London flat vs house: the price gap by borough (2026)

In 2025 the median London flat changed hands for £440,000. The median London house — detached, semi-detached or terraced — sold for £625,000. That is a gap of £185,000, or 42%, measured across 78,876 standard residential sales recorded by HM Land Registry across the capital's 33 boroughs (data retrieved 28 June 2026).

But that capital-wide headline hides an enormous spread. In Kensington and Chelsea the median house sold for 3.3 times the median flat. In Newham, a few miles east, the multiple was just 1.14. The table below ranks every borough with enough sales to measure, and the rest of this guide explains why the gap is so wide in some places and almost closed in others.

The capital-wide picture

Flats and houses sell in almost equal numbers in London — the only major UK city where flats are not a minority of the market. Across the capital a flat costs roughly 70p for every £1 a house costs. The figures are medians of HM Land Registry "category A" standard residential sales for the 2025 calendar year, so they describe what was actually paid, not an estimate of any individual property's value.

For the all-stock picture — every property type, every borough — see our average house prices across London's 33 boroughs guide. This guide isolates a single question: how much more does a typical house cost than a typical flat, and where is that gap biggest?

The flat-to-house price gap, ranked by borough

The City of London is excluded: only one house sold there in 2025, too few to produce a meaningful median (its flat median was £780,000). "House" combines detached, semi-detached and terraced sales; "flat" includes maisonettes. Source: HM Land Registry Price Paid Data, category A, 2025.

Where the gap is widest: prime inner London

The top of the table is a clean run of prime inner boroughs. In Kensington and Chelsea, the median house (£3.1m) cost £2.16m more than the median flat (£940,000) — the widest absolute and proportional gap in the capital. Westminster (3.20×) and Camden (2.94×) follow closely; the Camden median house landed at a fraction under £2m.

Grouped by the statutory classification, the 12 inner London boroughs cluster around a 2.3× multiple, while the 20 outer boroughs sit closer to 1.7×. The pattern is consistent: the closer to the centre, the larger the premium a house commands over a flat.

Where it is narrowest: the eastern boroughs

At the other end, Newham stands out. Its median flat (£422,000) and median house (£480,000) are only £58,000 apart — a 1.14× multiple, by far the tightest in London. Greenwich (1.35×), Hounslow (1.52×) and Brent (1.53×) are the next narrowest. In these boroughs a buyer choosing between a flat and a house faces a far smaller price step than in the prime west.

Why the multiple varies so much — it is the stock, not a pricing rule

The temptation is to read a 3.3× multiple as "a house is worth three times a flat." It is not that. The gap is a composition effect — a story about what kind of flats and what kind of houses each borough actually contains.

In prime inner boroughs, the "house" category is dominated by large period townhouses and the occasional detached mansion, while the "flat" category is full of modest one- and two-bedroom conversions and apartments. The median house is therefore a fundamentally larger and rarer asset than the median flat, and the ratio balloons. The same boroughs are where inner London's flat market is busiest and most leasehold-heavy.

In the eastern boroughs the housing stock is more uniform. Newham's flats are largely newer apartments around the Royal Docks and Stratford regeneration zones, while its houses are mostly modest Victorian and inter-war terraces — two property types that sit close together in size and price, so the medians converge. None of this says any single flat is "worth" a set fraction of any single house; it reflects the mix of homes on the market in each borough.

This is the local-detail version of a national pattern. For the underlying cost differences that follow you from any flat to any house — ground rent, service charges, maintenance and more — see our guide to the full cost difference between a flat and a house.

What the gap means for the monthly cost

The £185,000 capital-wide price gap does not stay still once a mortgage and stamp duty are added. At the current Bank of England quoted 75% loan-to-value five-year fixed rate of 4.32% (April 2026), a 25-year repayment mortgage with a 25% deposit works out at approximately:

The house carries roughly £757 more a month in mortgage cost and £9,250 more in stamp duty than the flat. These are illustrative figures at one rate and one deposit size; an actual rate depends on the lender, deposit, term and credit profile, and stamp duty depends on whether a buyer is a first-time buyer or owns another property. This is general information, not advice — speak to a qualified adviser before acting.

Council tax does not follow the price

One London quirk worth flagging: the borough with the most expensive houses also has some of the cheapest council tax. Kensington and Chelsea's 2026-27 Band D is £1,666.65 and Westminster's is just £1,049.55 — the lowest in England — while many outer boroughs with far cheaper homes charge well over £2,000. We unpack that inversion in the cheapest and most expensive council tax areas in England.

See the numbers for any London street

Borough medians describe the market; they cannot tell you what was paid on a specific road. Homecost can. Type a postcode to see the recorded sale prices, energy ratings and full running cost for every property on it — from a prime flat block in Kensington (W8 6NB) to a regeneration apartment in Newham's Royal Docks (E16 4EE). Browse more local data in our regional price guides.

Based on 78,876 London Land Registry transactions recorded for 2025. See how Homecost is built on open data.