Dacorum property: commuter premiums, village scarcity and a wall of planned homes

Ask three estate agents about Dacorum and you will hear three boroughs. Hemel Hempstead is the volume market: New Town housing, riverside flats at Apsley, family houses in Boxmoor. Berkhamsted is the premium commuter town, its high street and grammar of independent schools capitalised into sale prices. Tring sits between country town and London satellite, with a station that is not in the town.

Villages: Aldbury, Little Gaddesden, Potten End, Flaunden: trade on scarcity. There are not many houses. When one appears, the photography involves a duck pond or a footpath.

The strategic risk is not interest rates. It is supply. Hemel Garden Communities would add a scale of housing the New Town has not seen since the original designation. That could relieve prices in the north of Hemel; it could also load the A4147, the GP lists and the secondary schools. Planning documents adopted this summer are the start of that argument, not the end.

Our property desk will keep a running brief on new developments, weekly planning lists and area guides. We do not sell houses. We do try to explain why two streets a mile apart are not in the same market.