Here is a number that surprises almost everyone: the median home sold in Kensington & Chelsea in 2025 went for less than it did in 2015. Not less in real terms. Less in pounds.
Meanwhile, the median sale in Havering — the far eastern edge of London, the end of the District line — rose 56% over the same decade.
This is London's great property flip, and it is written plainly in the official record: every completed residential sale registered with HM Land Registry, 2015 to 2025.
The decade in one table
Biggest risers, 2015 → 2025 (median sale price, all property types):
| Borough | 2015 | 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Havering | £285,000 | £445,000 | +56.1% |
| Barking & Dagenham | £245,000 | £380,000 | +55.1% |
| Bexley | £275,000 | £420,000 | +52.7% |
| Newham | £305,000 | £445,000 | +45.9% |
| Waltham Forest | £365,000 | £520,000 | +42.5% |
The only three boroughs that went backwards:
| Borough | 2015 | 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hammersmith & Fulham | £730,000 | £670,000 | −8.2% |
| Kensington & Chelsea | £1,195,000 | £1,130,000 | −5.4% |
| City of Westminster | £925,000 | £890,000 | −3.8% |
Source: HM Land Registry Price Paid Data. Medians across all residential sales in each borough.
The gap between the best and worst performer — Havering and Hammersmith & Fulham — is 64 percentage points over ten years. Same city. Same interest rates. Same decade.
London as a whole rose 28.1% (£398,000 → £510,000). But that average hides two cities moving in opposite directions.
Houses doubled the gains of flats
Split the same decade by property type and a second story appears.
| 2015 | 2025 | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Houses (terraced, semi, detached) | £447,500 | £610,000 | +36.3% |
| Flats | £359,950 | £425,000 | +18.1% |
Flats peaked in 2022 at £439,000 and have drifted lower since: the median London flat sold in 2025 (£425,000) went for less than in 2022, 2023 or 2024 — in pounds, before inflation, service charges or ground rent. Houses kept going.
£510,000 still buys a house — in six boroughs
London's 2025 median sale price was £510,000. In most of the capital, that buys a flat. In six boroughs, the median house sold for that or less:
| Borough | Median house price, 2025 |
|---|---|
| Barking & Dagenham | £400,000 |
| Bexley | £460,000 |
| Newham | £465,000 |
| Havering | £475,000 |
| Croydon | £485,000 |
| Greenwich | £510,000 |
Four of those six are also in the decade's top-risers table. That is not a coincidence: this is where priced-out buyers went, and prices followed them.
The stamp duty stampede
One month in 2025 looks nothing like the others.
| Month (2025) | London sales |
|---|---|
| January | 8,194 |
| February | 8,803 |
| March | 19,717 |
| April | 4,186 |
| May | 6,696 |
March 2025 recorded 2.45 times the average of every other month that year. April collapsed to the quietest month of the year.
The reason: stamp duty thresholds fell on 1 April 2025. The tax-free band dropped back to £125,000, and first-time-buyer relief now stops at £300,000 (and disappears entirely above £500,000).¹ Thousands of buyers raced to complete before the deadline — and pulled April's sales into March.
One policy date pulled roughly 11,700 extra London completions into a single month.
The "frozen" market that wasn't
In spring 2026, early figures suggested 2025 was one of London's quietest years on record — under 90,000 sales. We said so ourselves.
The record has since caught up. Land Registry registrations can trail the sale by months, and late filings keep arriving long after the headlines are written. 2025 now stands at 108,179 sales — more than 2023 (96,500) or 2024 (106,790).
| Year | Sales (as registered today) |
|---|---|
| 2023 | 96,500 |
| 2024 | 106,790 |
| 2025 | 108,179 |
The lesson for anyone reading property headlines: the most recent months are always undercounted. A "slump" in the latest data is often just paperwork that has not landed yet. That is why this article sticks to completed years.
Run it for your own borough
Every number above came from the same dataset the OpenProp AI analyst answers from. Ask it about one borough at a time — for example:
- "How have house prices in Havering changed from 2015 to 2025?"
- "What is the median flat price in Hammersmith and Fulham in 2025?"
- "How many properties sold in Croydon each month in 2025?"
the analyst answers one borough per question. For a comparison, ask about each borough separately.
What the data cannot tell you is what happens next. It shows where London has been. The call on where it is going is yours.
Notes & sources
¹ Stamp duty thresholds. Current residential rates (nil-rate band £125,000; first-time buyer relief up to £300,000, not available above £500,000) apply to completions from 1 April 2025, when the higher thresholds in place since 2022 ended. Source: Stamp Duty Land Tax: residential property rates — GOV.UK.
All figures are drawn from HM Land Registry Price Paid Data (Crown copyright, OGL v3.0), covering completed residential transactions in Greater London, data current to August 2026. Figures include both standard (PPD category A) and additional (PPD category B) transactions. Medians are across all sales in the stated area and year; a change in the mix of properties sold can move a median as well as a change in prices.
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