England & Wales market intelligence
State of the Property Market
Track sold prices, sales depth, regional winners and losers, property-type performance, leasehold/freehold trends, new-build premiums and the real monthly cost of buying with a mortgage.
Latest snapshot
Apr 2026What is happening now?
Buyer view
What this means for buyers
- Prices are lower on the latest 12-month comparison, which may improve negotiating power.
- Sales volumes are thinner than last year, so local averages may be more volatile.
- Use the heat map and local lookup to compare nearby markets before relying on one postcode.
Seller view
What this means for sellers
- The price signal is not strongly positive, so realistic pricing and comparable evidence are important.
- Sales activity is weaker than the prior year, so overpricing risk is higher.
- Check your local market score before using national figures to guide an asking price.
Local market lookup
Town or areaCheck your local market
National trend
Prices and sales volume
Default view uses the last five years to show the recent market cycle without hiding the current direction.
True cost
Mortgage-cost view
Illustrative monthly repayment based on 20% deposit and 25-year repayment mortgage.
Regional comparison
View heat mapStrongest and weakest regions
Property types
Latest 12 monthsHouses vs flats
Tenure split
Latest 12 monthsFreehold vs leasehold
Useful for spotting whether flat-heavy leasehold markets are moving differently from freehold houses.
Build status
Latest 12 monthsNew build vs resale
Shows the new-build premium/discount and how much of the latest market is resale stock.
Local winners and losers
Median-first · minimum 50 sales in each periodLocal market movement
Local authority and town rankings
All eligible areas · ONS basis where availableSortable market table
Phase 4 makes this table more defensible: it uses median movement where available, shows the average separately, flags property-type mix changes, and sorts the full eligible local dataset rather than a pre-selected top-75 list.
| Area | Median price | Avg price | 12m growth | Sales | Volume | Score | Mix shift | Confidence |
|---|
National heat-map layers
See where the market is hot, cooling or thin
Use the heat map alongside this report to compare growth, activity and £/m² visually. A future stage can embed the map directly; this phase gives users direct layer entry points without disturbing the existing heat-map page.
Data confidence
How reliable is each signal?
High transaction depth. Usually the best signal for national and regional comparisons.
Enough sales to be useful, but still worth checking the local sold-price evidence.
Meets the threshold, but the sales volume or mix of property types has changed enough to treat the movement carefully.
Not enough evidence for a reliable trend. Use individual comparables instead.
Methodology
How this report is calculated
National/regional cards retain average completed sold price. The local ranking table now uses median price movement by default where enough price observations are available, with average price shown as a secondary measure.
Completed sale count by sale date. Late registrations mean recent months can be revised by future imports.
County/table level sales grouped into broad England & Wales regions for market comparison.
Local winners and losers use ONSPD local authority names where the enriched geography columns are available, otherwise the report falls back to town/county labels. Areas must have enough sales in both 12-month comparison periods.
Freehold/leasehold and new-build/resale are calculated from the Price Paid tenure and new-build flags where present.
Illustrative capital-and-interest repayment, 20% deposit, 25-year term. It excludes stamp duty, fees, service charge and insurance.
Confidence badges are based on sales depth, median availability and property-type mix stability. A large change in the mix of detached/semi/terraced/flats is flagged because it can distort price movement.
The local lookup uses town/county labels already present in the sold-price tables and links users back into the main sold-price search.
Plain-English summary
North East is currently the strongest broad region in the report, while London is the weakest on the same 12-month measure.
Detached property is showing the strongest property-type movement, while Other property is the weakest.
Affordability remains a separate signal from sale prices: the same average price can produce very different monthly costs at 2%, 5% or 6% mortgage rates.