Leeds's median home sold for £250,000 in 2025. London's median was £530,000 — 2.12 times as much, or put the other way round, Leeds's typical price is 47% of London's. Across 10,382 Leeds sales and 86,191 London sales (HM Land Registry, full-year 2025, standard residential sales), the two cities sit at opposite ends of England's price range for buyers comparing a move north or south.
A sale price is only the starting point, though. Add the deposit, the stamp duty, the monthly mortgage and the council tax, and the gap between the two cities behaves differently depending on which line you look at. Here is the same buyer, priced in both.
A note on method: every price below is the 2025 median for standard residential sales (detached, semi-detached, terraced and flats) recorded by HM Land Registry, fetched on 29 October 2026. Council tax figures are the 2026-27 Band D rates published by each billing authority; for London, the figure is the average across all 33 boroughs. Mortgage figures use the Bank of England's most recent quoted rate for a 75% loan-to-value five-year fix (4.32%, April 2026).
What your money buys
| Property type | Leeds (median) | London (median) |
|---|---|---|
| Flat | £155,000 | £442,500 |
| Terraced | £196,250 | £590,000 |
| Semi-detached | £259,250 | £625,000 |
| Detached | £420,000 | £905,000 |
| All types | £250,000 | £530,000 |
The housing mix is the sharpest difference. Flats make up just 12.6% of Leeds's 2025 sales (1,310 of 10,382) against 51.6% of London's (44,488 of 86,191) — more than half of everything sold in the capital is a flat, against roughly one in eight in Leeds. A typical London flat (£442,500) still costs almost double a typical Leeds detached house (£420,000), despite one buyer getting a flat and the other a house with a garden.
The upfront cost
Take a buyer putting down a 25% deposit and paying England's standard Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT).
| Upfront cost | Leeds (£250,000) | London (£530,000) |
|---|---|---|
| 25% deposit | £62,500 | £132,500 |
| Stamp duty (home-mover) | £2,500 | £16,500 |
| Total to complete | £65,000 | £149,000 |
SDLT is charged in slices: nothing on the first £125,000, 2% up to £250,000, then 5% on the portion between £250,001 and £925,000 (HMRC, 2026). Leeds's median sits exactly on the boundary of the 2% band, producing £2,500 — an effective rate of 1.00%. London's median runs well into the 5% band, producing £16,500 — an effective rate of 3.11%, more than three times Leeds's.
First-time buyer relief: full value in Leeds, zero in London
First-time buyers pay no SDLT on their main residence up to £300,000, a reduced rate between £300,001 and £500,000, and no relief at all once the price passes £500,000 (HMRC, 2026). A first-time buyer at Leeds's £250,000 median pays nothing — the relief shelters the whole purchase, with £50,000 of headroom to spare before the taper even begins. A first-time buyer at London's £530,000 median is above the £500,000 cut-off, so the relief has already withdrawn completely; they pay the same £16,500 as a home-mover.
Buyers of an additional property — a second home or a buy-to-let — add a 5-percentage-point surcharge on the whole price on top of these figures: £15,000 in Leeds (an effective rate of 6.00%) and £43,000 in London (8.11%).
The monthly cost
On a 25% deposit, a 25-year repayment mortgage and the April 2026 quoted rate of 4.32%:
| Monthly cost | Leeds | London |
|---|---|---|
| Mortgage | £1,023 | £2,169 |
| Council tax (Band D) | £190 | £174 |
| Total | £1,213 | £2,343 |
Leeds council tax is the city's own 2026-27 Band D (£2,283.73/yr); London is the average Band D across all 33 boroughs (£2,090.08/yr). Figures exclude energy, insurance and maintenance.
The mortgage carries almost the entire gap: £1,023 a month in Leeds against £2,169 in London, a £1,146 monthly difference that compounds over 25 years into roughly £119,000 of total interest in Leeds versus £253,000 in London.
The council-tax twist, a second time
This is the second city pairing in a row where the cheaper city to buy in turns out to have the higher Band D charge. Leeds's own rate, £2,283.73, is about 9% above the £2,090.08 average across London's 33 boroughs — a smaller gap than Birmingham showed against London, but running the same direction. Council tax is a flat charge per band, set by each authority to fund its own budget from 1991 property valuations — it is not a percentage of today's price, so a cheaper city to buy in has no structural reason to also be cheaper to live in. The spread inside London does the rest of the work: Wandsworth (£1,028.21) and Westminster (£1,049.55) set two of the lowest Band D charges in England, while several outer boroughs charge more than Leeds does. The actual bill always depends on the individual property's own band, not the city-wide figure quoted here.
Which way are prices moving?
The most recent UK House Price Index release, for July 2026, shows the two cities moving in opposite directions over the past year. Leeds's three-month-average index rose from 103.7 (May-July 2025) to 108.2 (May-July 2026), up about 4.3%. London's fell from 99.4 to 96.3 over the same window, down about 3.1%. These are published index movements, not predictions — the index is mix-adjusted, so it is a better guide to direction than a raw median, which moves with whatever mix of homes happens to sell in a given period.
Energy and other running costs
Leeds's housing stock is on average more energy-efficient than London's on this measure: on the latest certificate for each address, 35.8% of Leeds homes are rated EPC C or above, against 31.7% in London (EPC Open Data, fetched 29 October 2026). Neither city has a fully modernised housing stock, and EPC modelled running costs rest on dated assumptions — best read as directional rather than a precise bill.
See the numbers for your own search
Every figure here is a citywide median, and the street-level picture varies widely. You can see the full True Cost — mortgage, council tax, energy and stamp duty — for any specific address by searching a postcode: try a Leeds postcode or a London postcode, both close to their city's own 2025 median.
For the detail behind each city, see our breakdown of the average house price in Leeds, or compare the capital against two other northern cities in the cost of buying a home: Birmingham vs London and the cost of buying a home: London vs Manchester. Leeds's own cheaper-city, higher-council-tax pattern is explored further in West Yorkshire's priciest homes, cheapest council tax. For the worked brackets either median sits closest to, see the true cost of buying a £250k home and the true cost of buying a £500k home.
Based on 10,382 Leeds and 86,191 London Land Registry transactions in 2025, EPC Open Data certificates and 2026-27 council tax data — see more in our cost intelligence guides.
This is general information, not financial, tax or mortgage advice. Your rate, your eligibility and the stamp duty you pay will depend on your circumstances. Speak to a qualified adviser before acting.