Where a four-bedroom house costs least on our catalogue

Four bedrooms is the single most common size on our catalogue: 52 of the 146 homes have it as their largest unit. Most families who ask us for one want a house rather than an apartment, and want to pay in cedis. So we pulled out every four-bedroom home priced in cedis and lined them up by area. There are 25. Eighteen are standalone houses, four sit in gated communities and three are townhouses. All of them are finished and ready to move into, and nearly all come from a single developer, so read this as a guide to that stock rather than to the whole city.

The range: GHS 2.15m to GHS 10.8m

The most affordable is a four-bedroom house in Kwabenya at GHS 2.15m. The dearest is a four-bedroom house with a garden in East Legon at GHS 10.8m, five times as much for the same number of bedrooms. The median is GHS 4.5m. As always, these are asking prices, not sale prices.

Under GHS 3.1m: the north-eastern fringe

Nine of the 25 ask less than GHS 3.1m, and they cluster on the outer edge of the city's north-east: Kwabenya (GHS 2.15m), East Legon Hills (GHS 2.2m and GHS 2.8m), Oyarifa (GHS 2.5m and GHS 3m), Haatso (GHS 3m and GHS 3.01m) and Spintex (GHS 2.91m for a gated home, GHS 3.06m for a townhouse). If your budget is around GHS 3m and you need four bedrooms, this is where the catalogue says to look.

GHS 3.1m to 6m: the middle ring

The next band covers ten homes in places such as Taifa (GHS 3.36m), Nmai Dzorn (GHS 4.2m), Ashaley Botwe (GHS 4.5m), East Airport (GHS 4.8m), Adjiringanor, Ogbojo and Tse Addo (GHS 5.4m each) and North Legon Extension (GHS 5.76m). Above that, a second house in Tse Addo asks GHS 8.26m.

East Legon and Cantonments: a different market

East Legon has six four-bedroom homes on our catalogue, and their median is GHS 8.07m, about 80% above the median for the whole set. The range inside East Legon is itself wide, from GHS 4.03m for a semi-detached townhouse to GHS 10.8m for the house with the garden, so the address alone does not set the price. Cantonments has one, a townhouse at GHS 9m.

What a fourth bedroom costs

Where an area has both three- and four-bedroom houses on the catalogue, the step up ranges from about GHS 0.3m to GHS 1.5m. In Oyarifa, a three-bedroom house asks GHS 1.5m and the two four-bedroom homes ask GHS 2.5m and GHS 3m. In Spintex the gap runs from about GHS 1.98m to about GHS 2.91m. In Haatso it is GHS 2.69m against GHS 3m. Across all 18 three-bedroom houses priced in cedis, the median is GHS 2m, so the fourth bedroom more than doubles the median. Much of that comes from where the bigger houses are, not from the extra room alone.

Staff quarters

Eleven of the 25 four-bedroom homes mention a boys' quarters, staff quarters or servant's quarters, and their median asking price is GHS 5.4m, against GHS 3.04m for the 14 that do not. Do not read that as the price of the outbuilding. The houses with staff quarters are mostly in the dearer areas, so the gap mixes the two. If you need one, filter for the area first and the outbuilding second.

How to use this

Pick the band your budget fits, then compare homes within it. Ask us for the floor area and the plot size of each one. Two houses with the same bedroom count and the same price can differ by a hundred square metres.