Keynsham vs Chew Valley House Prices and EPC Ratings 2026

Outside Bath's Georgian core and the Radstock and Midsomer Norton corner, the rest of Bath and North East Somerset looks greener on paper than anywhere else in the authority — 45.3% of its homes rate EPC C or above, against 32.8% in Bath itself. But that average hides two very different housing markets sitting a few miles apart: Keynsham, a fast-growing commuter town with mostly post-war stock, and the Chew Valley villages, where the oldest and largest houses in the authority also happen to be the most expensive.

Three zones, one council area

Bath and North East Somerset (B&NES) splits naturally into three housing markets once its historic core and its southern coalfield towns are accounted for separately. Bath's Georgian core carries the highest prices and the oldest stock; Radstock and Midsomer Norton is the cheapest corner of the authority. Everything else — Keynsham, Paulton, Timsbury and the Chew Valley villages — sits in between on paper, based on 2025 Land Registry sales and the latest EPC certificate recorded against each address (fetched 2026-10-01).

A boundary note first: BS40 and BS41 also reach into North Somerset, and BS14 (Whitchurch) sits mostly within Bristol — so every figure below counts only the postcodes that fall inside Bath and North East Somerset's own boundary, not the full BS3x/BS4x postcode areas.

Keynsham, Paulton and the Chew Valley aren't one market

Split the "rest of the authority" total three ways and the 45.3% average stops looking like a single story. Keynsham (BS31) is doing almost all of the work; the Chew Valley villages (BS40) pull in the opposite direction entirely.

Keynsham, redeveloped heavily since the 1960s and more recently on the former Somerdale chocolate factory site, has the youngest housing stock of the three by a wide margin — fewer than one in five homes there pre-date 1950. That newer stock is the main reason the wider zone's EPC average looks as strong as it does. The Chew Valley villages run the opposite way: 43.2% of homes pre-date 1950, nearly two and a half times Keynsham's share, and the EPC C+ rate (29.7%) is lower than anywhere else in the authority — including Bath's listed Georgian terraces (32.8%). A detached, centuries-old farmhouse by Chew Valley Lake is a different retrofit problem to a 1990s semi on a Keynsham estate, even though both sit in the same council area and pay the same council tax.

Price moves in the opposite direction to energy rating. Across the 59 recorded 2025 sales in BS40 (minimum £305,000, maximum £1.9m, and two-thirds of them detached houses), the median sale was £645,000 — higher than Bath's own historic core, and more than double Paulton and Timsbury's £339,975.

What it costs to buy in each pocket

Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) and an illustrative mortgage show how differently these three pockets sit for a buyer, based on HMRC's current SDLT bands and the Bank of England's quoted 75%-loan-to-value five-year fixed rate of 4.32% (dated 2026-04-01, the latest available reading).

*75% loan-to-value, 25-year term, at the Bank of England's quoted 4.32% five-year fixed rate. Illustrative only — your own rate will depend on your lender, deposit and credit profile.

The sharpest line in that table is the last row: at £645,000, the Chew Valley median sits well above England's £500,000 first-time buyer relief ceiling, so the first-time buyer and standard SDLT bills are identical — £22,250 either way. Keynsham and Paulton/Timsbury, by contrast, both sit inside the band where first-time buyer relief still makes a real difference: £5,000 saved at the Keynsham median, and £5,000 saved at the Paulton and Timsbury median too, since both still pay no tax on the first £300,000 as first-time buyers.

Same council tax, different running costs

B&NES sets one Band D figure for the whole authority — £2,383.42 for 2026-27, regardless of whether a home sits in Keynsham or up a Chew Valley lane. That means council tax isn't what separates these three pockets on cost of living; running costs diverge instead through energy use, which is where the EPC gap matters most in an older, larger, rural home. EPC-modelled running costs are a standardised estimate rather than a household's actual bill, so treat the C+ shares above as a guide to a property's likely starting point for retrofit, not a specific pounds-and-pence forecast.

This piece draws on 704 Land Registry transactions and 8,997 EPC certificates covering the non-Bath, non-Radstock postcodes of Bath and North East Somerset, plus the authority's published 2026-27 council tax rate — see Homecost's full data sources and methodology for how every figure here is derived.

Try it on a real street

A terraced and semi-detached stretch of Albert Road in Keynsham shows the pattern in practice: search BS31 1AE on Homecost to see individual recorded sale prices, floor areas and EPC ratings on a genuinely mixed street, rather than a single new-build estate.

For the wider picture, see average house prices in Bath, average house prices in nearby Bristol, the true cost of buying a £400,000 home in the UK, or browse more regional house price guides.

This is general information based on published data, not financial or legal advice. Speak to a qualified adviser before acting on stamp duty, mortgage or conveyancing decisions.