- Zoopla has come up with more relatable measure than price per square foot
A square foot of property in the UK is now worth £193 on average.
However, Britons have never really taken to valuing their home in this way. We don’t tend to think about a property’s worth in terms of its floor space alone, and it can be hard to visualise the value of your home in relation to its size.
Now, property website Zoopla has come up with a novel way of doing so.
Instead of looking at house prices in square feet, it has used a measure of size that everybody understands – a sheet of A4 paper.
In its latest research, it has revealed how many sheets of A4 paper’s worth of property £200 could buy you in towns and cities across Britain.
Spaced out: Zoopla has outlined the areas where it is cheapest – and most expensive – to buy a slice of property the size of an A4 sheet of paper
Where you get most bang for your buck
Every major city across the North and Midlands delivers a full sheet of A4’s worth of space for £200 – including Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool, Birmingham, Coventry, Wolverhampton and Newcastle. Cardiff also hits the mark.
Those in Edinburgh and York also come very close to getting a full single sheet.
Buyers in the Scottish capital would typically pay would get 98 per cent of a full A4 sheet for £200, with a full sheet costing £204. In York, £200 would buy 95 per cent of an A4 sheet on average.
However, some cities offer bargain-seeking buyers twice the space for the same amount.
In Burnley, Hull, Sunderland, Blackpool, Middlesbrough and Blaenau Gwent they can get two full A4 sheets worth of space for £200.
At the other end of the scale, buyers in Westminster, London would need to pay £837 for a single sheet of A4’s worth of property, as £200 would net them just 24 per cent of a piece of A4.
They would pay £686 in Kensington and Chelsea, and £665 in Camden. In both of these areas, £200 would buy less than a third of a sheet of paper.
| Local authority | £ per sheet of A4 | £200 buys (2025) | £200 buys (2015) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Most affordable | ||||
| Barking & Dagenham | £273 | 73% of a sheet | 1.1 sheets | |
| Bexley | £273 | 73% of a sheet | 1.0 sheets | |
| Havering | £283 | 71% of a sheet | 1.0 sheets | |
| Least affordable | ||||
| Camden | £665 | 30% of a sheet | 29% of a sheet | |
| Kensington & Chelsea | £686 | 29% of a sheet | 22% of a sheet | |
| Westminster | £837 | 24% of a sheet | 19% of a sheet |
The capital’s more affordable locations were found to be in the east. In Barking and Dagenham, a sheet of A4 would set a buyer back £273, with £200 buying 73 per cent of the piece of paper. The same is true for the borough of Bexley in the south east.
Havering was the third most affordable, at £283 for a full sheet.
Prices have risen in these areas, however. In 2015, Zoopla said all three areas would deliver a slice of property equal to an A4 sheet for £200 or less.
In contrast, buyers now get more property for their money in each of Camden, Kensington and Westminster than they did a decade ago.
Zoopla also identified the most and least affordable towns in each region of Britain, with Argyll and Bute in Scotland (£74/A4 sheet) Stoke-on Trent (£104/A4 sheet) and Boston, Lincolnshire (£115/A4 sheet) emerging as some of the winners.
The prices per square foot were based on Zoopla analysis of Land Registry residential property transactions data from 2025.
The dimensions of an A4 sheet of paper are 210mm × 297mm or 623.7 cm². The price per square foot data was calculated by taking the local price per sq ft and multiplying it by 0.0623 sq ft per A4.
| Region | Most affordable | £/A4 | £200 buys | Least affordable | £/A4 | £200 buys |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| E. Midlands | Boston | £115 | 1.7 sheets | South Northants | £206 | 97% of a sheet |
| Eastern | Fenland | £138 | 1.4 sheets | St. Albans | £351 | 57% of a sheet |
| London | Barking & Dagenham | £273 | 73% of a sheet | Westminster | £837 | 24% of a sheet |
| North East | Sunderland | £83 | 2.4 sheets | Northumberland | £134 | 1.5 sheets |
| North West | Burnley | £80 | 2.5 sheets | Trafford | £212 | 94% of a sheet |
| Scotland | Argyll and Bute | £74 | 2.7 sheets | Edinburgh | £204 | 98% of a sheet |
| South East | Portsmouth | £171 | 1.2 sheets | Elmbridge | £363 | 55% of a sheet |
| South West | Plymouth | £133 | 1.5 sheets | Christchurch | £243 | 82% of a sheet |
| Wales | Blaenau Gwent | £84 | 2.4 sheets | Monmouthshire | £179 | 1.1 sheets |
| W. Midlands | Stoke-on-Trent | £104 | 1.9 sheets | Warwick | £213 | 94% of a sheet |
| Yorks & Humber | NE Lincolnshire | £90 | 2.2 sheets | York | £209 | 96% of a sheet |
What’s happening to house prices?
House prices are rising by small amounts, flatlining or even falling slightly, depending on where in the country you live.
According to the latest Halifax data, average house prices went up by just 0.8 per cent in the year to March 2025.
But they dipped slightly on a monthly basis, meaning the average home is now worth £299,677, having dipped below the £300,000 mark reached at the start of the year.
While the market was sluggish before the conflict in Iran, rising mortgage rates and economic uncertainty could cause buyers to hold off and drag down prices further.
There is also a growing disparity between more affordable parts of the country, where house prices are rising, and more expensive ones where they are staying flat or declining.
Nationwide’s latest house price index at the end of March suggested prices in the South East and East Anglia were lower than a year ago, falling by 0.7 per cent and 0.4 per cent respectively.
However, at the other end of the spectrum, Northern Ireland continued to outpace the rest of the UK by a wide margin, with prices increasing by 9.5 per cent over the year. Meanwhile, Scotland saw a pickup in annual house price growth of 3 per cent.