This scientist’s 3D map of UK house prices will make you weep into your morning coffee
A physicist with a "morbid curiosity" about London house prices has literally added a new dimension to the horror of the capital's property boom.
This fly-through 3D animation shows the house prices of all properties sold in England and Wales from 1995 onwards, averaged and adjusted for inflation. London sticks out as a huge red scar on the property landscape.
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Jason Cole, a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College London, said he has no particular interest in houses other than "the inherent morbid curiosity that comes from living in London" – a feeling many of us know well.
Cole said he extracted the price, month, year and postcode of every house sold between 1985 and today from over 21m records (he describes projects like this as his "geeky hobby on weekends").
"It's difficult to visualise large datasets like this, so a 3D video felt like the most interesting way to go about it," he said.
"I thought people might be interested in a historical perspective on house prices, especially given the on-going disparity between prices in London and elsewhere."
His analysis also shows the impact of the recession on property prices – this histogram show how sales plummeted by 50 per cent between 2007 and 2008. House price sales have been on the rise again since 2012, but still haven't returned to pre-crisis levels.
For more charts, maps and analysis, see Jason's blog Almost Looks Like Work (you may be there for a while).