Chichester: Battle of the postcodes

I was asked last week if postcodes make a difference to property values. Well, in swanky West London, the difference between SW3 and SW10 can influence values by thousands or even millions of pounds. In Chichester however, we don’t have many Russian Oligarchs and Saudi Prince’s buying our properties. After a little investigating though, I discovered some interesting information.

The main postcode area of the City is PO19, covering the area up to Lavant and down to the A27, plus Stockbridge and part of Fishbourne. The villages to the North of this are in PO18, also incorporating as far as Eartham to the East and Nutbourne to the West. Then to the South of the A27, covering the Manhood Peninsula and reaching down towards Bognor Regis, is PO20.

It is for these geographical reasons that I have witnessed scenarios where two seemingly similar properties, but on different sides of the PO19/PO20 border, have varied in desirability and price due to the proximity to Chichester’s city centre.

Indeed of these three postcode areas, the one with the best performing housing market over the past 12 months has been the most central to Chichester, PO19, with average values rising by 6.9%. In a very close second was PO20 with a rise of 6.6% and in third was PO18 with a still decent 4.4% increase.

It’s a similar story when looking back at the areas over a longer period. Over the last 5 years, values in PO19 have risen by 16.9%, PO20 is only slightly behind with a 15% rise and finally PO18 has seen a respectable 11.9% increase.

The rental yields also reflect similarly on the three postcode areas, as PO19 leads the way with an average 4% yield, slightly ahead of PO20 (3.9%) and PO18 (3.6%).

Another interesting bit of analysis was to compare the number of properties that were for sale against the number for rent. The majority of households in the PO18 and PO20 areas are owner occupied. This is evident by the fact that 109 properties were available for sale but just 18 for rent in PO18 and a whopping 348 were for sale compared to just 38 for rent in PO20.

Compare this to the PO19 postcode where there were 244 properties for sale and a far healthier 94 for rent and we see there’s a greater supply of rental properties closer to Chichester’s city centre as a result of stronger tenant demand.

See below for a full list of all 22 mainland ‘PO’ postcodes and how their performance has varied over the past one to five years (clue - central Chichester is number one!).

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