Average house price in Cardiff 2026: what buyers actually pay

The typical home in Cardiff changed hands for £270,000 in 2025, drawn from 4,264 standard sales recorded by HM Land Registry across the City of Cardiff. That is a calm, mid-market number for a UK capital city — below Bristol across the Severn, well below London, and shaped by a housing stock that is, unusually for a major city, led by terraced streets rather than flats or semis.

This guide breaks down what sold and for how much, how prices vary across Cardiff's CF postcodes, and the two things that make the cost of buying here genuinely different from England: Wales runs its own property-purchase tax (Land Transaction Tax, not Stamp Duty), and its council tax sits on a different banding system. All figures below come from HM Land Registry Price Paid Data for the 2025 calendar year (standard sales of detached, semi-detached, terraced and flat dwellings), the UK House Price Index, the Welsh Revenue Authority and the Welsh Government, retrieved on 21 June 2026.

A note on geography: the CF postcode area is wider than the City of Cardiff council area — CF also covers parts of the Vale of Glamorgan, Rhondda Cynon Taf and Caerphilly. Every figure in this article is filtered to the City of Cardiff local authority only, so neighbouring towns are not folded into the "Cardiff" numbers.

The headline: £270,000, and a terrace-led market

Across 4,264 standard transactions in 2025, the median Cardiff sale price was £270,000 and the mean was £314,507. The roughly £45,000 gap between the two reflects a smaller number of high-value detached sales pulling the average upward — the median is the better guide to what a typical buyer paid.

What is distinctive about Cardiff is the mix of what sells. Terraced houses were the single largest category, but they sit below semi-detached homes on price — a conventional ordering, unlike nearby Bristol where sought-after Victorian terraces have pushed the terrace median above the semi.

The terrace-led shape is a Cardiff hallmark: the Victorian and Edwardian streets of Roath, Canton, Grangetown and Cathays form the bulk of the market, with flats concentrated in the city centre and Cardiff Bay and detached stock clustered on the northern and western edges.

The price map: Cardiff by CF district

Prices climb steadily from the central and inner-east districts to the leafier north and north-western edge. The table below ranks the CF districts inside the City of Cardiff by 2025 median (districts with at least 30 recorded sales).

CF14 is both the busiest district by volume and one of the dearest, the engine room of the family-home market. At the other end, CF10's £176,000 median reflects its flat-heavy, city-centre profile rather than any judgement on the area. You can see the per-street picture for any Cardiff postcode — last sale, floor area and energy rating — by searching it on the Homecost true-cost tool.

Are prices rising? What the index says

The raw 2025 median (£270,000) was up from £265,000 in 2024 — a rise of about 1.9%. Because a raw median moves with the mix of what sold as well as with underlying values, the mix-adjusted UK House Price Index is the better cross-check. To March 2026, the latest release available, the index for Cardiff rose 1.2% year on year, and the wider Wales index rose 2.9%; the England-and-Wales index was broadly flat (down 0.4%).

In short, the raw median and the mix-adjusted index point the same way — modest growth — though the precise figure depends on which geography you read. This is a published index movement to a stated date, not a forecast; nobody can tell you where Cardiff prices go next.

For the bigger-picture comparison, the average house price in Bristol just across the Severn and the average house price in Bath provide the nearest large-city reference points; both sit above Cardiff on price.

The tax is different here: Land Transaction Tax, not Stamp Duty

Buyers in Wales do not pay Stamp Duty Land Tax. Since April 2018, property purchases in Wales have been charged Land Transaction Tax (LTT), collected by the Welsh Revenue Authority. The rates and thresholds are set in Cardiff, not Westminster, and they differ in two ways that matter at Cardiff's price point.

The main residential LTT rates are:

At Cardiff's £270,000 median, LTT works out at £2,700 — 6% of the £45,000 slice above the £225,000 nil-rate threshold, an effective rate of 1.0%. The same £270,000 purchase in England would attract £3,500 of Stamp Duty (effective 1.3%), so a standard mover buying at the Cardiff median pays roughly £800 less in Wales.

The second difference cuts the other way. Wales has no first-time buyer relief. In England, a first-time buyer purchasing their main residence at £270,000 pays nothing, because first-time buyer relief lifts the nil-rate band to £425,000. In Wales there is no equivalent scheme — a first-time buyer at £270,000 pays the same £2,700 as anyone else. Wales instead offers a single, higher universal nil-rate band (£225,000, against England's standard £125,000) that benefits all buyers rather than first-timers specifically.

You can run any Cardiff purchase price through the Homecost stamp duty and LTT calculator, which handles all four UK regimes. For how LTT stacks up against England's SDLT and Scotland's LBTT side by side, see the SDLT vs LBTT vs LTT comparison; buyers of additional properties should read how the higher residential LTT rates work, as a separate surcharge applies. This is general information, not advice. Speak to a qualified adviser before acting.

Council tax: the cheapest band D in Wales

Cardiff has a second cost advantage. For 2026-27, its average band D council tax is £2,013 — the lowest of any billing authority in Wales, where the average is £2,283 and the highest is Merthyr Tydfil at £2,594 (Welsh Government, 2026). The figure includes the South Wales Police precept and any community council precepts.

Welsh council tax also works on a different grid from England's. Wales uses nine bands, A to I, based on property values as at 1 April 2003, whereas England uses eight bands, A to H, frozen at 1991 values. Band D remains the standard reference band against which the others are set as fixed proportions. For a buyer comparing Cardiff with an English city, the headline is that Cardiff combines a higher-than-Welsh-average house price with the cheapest council tax in the country.

Energy: a relatively green stock for a big city

Cardiff's housing is more energy-efficient than several of its English peers. Of the 94,310 domestic Energy Performance Certificates on record for the city, 37.5% are rated C or above, with 62.5% at band D or below:

The median floor area on certificate is 95.9 m² for houses and 60.9 m² for flats. A band rating is a useful proxy for relative running costs — a C-rated home is cheaper to heat than a D or E equivalent — but the modelled energy-cost figure printed on an EPC rests on dated assumptions and should not be read as a current bill. The direction (greener bands cost less to run) is reliable; the precise pounds are not.

The monthly picture

Putting the pieces together for the median Cardiff home: at the current Bank of England quoted rate for a five-year fix at 75% loan-to-value (4.32% as of April 2026), a £270,000 purchase with a 25% deposit (£67,500) leaves a £202,500 mortgage. Over a 25-year term that works out at approximately £1,105 a month, with total interest of around £129,000 across the life of the loan. Your own rate will depend on your lender, deposit and credit profile, and rates move month to month.

Add the council tax (£2,013 a year, or about £168 a month) and the day-one tax bill (£2,700 LTT for a mover), and the all-in monthly cost of the typical Cardiff home is materially different from the asking price alone — which is the whole point of looking past the headline. You can model the mortgage at different rates and deposits on the Homecost mortgage calculator, and see how the same budget plays out elsewhere via the true cost of buying a £300,000 home guide.

Try it for your postcode

Cardiff's median tells you what the typical buyer paid, but every street is different. Search any CF postcode on Homecost to see the recorded sale prices, floor areas, energy ratings and the full monthly cost of ownership — mortgage, council tax, energy and Land Transaction Tax — for the homes on it. To browse more area guides, see the Regional Prices section.

This article is general information, not financial, tax or legal advice. Speak to a qualified adviser before acting.