House prices in London

This article shows price per square metre data and various charts to help you understand the housing market in London - stats were last calculated on 01 November 2024.

Defining 'London'

This boundary is taken directly from the Office of National Statistics area called London. It is shown in red on the map below.

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Price per square metre

Knowing the average house price in London is not much use. However, knowing average price per square metre can be quite useful. Price per sqm allows some comparison between properties of different size. We define price per square metre as the sold price divided by the internal area of a property:

£ per sqm = price ÷ internal area

For example in September 2024, 16, Ebbisham Road, London, KT4 8NE sold for £735,000. Given the internal area of 121 square metres recorded on the EPC, the price per sqm is £735,000 ÷ 121 sqm = £6,074.

England & Wales have been officially metric since 1965. However house price per square foot is prefered by some estate agents and those of sufficiently advanced age ;-). It is a huge pain to code the automatic conversion for square meters to square feet for all the graphs and charts on London and elsewhere. All the conditionals turn my tidy code for into spaghetti. I will get around to it at some point, but for now you can just divide everything by 10 in your head, move a decimal place and you'll be close enough. If you want to be more precise 1 sqm = 10.76391 sqft.

Distribution of £ per sqm for houses vs flats in London

Tip: click on the legend labels to show/hide different property types.

The chart above is called a histogram, it helps you see the distribution of house price per sqm in London To make this chart we put all the sales data into a series of £ per sqm 'buckets' (e.g. £7,950 to £8,500, £8,500 to £9,050, £9,050 to £9,600 etc...) we then count the number of sales with within in each bucket and plot the results. The histogram is based on 54,056 sales that took place in London in the last 12 months.

Generate a custom histogram like the one above but based on your own criteria.

You can see the spread of prices above. This is because although internal area is a key factor in determining valuation, it is not the only factor. Many factors other than size affect desirability; these factors could be condition, aspect, garden size, negotiating power of the vendor etc.

The spread of prices will give you a feel of the typical range to expect in London. Notably, only 25% of properties that sold recently were valued at more than £8,000 sqm. For anything to be valued more than this means it has to be more desireable than the clear majority of London homes.

Box plot of £ per sqm for London

Tip: click on the chart to see the values.

The chart above is called a boxplot (or a box-and-whisker plot). Box plots, like histograms, are used to graphically represent the distribution of data, showing the central tendency, spread of the distribution. In the context of £ per square metre property price distributions, box plots represent the variation in property prices within a geographic area e.g. London. The chart above shows a boxplot for 'London' broken down by property type (Flats, Semi-detached, Detached and Terraced). Almost everywhere houses command higher prices per square metre than flats, and detached houses most of all.

Median: The horizontal line inside the box represents the median (£ per square meter). This is the midpoint of the data, meaning 50% of the prices are below this value, and 50% are above. The middle price per square metre in 'London' is £6,300.

Interquartile Range (IQR): The box spans from the 25th percentile (Q1) to the 75th percentile (Q3). This is the range where the middle 50% of the data lies, giving a good indication of the typical price spread. Of the 54,056 sales in London half were sold for between £5,100 and £8,000 per square metre.

Whiskers: In our case, the whiskers extend from the 9th percentile (at the lower end) to the 91st percentile (at the upper end), This provides a slightly broader view of the distribution by including the middle 82% of records. The whiskers capture most of the variation but exclude extreme outliers caused by data errors in recording sold house prices or internal area.

'n=' is the number of property sales the box is based on.

Box plot of £ per sqm for London (New vs Old)

The box plot above for the London region, is split by newbuild/existing as well as by houses/flats. It is interesting to see that the new-build premium for houses is 1.5%. Whereas the new-build premium for flats is 22.0%. This makes sense if you consider that older houses have more scope for extensions than new build houses. New build houses built to the maximum size a plot can take, tend to have smaller gardens. Flats are a different story, scope for extension doesn't play a role and interior standards matter more.

Property price map for London

Have a look at the interactive price map I created for myself. Use it to explore postcode area 'London' house prices all the way down to individual property plots.

House prices in London mapped

Will London house price go up in 2025?

I cannot tell the future and don't believe anyone who says they can. However we can plot price trends, I have done this in the chart below for houses and flats in London. You can extrapolate from this based on your own views on future interest rates, inflation and other factors.

House price index for London

Tip: click on the legend items to show/hide different lines

Download house price index as CSV (premium users only).

The chart above shows changes in 'London' property prices over the last 20 years. The index is calculated from the average price paid per sqm for property in London and is set to 100 in 2004. The chart compares trends for Flats vs Houses in London. You can see how different they are. Keep this in mind when you see any price index that doesn't provide this breakdown.

The dashed lines show nominal house price changes, the solid lines show the same data adjusted for inflation. Economists call this the 'real' price change. You have to take inflation into account when comparing prices over time. It's calculated using the formula:

Real Rate of Return = (1 + Nominal Rate) ÷ (1 + Inflation Rate) – 1

In this formula, the nominal rate is the rate of change before any adjustments, and the inflation rate is taken from the Consumer Price Index. The real rate of return is a more accurate measure of change in value, because £1 today does not have the same buying power as £1 in the past. For example, if a savings account pays an interest rate of 3% per year and the inflation rate is 5% per year, the real rate of return is -2%. This means that the investment's value is shrinking by 2% each year.

Historic returns for London

	Flats		Houses
	Nominal	Real	Nominal	Real
20 yr per annum	3.7%	1.0%	4.5%	1.8%
20 yr total	105.9%	21.9%	140.0%	42.2%
10 yr per annum	2.1%	-0.7%	3.3%	0.5%
10 yr total	22.6%	-6.9%	38.5%	5.1%
5 yr per annum	1.5%	-2.5%	2.9%	-1.1%
5 yr total	7.5%	-12.0%	15.4%	-5.5%
1 yr per annum	-0.5%	-4.5%	-0.8%	-4.8%
1 yr total	-0.5%	-4.5%	-0.8%	-4.8%

This table complements the house price index chart above, presenting the data in a more detailed format. It breaks down the information into 20-year, 10-year, 5-year, and 1-year periods, further categorized by property type. For each period, we display both a per annum rate of change and a total rate of change.

The total rate of change represents the overall change over the entire period. The formula for total return is:

Total return = (Index at end of period ÷ Index at start of period) - 1

The per annum rate of change is the annualized rate of change over the period. This is equivalent to the annual bank savings rate you would need to achieve the same total return over the given period. This annualized return is also known as the Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR). The formula for CAGR is:

CAGR = (1 + Total return) ^ (1 ÷ Number of years) - 1

Some specific examples:

Over the past 20 years, Flats have seen a 1.0% annual change when adjusted for inflation. This translates to a total change of 21.9% in real terms.
Over the past 5 years, Flats have seen a -2.5% annual change when adjusted for inflation. This translates to a total change of -12.0% in real terms.

Transaction volumes

Property transaction volumes in the UK follow a cyclical pattern. In addition to seasonal trends that occur annually, transaction volumes fluctuate with changes in house prices. When prices are rising, transactions typically increase, whereas falling prices tend to result in fewer sales, with only motivated sellers (e.g., due to death or divorce) entering the market. Exceptions to this trend often occur when changes to Stamp Duty drive a temporary surge in transactions.

Number of properties sold in London

The chart above shows the number of properties sold each month in London as reported by Land Registry. Key events highlighted include the Northern Rock bank run at the start of the 2007/8 Financial Crisis, the introduction of additional Stamp Duty on second homes in April 2016, the COVID-19 lockdowns and subsequent Stamp Duty holiday, and the 2023 interest rate rises. It's important to note that Land Registry reporting is lagged, particularly affecting new build sales, so treat the last year of sales volume data with caution. Based on historical reporting lags, I've provided a crude forecast of sales volumes for London, shown in yellow.

Nearby geographies

The table below shows how 'London' compares to the other regions.

Region	Lower quartile	Median	Upper quartile	Sales in last 1yr
North East	£1,150 sqm	£1,760 sqm	£2,360 sqm	25,748
North West	£1,710 sqm	£2,380 sqm	£3,090 sqm	64,457
South East	£3,500 sqm	£4,300 sqm	£5,180 sqm	77,526
Wales	£1,710 sqm	£2,330 sqm	£2,990 sqm	25,508
London	£5,100 sqm	£6,300 sqm	£8,000 sqm	54,056
South West	£2,880 sqm	£3,530 sqm	£4,250 sqm	52,946
West Midlands	£2,190 sqm	£2,810 sqm	£3,430 sqm	44,865
East of England	£3,030 sqm	£3,800 sqm	£4,730 sqm	51,743
East Midlands	£2,140 sqm	£2,700 sqm	£3,270 sqm	41,513
Yorkshire and The Humber	£1,730 sqm	£2,350 sqm	£3,030 sqm	47,893

Raw data

Our analysis of London is derived from what is essentially a big table of sold prices from Land Registry with added property size information. Below are three rows from this table to give you an idea.

Address	Paid	sqm	£/sqm
16, Ebbisham Rd,	£735,000 Sep-2024	121	6,074
9, Barrow Hill Close,	£532,000 Sep-2024	125	4,256
9a, Cheam Common Rd,	£267,500 Sep-2024	58	4,612

Search the entire list of all sales here.

About

I created HouseMetric because I wanted to see this data and analysis myself, I also wanted to teach myself to build a website. Please give me feedback or spread the word about it. I'm constantly tinkering and adding more stuff to it.