Nottingham, Chesterfield, Ashfield, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Wigan and Knowsley share almost nothing on a map — a Midlands city, two Nottinghamshire and Staffordshire towns, and two boroughs either side of the Pennines. But run every 2025 residential sale recorded by HM Land Registry through each authority, and all six report an identical median house price: £200,000, to the pound.
That is not a coincidence confined to one price point. Homecost calculated the 2025 median sale price for every English local authority with at least 30 recorded residential transactions — 295 of England's 296 billing authorities clear that bar — and found that a striking share land on a round figure. 198 of the 295 (67%) sit on an exact multiple of £5,000. 120 (41%) are an exact multiple of £10,000. Fifty-one (17%) land on a multiple of £25,000, and 36 (12%) hit an exact £50,000 mark.
How common is a round-number median?
| Test | Local authorities matching | Share of 295 |
|---|---|---|
| Exact multiple of £1,000 | 241 | 82% |
| Exact multiple of £5,000 | 198 | 67% |
| Exact multiple of £10,000 | 120 | 41% |
| Exact multiple of £25,000 | 51 | 17% |
| Exact multiple of £50,000 | 36 | 12% |
Source: Homecost analysis of 754,631 HM Land Registry category-A (arm's-length, market-value) residential sales completed in 2025, filtered to detached, semi-detached, terraced and flat property types across 295 English local authorities. Fetched 2026-09-18. See more from Homecost's market data desk.
None of this should be surprising at the £1,000 level — UK house prices are almost always agreed in round thousands, so a median built from two such prices will nearly always land on one too. What is more striking is how far the pattern holds as the round numbers get bigger. A £50,000 exact match is not a rounding artefact; it means a genuine concentration of sales actually completed at that specific price in that authority during the year.
Why a median lands exactly on a price at all
A median is the middle value of a sorted list. Where an authority recorded an odd number of qualifying sales, the median is one actual transaction price. Where it recorded an even number — the more common case here — the median is the average of the two middle-ranked sales. When those two middle sales happen to share an identical price, which they often do at popular round figures, the average is that same figure exactly, with no fractional pence to round away.
In practical terms, a local authority median of exactly £350,000 means the market's middle ground in that area in 2025 was thick with sales at £350,000 specifically — not that the underlying figure has been rounded for presentation.
Nine places, nine numbers
The clustering is not limited to £200,000. Filtering for medians shared by four or more authorities turns up nine distinct clusters, spread across every region of England:
| 2025 median | Local authorities sharing it |
|---|---|
| £550,000 | Brent, Harrow, Kingston upon Thames, Merton |
| £350,000 | Bristol, Reading, Milton Keynes, Bedford, Arun, Crawley, Worthing |
| £345,000 | Southend-on-Sea, Dorset, East Cambridgeshire, Eastleigh, Canterbury, Stevenage |
| £330,000 | East Devon, Colchester, Stroud, Harborough, Solihull |
| £300,000 | Cheshire East, West Northamptonshire, Exeter, Teignbridge, North Norfolk, South Norfolk |
| £260,000 | Southampton, South Derbyshire, South Kesteven, Stafford, Redditch, Worcester, Wyre Forest |
| £235,000 | Fenland, Amber Valley, South Holland, West Lindsey, Norwich, Ipswich |
| £220,000 | Derby, Wirral, North Tyneside, Sandwell, Wolverhampton, Sheffield |
| £200,000 | Nottingham, Chesterfield, Ashfield, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Wigan, Knowsley |
The four outer-London boroughs at £550,000 make geographic sense as a shared commuter-belt price band. Most of the other clusters cut across regions with no obvious link: the £330,000 group pairs a Devon coastal district with a West Midlands metropolitan borough and a Gloucestershire district. What unites them is not geography but the fact that £330,000, like £200,000 or £350,000, is simply a price point buyers and sellers gravitate towards.
Is this about stamp duty?
Round-number bunching in individual sale prices around Stamp Duty Land Tax thresholds is well documented. Homecost's own analysis of Welsh Land Transaction Tax bunching found spikes at both real tax boundaries and at nearby round numbers with no tax relevance at all, and concluded the round-number effect on its own can largely explain an apparent threshold spike. The same caution applies here.
Of the nine clusters above, only two sit on an actual England stamp duty boundary. £250,000 — held by Broxtowe and Tamworth, just below the four-authority cut-off used for the main table — is where the standard 2% band gives way to 5%. £300,000 is where first-time buyer relief's nil-rate band ends and a 5% rate begins on the next £200,000 (HMRC, Stamp Duty Land Tax rates). The remaining seven clusters — £200,000, £220,000, £235,000, £260,000, £330,000, £345,000 and £550,000 — have no statutory significance in England's SDLT schedule at all. They are round numbers because round numbers are how homes get priced, not because of the tax system. Homecost's analysis of surcharge costs at round-number price points found a related pattern when testing where additional-property surcharge bills cross clean-looking thresholds.
What this means for comparing areas
None of this changes what any individual buyer would pay — a £5,000 or £10,000 landing on the area-wide median doesn't affect a specific sale price, mortgage or stamp duty bill, all of which are set by the actual price agreed on a specific property. Two areas sharing an identical median, like Nottingham and Wigan at £200,000, can still have very different council tax bills, EPC profiles or property-type mixes underneath that headline number. A median is a summary of the middle of the market, not a description of every home within it — for a fuller picture of how far a single figure can mislead, see Homecost's work on the gap between median and mean house prices in major UK cities.
Homecost's postcode tool breaks a single area's figures down to street level rather than a borough-wide median. Searching NG1 1AA in Nottingham, one of the six authorities at the £200,000 mark, shows the individual sale prices, EPC ratings and stamp duty position behind that headline number.
This is general information about aggregate market data, not advice on the value or suitability of any individual property. Speak to a qualified adviser before making a buying decision.