The national house price figure hides almost everything that matters. This is our standing reference for what UK property is doing underneath it, built entirely on the government’s own index rather than on any agency’s.
How we price these, and what the figures are
Every figure on this page comes from HM Land Registry’s UK House Price Index, the official statistic, read from its free linked-data API. That is grade-two evidence: not an individual transaction, but an official index compiled from completed sales rather than from asking prices or agency estimates. We pull a twelve-month series before publishing any direction, because a single month of a small sample can invert and look like a trend.
1. England’s House Prices Rose 2.3 Percent. Kensington and Chelsea Fell 10.7. Westminster Fell 22.8.
England’s house prices rose 2.3 percent while Kensington and Chelsea fell 10.7 and the City of Westminster fell 22.8. Prime central London is detaching from the country around it. Read the full piece and its sources.
2. The Cheapest Parts of Britain Are Rising Fastest. The Most Expensive Is the Only One Falling.
Across twelve UK regions, the correlation between how expensive a place is and how fast it is growing ran to -0.895. The cheapest parts of Britain are rising fastest and the most expensive is the only one falling. Read the full piece and its sources.
3. Every London Borough, Ranked: 20 of 33 Fell, and the Worst Is Not the Most Expensive
All 33 London boroughs, ranked. Twenty fell, and the worst is not the most expensive: Tower Hamlets sits 30th of 33 on price and third on decline. Read the full piece and its sources.
4. Flats Are the Weakest Property Type in All 13 UK Regions. In England They Fell 2.2 Percent While Detached Rose 2.5.
Underneath the national figure, one property type is losing everywhere. The flat is the weakest of the four types HM Land Registry measures in all thirteen UK regions, and in England it fell 2.2 percent while detached houses rose 2.5. Read the full piece and its sources.
5. The Top Third of US Housing Lagged the Bottom in 65% of Metros. In the Biggest 25, It Led.
The same question asked of the United States gives the opposite answer, and the answer depends on how many metros you count. Across all 891 the top third of housing lagged the bottom in 64.6 percent of them; across the largest 25 it lagged in only 20 percent and led by a median 0.52 points. Read the full piece and its sources.
6. Stamp Duty on a 10 Million Pound House Runs From 1.11m to 1.81m. The House Is the Same.
Before any of that comes the purchase tax, and it is not one number. On a 10 million pound house, stamp duty runs from 1,113,750 to 1,813,750 depending only on who signs, because the two surcharges are flat percentages of the whole price rather than top slices. Read the full piece and its sources.
Sources
All price data is HM Land Registry’s UK House Price Index, read from the linked-data API at landregistry.data.gov.uk on 5 August 2026, for the months stated in each piece. The index is the official measure and is compiled from completed sales. The rankings and the correlations are our own arithmetic on that data, and so is the twelve-month series. Where a correlation was too weak to support the claim we wanted, the article says so and prints the figure anyway.
Frequently asked questions
What does it cost to hold a house in Britain?
Council tax, insurance and maintenance, plus the service charge and ground rent on a leasehold flat. Against those sits the direction of the market. In the year to May 2026, HM Land Registry’s index has England up 2.3 percent while the City of Westminster fell 22.8, a spread of more than twenty-five percentage points inside one country.
Are London house prices falling?
In the year to May 2026, twenty of the thirty-three London boroughs fell while England as a whole rose 2.3 percent. The falls are concentrated in prime central London, where the City of Westminster fell 22.8 percent.
Why use HM Land Registry rather than an estate agent’s index?
Because of what each one is built from, and who builds it. The Land Registry index is compiled from completed sales, published by the government at no cost, and served from a machine-readable API at landregistry.data.gov.uk, which means anybody can check our arithmetic against the same figures we used. An agency index is produced by a party with property to sell, and most are built on asking prices or mortgage approvals rather than on completions, so they lead the market rather than measuring it. The difference is not academic at the top of the market: reading the official index for the year to May 2026 gives England up 2.3 percent while the City of Westminster fell 22.8 percent, a divergence that an asking-price series would have shown later and smaller. Every property figure on this desk comes from that API, on the date each piece states.