Average house price in Cambridge 2026: the £494,250 median

Outside London, few English cities cost as much to buy into as Cambridge. The typical home that changed hands in the city in 2025 sold for £494,250 — about 1.7 times the England-wide median of £295,000, and dearer than Bath, Bristol or any of the West Midlands boroughs.

That figure is the median of 1,286 standard residential sales recorded in the Cambridge City local authority area during 2025 (HM Land Registry Price Paid Data, houses and flats, "additional entry" transfers excluded). The median is the mid-point: half of buyers paid less, half paid more. It is a more honest measure of the "typical" price than the average, because Cambridge has a long, expensive tail — the mean sale price was £593,028, nearly £99,000 above the median, pulled up by a small number of very high-value homes near the colleges and along the river.

Cambridge at a glance

Source figures are drawn from HM Land Registry, the gov.uk council tax dataset for 2026-27 and the domestic EPC register. You can see the same building blocks — price, council tax and energy — for any street by trying the tool: see the true monthly cost of a Cambridge home.

What each type of home costs

The city's price ladder is steep, and terraced houses — not flats — are the workhorse of the market, accounting for the largest share of sales.

A median detached home costs 2.1 times a median flat. The terraced median, at £496,250, sits almost exactly on the citywide figure — a reminder that in Cambridge a period terrace is a mid-market, not an entry-level, purchase. Flats, at a £340,000 median, are the most accessible way in, though still well above the national all-property median.

Where the money is: prices by district

Splitting the city by postcode district shows a clear west-to-east gradient. CB3, covering Newnham, west Cambridge and the university's newer research campuses, leads; the northern and eastern districts are more affordable.

The gap between the dearest and cheapest district is about 1.5 times — narrower than the spread you see in bigger cities, because Cambridge is small and uniformly in demand. CB1, which takes in the central and southern-central neighbourhoods, was comfortably the busiest district, with 529 recorded sales.

Small homes, big prices per square foot

Cambridge's homes are not especially large — the median floor area on EPC-matched 2025 sales was about 86 square metres — which makes the price per square foot one of the highest in the country. On the same 2025 sales, the median worked out at roughly £554 per square foot. Among the cities we track, only London (around £599) is higher; Cambridge sits ahead of Bath and Bristol. For the full national picture, see our ranking of price per square foot across UK cities.

Council tax and the monthly running cost

Cambridge City's Band D council tax for 2026-27 is £2,467.02 — above the England median of about £2,441 but not an outlier. Because the bill is set by the billing authority and the county precept, not by the sale price, it takes a much smaller share of a monthly budget here than it does in cheaper parts of the country.

As an illustration only: a buyer putting down a 25% deposit on the £494,250 median home would borrow about £370,700. At the Bank of England's most recently published quoted rate for a five-year fixed mortgage at 75% loan-to-value (4.32%), a 25-year repayment mortgage would cost roughly £2,020 a month, with Band D council tax adding about £206. That is a mortgage-plus-council-tax figure of around £2,230 a month — before energy, insurance, maintenance or any service charge, and before the one-off costs of buying. Your own rate will depend on your lender, deposit and credit profile. Speak to a qualified adviser before acting.

Stamp duty at the Cambridge median

The median Cambridge home sits in an unusual spot: just below £500,000, the ceiling above which first-time buyer stamp duty relief disappears entirely. That makes the buyer's situation matter more here than almost anywhere else.

A first-time buyer buying the median home as their main residence pays no stamp duty on the first £300,000 and 5% on the slice up to the purchase price, which comes to £9,712 — about £5,000 less than a home mover (HMRC residential rates, 2026). Had the same home cost just over £500,000, that relief would vanish and the bill would jump. The mechanics of that cliff, and the taper approaching it, are set out in our guide to how first-time buyer relief tapers between £300,000 and £500,000. Eligibility is confirmed by a conveyancer on completion — speak to a qualified adviser before acting.

Energy: greener than the national stock

Nearly half of Cambridge homes with a linkable energy certificate — 49.6% — are rated EPC band C or above, comfortably ahead of the roughly 40% share across England and Wales. The city's large stock of newer flats and university-linked developments lifts the figure; the Victorian terraces around Mill Road and Romsey pull the other way, as older terraced stock does everywhere.

Which way have prices moved?

The raw median was broadly flat year on year: £495,100 in 2024 against £494,250 in 2025, a movement of well under 1%. The mix-adjusted UK House Price Index, which strips out changes in the type of home being sold, tells a softer story — the index for Cambridge was down about 2.9% in the year to April 2026 (three-month average), against +1.1% for Cambridgeshire as a whole, +2.0% for the East of England and +1.6% for England. In short, the city has cooled slightly relative to its surrounding county over the past year. These are backward-looking measures of what has already happened, not a prediction of what comes next.

For a nearby comparison, the average house price in Norwich shows how much further a budget stretches elsewhere in the East of England, while the average house price in London is the natural reference point at the top end. You can browse the full set of regional price guides for more cities.

Based on 1,286 HM Land Registry Price Paid transactions for the Cambridge City local authority area in 2025, gov.uk council tax data for 2026-27 and the domestic EPC register. See how the figures are put together.