Average house price in Bristol in 2026: what buyers actually paid

The median home in the City of Bristol sold for £350,000 in 2025, across 5,851 standard residential transactions recorded by HM Land Registry (data fetched 18 June 2026). That makes Bristol the most expensive of the large English regional cities mapped here so far — ahead of Manchester (£250,000), Leeds (£247,000) and Birmingham (£237,000), though still well below London's £527,500.

The average (mean) sale price was higher, at £403,253. The roughly £53,000 gap between the two is the fingerprint of a market with a long tail of expensive sales — the detached homes of Stoke Bishop and the period houses of Clifton and Redland — pulling the average upward. For a sense of the typical home, the median is the more reliable number: half of Bristol sales were below £350,000 and half above.

Figures cover Land Registry category-A (standard) sales of detached, semi-detached, terraced and flat homes in the City of Bristol local authority (E06000023) for calendar year 2025.

Bristol in its region: Bath is dearer to buy

Bristol does not top its own patch. Across the four West of England unitary authorities — the former county of Avon — Bath and North East Somerset had the highest median in 2025, at £399,950. Bristol came second, with North Somerset and South Gloucestershire below it.

The spread from top to bottom is just 1.27x — a tight range compared with London's near-3x gap between its priciest and cheapest boroughs, reflecting a single contiguous travel-to-work area where commuters trade location against price across the M4/M5 ring rather than across a vast metropolitan sprawl.

Bristol by postcode district

Within the city, sale prices vary roughly two-fold by neighbourhood. The figures below are by postcode district, which is not the same as the council boundary: the BS postcode area also covers Weston-super-Mare (BS22–24), Clevedon (BS21), Keynsham (BS31) and rural North Somerset, so some BS districts sit wholly or partly outside the City of Bristol. The table is limited to districts centred on the city, each with at least 80 sales in 2025.

From the BS1/BS13 floor to the BS9 ceiling, the within-city range is about 2.0x. Note that BS15 (Kingswood) and parts of BS16 extend into South Gloucestershire, so those districts blend two authorities' housing stock.

You can see street-level sale histories for any of these districts on Bristol's True Cost pages, seeded here with a central Clifton postcode — every home on the street, with its last recorded sale price, council tax band and energy rating.

What kind of homes change hands

Bristol is a terrace city. Terraced houses were the single largest property type sold in 2025 — more than flats, semis or detached homes — a legacy of the Victorian and Edwardian streets that fan out from the centre through Bedminster, Easton, Bishopston and St George.

Houses (detached, semi and terraced together) made up about 70% of sales. That is a different shape from Manchester, where flats were the largest single type, and closer to — but distinct from — Birmingham and Leeds, where the semi dominates. In Bristol the terrace rules, and its median (£378,000) actually edges above the semi (£367,500), reflecting how sought-after the inner-city terraced streets have become.

Did prices rise in 2025? The honest answer

The raw median rose from £340,000 in 2024 to £350,000 in 2025 — about +2.9% on the face of it. But a raw median is sensitive to mix: if more larger or pricier homes happen to sell in a given year, the median climbs even if no individual home gained value.

The mix-adjusted check tells a more cautious story. The ONS UK House Price Index for the City of Bristol fell from 101.3 (March 2025) to 98.6 (March 2026), a decline of about 2.7% year on year. The wider South West region also edged down (98.1 to 97.3, −0.8%), while the UK as a whole was essentially flat (102.7 to 102.8). Because the index controls for the mix of homes sold, the safest reading is that headline Bristol prices were broadly flat to slightly softer over the year, and the +2.9% in the raw median reflects what sold rather than confirmed price growth. These are published index movements to the most recent release, not a forecast.

What it costs to buy at the Bristol median

A £350,000 purchase sits above the £250,000 point where stamp duty starts to bite at 5%. Here is how the costs break down, using current published rates.

Stamp Duty Land Tax (England). On a £350,000 main home, a buyer who already owns property pays £7,500 in SDLT — an effective rate of 2.14% (HMRC rates, 2026). A first-time buyer pays £2,500, because the first £300,000 is charged at 0% and only the slice from £300,001 to £350,000 is taxed at 5%; first-time buyer relief is available up to £500,000. A buyer of an additional dwelling pays the 5% surcharge on the whole price on top — £17,500 — taking the total to £25,000. You can run any price through the Homecost stamp duty calculator for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Mortgage. At the Bank of England's latest quoted 75% loan-to-value five-year fixed rate of 4.32% (April 2026), a buyer putting down a 25% deposit (£87,500) and borrowing £262,500 over 25 years would pay approximately £1,432 a month, with roughly £167,000 in interest over the full term. Your actual rate will depend on your lender, deposit and credit profile. Model different deposits and terms with the Homecost mortgage calculator.

Council tax. Here Bristol stands out. Its 2026-27 Band D charge is £2,713.68 — the highest of the four West of England authorities, even though Bath homes cost more to buy. The contrast is striking:

Council tax bands rest on April 1991 property values and each authority's annual budget, not on what homes change hands for today — which is why the cheapest area to buy is not automatically the cheapest to run.

Energy. Of the domestic energy certificates on record for Bristol, about 29.6% are rated C or above and 70.4% sit at band D or below — a profile almost identical to Leeds, and between Manchester (66% at D or below) and Birmingham (78%). The older terraced stock that defines the city tends toward the lower bands. EPC running-cost estimates rest on dated modelling assumptions and should be read as directional rather than as a real bill.

How Bristol compares

For the full picture in the other cities, see the guides to the average house price in London, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds. To see every line item for a purchase at Bristol's price point, the pillar guides to the true cost of buying a £300,000 home and the true cost of buying a £400,000 home bracket the £350,000 median on either side. More area guides are in the Regional Prices section of the Homecost blog.

The bottom line

Bristol's £350,000 median makes it the priciest large English city outside London among those mapped here, with a distinctive terrace-led market and the highest council tax in its region. Headline values look broadly flat over the past year once the mix of homes sold is stripped out. To see what a specific street actually costs — mortgage, council tax, energy and stamp duty in one place — search any Bristol postcode on Homecost.

This is general information based on published HM Land Registry, ONS and Bank of England data, not financial, tax or legal advice. Speak to a qualified adviser before acting.