I AM sure many readers will have been shocked by the prices of one-bedroom flats in Barton Park estate at £300,000 and threebedroom houses at £600,000. They seem excessive.

This has prompted me to find out what the probable cost of building them is. The houses seem to be well designed and are probably built to high specifications.

Certainly the sales information waxes lyrical about its location, its integrated nature and how easy it is to pop down to the station on a bike.

I find it hard to believe that ‘in March 2016, Barton Park was awarded the NHS England’s Healthy New Town status with emphasis on the health inequalities facing Barton residents but also the importance of community cohesion for the new and existing neighbourhoods’. I am not sure how the new estate will improve the healthy living of the whole estate, old and new.

They are hoping people working in the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals Trust will come forward to buy their homes so maybe they will improve these health inequalities? To get an idea of price I asked an estate agent who made a guess of £200,000 for building the house and I then asked a builder with hands-on experience.

He thought about £125,000 but then said if it were a high-spec build he would suggest that £150,000 would be the building price. Of course the cost of the roads and parking spaces along with all the underground services have to be included in the price but with a large number of units being built that price becomes increasingly reasonable. So what can we think about these property prices?

I believe the builders have talked with the council saying they could not make enough profit to fulfil the council’s demand to build 50 per cent of the homes as ‘affordable’ (ie with 20 per cent off the market price). The builders have been let off and will now be providing 40 per cent rentable social housing units.

I believe these are all flats. The estate agent I spoke to was pleased about the asking price of £600,000. He thought this would mean Oxford prices would rise faster! Is this really what the council wants?

Sarah Lasenby, Oxford