% in London in February.