Rank areas on a market metric

This is the comparison tool. market_facts answers for one geography; calling it in a loop to build a league table is slower, costs more and gives you rows from different periods. Use this for "which districts in Greater Manchester turn over fastest", "rank these twelve postcodes by price per sqm", "cheapest LADs in the North West by price_psm".

ALWAYS report the window block from the response alongside the ranking. It names the months aggregated, and it matters: a 12-month turnover and a 3-month one differ by roughly 4x. lag_months (default 3) deliberately drops the most recent months because HM Land Registry registers sales long after completion — the newest month looks near-dead and would rank registration lag rather than liquidity.

turnover_rate is exact — it is sales over stock, recomputed at this grain. Price, rent and yield are weighted means of the underlying medians, so describe them as indicative, not as medians.

min_stock (default 50) skips areas with too few dwellings for a rate to mean anything: one sale in a 2-dwelling district is a turnover of 0.5, which otherwise tops the table. Where a returned area still has a small stock_count, say so rather than presenting its rate as comparable.

Scope it EITHER by parent_area_code (every child of that area, e.g. every district in a county) OR by an explicit area_codes allowlist. area_type is the grain: "Postcode District" (default) or an administrative type such as "Local Authority District".

sort defaults to turnover_rate, the liquidity measure — sales as a share of the stock that could have sold. Do NOT sort on gross_yield or days_on_market: they are 0% populated, so every row ties as NULL and the "ranking" is arbitrary order. Populated metrics are sales_price, price_psm and turnover_rate. Whatever you sort on is always returned, and anything empty is named in metrics_with_no_data.

Distinct from market_volume_ranking, which ranks on raw transaction COUNT — that is market size, not liquidity.

UK only.