Average house price in Dudley 2026: cheapest council tax

Homes in Dudley changed hands for a median of £242,000 across 3,642 sales in 2025, according to HM Land Registry price-paid records. That is 81% of the £300,000 median for England as a whole — but it also makes Dudley the second most expensive of the seven West Midlands metropolitan boroughs to buy into, behind only Solihull.

What sets Dudley apart is the other side of the ledger. Its 2026-27 Band D council tax is £2,144.84 — the lowest of any borough in the West Midlands conurbation, and £266 below the £2,410.97 average across England's 296 billing authorities (gov.uk, 2026-27). For a household weighing the full running cost of a home, that is the borough's defining number.

What sells in Dudley, and for how much

Dudley's market is led by semi-detached homes, which made up close to half of 2025 sales. The table below breaks the year down by property type.

The gap between the typical detached house (£350,000) and the typical flat (£127,500) is 2.75× — a slightly narrower spread than in Birmingham or Solihull. The median flat price of £127,500 sits just above the £125,000 standard nil-rate threshold for Stamp Duty.

Prices by area

Dudley is a polycentric borough — the towns of Dudley, Stourbridge, Halesowen, Brierley Hill and Sedgley each have their own market. The ladder below ranks the borough's postcode districts by 2025 median price (districts with at least 40 recorded sales; figures restricted to the Dudley local-authority area, so cross-boundary slices of shared postcodes are excluded).

The spread from the dearest district (Halesowen's B62, £280,500) to the cheapest (Netherton's DY2, £197,000) is 1.42× — one of the most compressed intra-borough ranges in the conurbation, which points to broadly uniform affordability rather than a few premium pockets pulling the range wide. Stourbridge's DY8 was the busiest district, with 742 recorded sales. As a worked example, five homes sold in the B63 2SS postcode in Halesowen during 2025 at an average of £242,400 — almost exactly the borough median.

The direction of travel

Dudley's own house-price index rose from 103.0 to 105.2 between March 2025 and March 2026, a 2.1% year-on-year increase on the mix-adjusted measure (ONS and HM Land Registry UK House Price Index). That was firmer than the wider West Midlands region, which was flat to marginally down over the same window (−0.1%), and firmer than the England-wide figure (−0.7%). On the raw price-paid measure, Dudley's median rose from £230,000 in 2024 to £242,000 in 2025.

We report these as recorded movements rather than predictions — the UK House Price Index is published with a lag and revised as more sales complete.

Running costs: council tax, energy and the mortgage

Dudley's headline draw is council tax. Its 2026-27 Band D charge of £2,144.84 is the cheapest of the seven West Midlands boroughs. The table below sets the borough medians against Band D across the conurbation (prices: HM Land Registry, 2025; council tax: gov.uk, 2026-27).

The contrast at the two ends is stark: a Band D household in Walsall pays £482.64 a year more council tax than one in Dudley, even though Walsall homes are cheaper to buy. Dudley's Band D works out at 0.89% of its median price — a lighter council-tax-to-price load than every other affordable borough in the group. What any individual household pays depends on its property's band, not Band D alone; Band D is the standard benchmark used for comparison.

On energy, 29.8% of Dudley homes with an Energy Performance Certificate hold a rating of C or better (22,112 of 74,156 lodged certificates), while 4.6% sit in the F or G bands. The median floor area on the register is 82 m².

For the purchase itself, a home mover buying at the £242,000 median would pay £2,340 in Stamp Duty — an effective rate of 0.97%, charged at 2% on the slice between £125,000 and £242,000 (HMRC, 2026). A first-time buyer purchasing their main residence would pay £0, because £242,000 sits below the £300,000 first-time-buyer nil-rate band. A buyer of an additional dwelling — a second home or a buy-to-let — would pay £14,440, reflecting the 5% surcharge on the whole price.

At the most recent Bank of England quoted rate for a five-year fix at 75% loan-to-value (4.32%, April 2026), a £181,500 mortgage — 75% of the median price, assuming a 25% deposit — would cost roughly £990 a month over 25 years. Adding the Band D council tax of about £179 a month brings the borough-set running cost to around £1,169 a month, before energy, insurance and maintenance. An actual rate will depend on the lender, deposit and credit profile.

See the numbers for a specific street

Homecost breaks these figures down to the individual property. Enter a Dudley postcode — try DY8 in Stourbridge — to see recorded sale prices, the Band D council tax, an energy estimate from EPC data and a personalised Stamp Duty figure for each home on the street.

For the neighbouring boroughs, compare average house prices in Sandwell, which is both cheaper to buy and cheap to run, and Walsall, which carries the conurbation's heaviest council tax. Dudley's larger neighbour is covered in the Birmingham house-price guide, and the way the bills are built is set out in council tax bands explained. More area guides sit under regional prices.

Figures are based on 3,642 Land Registry transactions for 2025 and the 2026-27 Band D council tax set by Dudley Council; see the Homecost blog for how each guide is compiled.

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