Methods, definitions and sources

How each figure on this site is made, what it can and cannot tell you, and where the data comes from. Thresholds that the site applies are shown with their current settings.

• Four questions, three outcomes
• Postcode districts
• Prices: like-for-like change
• Sales activity
• Registration lag and provisional months
• Sample-size rules
• Local exceptions
• Affordability
• Buyer intent
• Homes available
• Pipeline
• Evidence states
• Coverage by nation
• Sources and licences
• Metric dictionary
• Revisions and editions

Four questions, three outcomes

The site reports separately on four questions: can people afford to buy, do they want to buy, what homes are available, and can developers deliver more. It never folds them into a single score. Three outcomes are kept apart: prices (what a comparable home is worth), sales activity (how many homes change hands, and how readily) and supply delivery (what competing homes may actually arrive). A district can hold its prices while selling slowly, or sell plenty of homes because they are discounted.

Postcode districts

The reporting unit is the postcode district: the full outward code, such as KT1, KT10 or SW1A, never truncated. A district’s position on the map is the average location of its live postcodes in the ONS Postcode Directory (February 2026). Districts cross council boundaries. Where a district is linked to a local authority, for example to show the official UK House Price Index for that authority, we use the authority with most of the district’s registered sales over the last five years and show the split. A postcode boundary is not a market boundary, so pipeline views use a distance around the district centre instead.

Non-residential and special-use postcodes without sales get no ranking.

Prices: like-for-like change

A district’s median price can rise simply because more detached houses sold. To separate that from a real change in values, the headline price change is mix-adjusted:

1. Sales are grouped into cells by property type (detached, semi-detached, terraced, flat) and new build versus existing home.
2. For each rolling 12-month window, the median price in each cell is calculated.
3. The change between two windows is the weighted average of the cell medians in the later window, divided by the same for the earlier window. Weights are each cell’s share of the district’s sales over the 60 months to the latest complete month, so they do not move when the mix of sales changes.
4. A cell is used only if it has at least 5 sales in both windows. The share of sales the calculation covers is shown with each figure.

The difference between the raw median change and the mix-adjusted change is shown as the mix effect, in percentage points. The uncertainty range uses the standard error of each cell median (≈ 1.25 × the standard deviation of log prices ÷ √n). Regional and England and Wales benchmarks use the same method with district × type × new-build cells, so they hold location mix fixed too. They are compared with the official UK House Price Index, which uses a fuller hedonic method and should be preferred for national headlines.

A difference between a district’s change and the benchmark’s change is expressed in percentage points. It is not a discount.

Sales activity

Sales counts are standard Price Paid transactions (category A) registered for houses and flats. They are counted by completion date. Monthly counts are compared with the same months in the previous three years to allow for seasonality. Without listing data, sales counts are an activity measure that reflects both buyer demand and the supply of homes for sale. They are not a count of willing buyers.

Registration lag and provisional months

Sales reach HM Land Registry weeks or months after completion, so the most recent months are always incomplete. The newest 3 months of data are shown as provisional (hatched in charts) and are left out of every 12-month comparison. A low count in a provisional month is not a fall in sales.

Sample-size rules

A district or segment price change is published only when each 12-month window has at least 30 standard sales and the mix-adjusted calculation covers at least half the district’s usual sales. Otherwise the site shows “insufficient evidence” and the regional comparison. Thirty sales is a starting guardrail, not proof of statistical adequacy.

Local exceptions

A district is listed as a local exception only if its like-for-like price change, or the change in its number of sales, differs from England and Wales by more than chance would explain after allowing for the number of districts tested. The test is a z-score with a Bonferroni adjustment for a family-wise error rate of 5%. Segment exceptions (for example flats in one district) are tested separately against the number of segments screened. A listed exception is a statistical difference to explain, not a cause. Each review story sets out the observed result, the evidence, a plausible explanation and the competing explanations.

Affordability

The calculator uses the district’s median price for the chosen property type over the latest 12 complete months, a deposit of price × (1 − loan to value), purchase tax for the nation (Stamp Duty Land Tax in England, Land Transaction Tax in Wales, Land and Buildings Transaction Tax in Scotland; rates checked 2 November 2026, main residence only), and a repayment mortgage calculated from the product rate and term. Rates are Bank of England quoted rates for the loan-to-value band, which are national averages. The housing burden is the monthly repayment divided by the net monthly income you enter. Household incomes and deposits are not observed for postcode districts, so the results are illustrations for buyer profiles, not the share of local households who could buy.

The change in monthly repayment over a year is split into a price effect (new price at last year’s rate) and a rate effect (new price at the new rate). Local incomes are not yet included.

Buyer intent

Direct measures of intent – searches, enquiries, viewings, offers and reservations – come from portals, agents and developers and are not yet connected. Until they are, the site shows a clearly labelled activity proxy (sales against their seasonal norm, and the national number of mortgage approvals). It is not a count of buyers.

Homes available

Stock for sale, time on the market, price reductions, fall-throughs and withdrawals need listing histories that are not yet connected. Those views show “not yet covered” rather than estimates. When listing data arrives, time to first agreed sale, time to successful agreed sale and time to completion will be kept as different measures, and months of supply will be calculated from agreed sales rather than lagged completions.

Pipeline

England’s brownfield land registers (via the Planning Data platform) list previously developed sites that councils consider suitable for housing, with minimum and maximum net dwellings and the permission recorded. They are one part of the pipeline only: greenfield allocations, applications, appeals and starts are not yet included. By default the priority universe is sites of more than 30 net homes; sites with no dwelling count are counted separately rather than dropped. Registered new-build sales from Price Paid Data show open-market new homes that have completed and sold. They exclude affordable and rented homes.

Evidence states

Observed calculated directly from registered records. Modelled depends on assumptions you can see and change. Provisional recent data that will grow as registrations arrive. Insufficient evidence too few sales to publish. Not yet covered no source connected for this place or measure. Missing data is never shown as zero.

Coverage by nation

HM Land Registry Price Paid Data covers England and Wales only. Scottish and Northern Irish transaction sources need separate licences. Until then their districts show “not yet covered”, with the national UK HPI as the comparison.

Sources and licences

• HM Land Registry Price Paid Data – sales of residential property in England and Wales from 1995, updated monthly on the 20th working day. Open Government Licence v3.0. About the data.
• UK House Price Index – official monthly index for the UK, nations, regions and local authorities. OGL v3.0. About the UK HPI.
• Bank of England Database – quoted household mortgage rates by loan-to-value band, effective rates on new mortgages, Bank Rate and mortgage approvals.
• Planning Data platform (MHCLG) – brownfield land registers. OGL v3.0. Dataset availability does not prove complete coverage. Documentation.
• ONS Postcode Directory (February 2026) – postcode locations used for district centres. OGL v3.0; contains OS and Royal Mail data. Postal geography.

Metric dictionary

Revisions and editions

HM Land Registry adds, corrects and deletes records each month; statistics are rebuilt from the corrected data after every release. Each edition of the UK Housing Market Review is frozen when published: its figures do not change, it has a stable address and citation, and any correction is added with a date at the top. Live pages always show the current data cutoff.