In every one of the thirteen UK regions HM Land Registry publishes, the flat is the weakest of the four property types it measures. Not the weakest in most of them, and not the weakest on average: the weakest in all thirteen, including Scotland and Northern Ireland, where every type is rising and the flat is simply rising least. In England the gap between a detached house and a flat is 4.7 percentage points.
How this was measured
Every figure here comes from HM Land Registry’s UK House Price Index, the official statistic, read from its free linked-data API on 5 August 2026 for the month of May 2026. The index is compiled from completed sales rather than from asking prices or agency estimates, and it publishes a separate annual change for detached, semi-detached, terraced and flat or maisonette, which is what makes this comparison possible without any modeling on our part.
Two checks were run before anything here was written. The first is the series rather than the month: a single month of one property type can invert and look like a trend, so twelve months of England were pulled, and English flats show a negative annual change in 10 of those 12 months. The second is every region rather than the national figure, because a country number can be one region’s problem wearing a national name. It is not: the pattern holds everywhere.
Every region, ranked by what flats did
| Region | Flat or maisonette | Terraced | Semi-detached | Detached | Gap, detached to flat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| London | -6.6% | -0.6% | +0.4% | -2.3% | +4.3pp |
| England | -2.2% | +3.2% | +4.1% | +2.5% | +4.7pp |
| West Midlands | -1.4% | +2.3% | +3.5% | +2.3% | +3.7pp |
| South East | -1.2% | +1.6% | +2.8% | +1.3% | +2.5pp |
| South West | -0.6% | +2.1% | +3.2% | +1.5% | +2.1pp |
| East Midlands | -0.2% | +3.2% | +4.0% | +2.9% | +3.1pp |
| East of England | +0.6% | +2.6% | +3.4% | +1.9% | +1.3pp |
| Yorkshire and the Humber | +0.9% | +4.6% | +5.2% | +3.8% | +2.9pp |
| Wales | +1.0% | +5.3% | +4.7% | +3.1% | +2.1pp |
| Northern Ireland | +1.2% | +8.5% | +9.0% | +6.7% | +5.5pp |
| Scotland | +1.3% | +5.6% | +6.6% | +6.9% | +5.6pp |
| North West | +2.3% | +6.6% | +6.4% | +5.5% | +3.2pp |
| North East | +2.7% | +6.5% | +6.9% | +5.0% | +2.3pp |
Flats are falling outright in 6 regions, and London is the worst
In 6 of the thirteen regions the flat index is not merely lagging but falling. London is the most severe at -6.6 percent, against +0.4 percent for a London semi-detached house in the same month and the same index. England as a whole shows flats at -2.2 percent while every other English type rises. In the remaining regions flats are still positive, so the universal claim here is about rank rather than direction.
The index level says this did not start this year
Annual change describes one year. The index level describes the whole run. In England the flat index stands at 95.5 against 101.4 for detached houses, on a scale where 100 is the index’s own reference period. Detached housing is above where it started and flats are below it. The average English flat is priced at £217,421 against £473,921 for a detached house, so the two are not merely growing at different rates; they have been moving apart for longer than this series shows.
England, twelve months, by type
| Month | Flat or maisonette | Terraced | Semi-detached | Detached |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-06 | -0.6% | +2.5% | +3.4% | +3.2% |
| 2025-07 | +0.6% | +2.3% | +2.8% | +2.8% |
| 2025-08 | -0.9% | +2.2% | +3.1% | +2.4% |
| 2025-09 | -1.7% | +2.3% | +2.3% | +1.5% |
| 2025-10 | -2.6% | +2.5% | +3.7% | +2.4% |
| 2025-11 | -1.3% | +3.4% | +3.2% | +3.0% |
| 2025-12 | -1.8% | +2.4% | +2.7% | +1.0% |
| 2026-01 | -2.3% | +2.2% | +2.3% | +0.8% |
| 2026-02 | -3.1% | +1.5% | +2.7% | +1.9% |
| 2026-03 | -6.0% | -0.3% | +1.4% | +1.8% |
| 2026-04 | +0.2% | +5.9% | +5.5% | +3.0% |
| 2026-05 | -2.2% | +3.2% | +4.1% | +2.5% |
That series is worth reading for its volatility as well as its direction. English flats ran from -6.0 percent to +0.6 percent across twelve months, and one month in the middle of it is positive. A reader meeting a single month of this index, in either direction, is meeting a number that moves several points from month to month. The finding is the persistence across 10 of 12 months and the rank across thirteen regions, not any one print.
What this does not show
It does not show why, and this desk will not guess. The trade press reporting that prompted this piece pointed at leasehold, service charges and lending conditions, and each of those is plausible. None of them is measurable from this index, which records completed sale prices and nothing about tenure, ground rent or mortgage availability. It also does not measure how long a flat takes to sell, which was the trade claim: time-to-sell is not in the UK House Price Index at all, and no free official series publishes it.
This piece is part of our property reference, What a British House Costs to Hold: Official Prices, by Region and by Borough, which sets out the method and collects every figure we have published on the subject. Also in it: England’s House Prices Rose 2.3 Percent. Kensington and Chelsea Fell 10.7. Westminster Fell 22.8., The Cheapest Parts of Britain Are Rising Fastest. The Most Expensive Is the Only One Falling., Every London Borough, Ranked: 20 of 33 Fell, and the Worst Is Not the Most Expensive, The Top Third of US Housing Lagged the Bottom in 65% of Metros. In the Biggest 25, It Led., Stamp Duty on a 10 Million Pound House Runs From 1.11m to 1.81m. The House Is the Same..
Sources
All figures are the UK House Price Index published by HM Land Registry, read from the linked-data API at landregistry.data.gov.uk on 5 August 2026 for May 2026 and for the twelve months to that date. The index is the official measure of UK house prices and is compiled from completed sales registered with the Land Registry, rather than from asking prices, mortgage approvals or agency estimates. Thirteen regions were pulled: England, London, the nine English regions, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The ranking, the gap column and the counts of regions and months are our own arithmetic on that data. No figure here is modelled, smoothed or seasonally adjusted by us. The occasion for the piece was trade reporting on 4 August 2026 that leasehold flats were struggling to sell across England; that report is the reason the question was asked and is not a source for any number above, because the thing it described is not something this index measures.
Frequently asked questions
Are flats a bad investment in the UK?
Measured on price alone, flats have been the weakest of the four property types in all thirteen UK regions in May 2026, and English flats fell 2.2 percent over the year while detached houses rose 2.5 percent, on HM Land Registry’s own index read on 5 August 2026. That is a statement about recent price direction rather than advice, and it says nothing about yield, which this desk does not measure.
Why are flat prices falling when house prices are rising?
The index does not answer that, and neither will we. What it shows is the size and the spread of the gap: 6 regions with flats falling outright, thirteen of thirteen with flats weakest, and a gap in Scotland of 5.6 percentage points between detached houses and flats. Tenure, service charges and lending conditions are the explanations usually offered, and none of them appears in this index.
Is this just a London problem?
No. London is the most severe at -6.6 percent, but flats are also falling in 5 other regions and are the weakest type in every single one of the thirteen, including Scotland and Northern Ireland where all four types are rising. That was checked precisely because a national figure can be one region’s problem wearing a country’s name.