Only 5 London Postcode Sectors Have a £300k-or-Less Median, 2026

Only five of London's 788 postcode sectors with enough 2025 sales to measure had a median sale price at or under £300,000, the ceiling below which an eligible first-time buyer pays no Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT). In all five, flats rather than houses set the median.

Across 84,850 house and flat sales recorded in Greater London in 2025 (HM Land Registry Price Paid Data), the median was £530,000. Just 8,938 of those sales, 10.5%, were at or under £300,000, and 8,221 of them (92%) were flats. Only 717 of London's 41,202 house sales (1.7%) came in that low.

The borough-level picture, where no London borough's median reaches the line, is in cheapest London boroughs for first-time buyers. This piece goes one step smaller, to postcode sectors.

The five sectors

A postcode sector is the outcode plus the first digit of the incode, so "CR0 2" is a neighbourhood-sized slice of the CR0 district. The table lists every London sector with at least 30 standard residential sales in 2025 whose median was at or under £300,000 (data fetched 24 September 2026).

Median sale prices from HM Land Registry Price Paid Data: standard-price-paid sales of detached, semi-detached and terraced houses and flats in Greater London, 1 January to 31 December 2025. RM1 2 sits exactly on the £300,000 line.

Every 2025 sale in SE18 5, RM1 3, CR0 2 and RM1 2 was in a single borough. In IG11 8, 50 of the 52 sales were in Barking and Dagenham and two were in neighbouring Redbridge.

What the medians hide

The five medians are not a picture of houses. Flats made up 248 of the 376 sales across the five sectors (66%), 247 of those 248 flats were leasehold, and none of the 376 sales is recorded as a new build.

"House" means detached, semi-detached and terraced. The house samples in IG11 8, RM1 3 and SE18 5 are small, so those medians are indicative only.

In every one of the five, the house median is above £300,000, from £382,500 in CR0 2 to £535,000 in RM1 3. The sector medians fall to the line because flats form 55% to 85% of the sales mix and sold for £210,000 to £255,100.

London as a whole gives the yardstick. The 2025 London flat median was £442,000 (43,648 sales) and the house median £628,507 (41,202 sales). Flats in the five sectors sold for 42% to 52% below the London flat median; houses sold for 15% to 39% below the London house median. In RM1 2 the flat share (54.5%) is barely above London's 51.4%, so it is the flat price level rather than the mix that puts its median on the line.

What an eligible first-time buyer would owe at those prices

In England, first-time buyer relief charges 0% on the first £300,000 and 5% on the portion from £300,001 to £500,000, with no relief at all above £500,000. It applies only where everyone buying is a first-time buyer and the property will be their main home (HMRC, 2026). The figures below apply those rates through the Homecost stamp duty calculator.

The standard-rate column is the tax on the same price for a buyer who does not qualify for the relief and is not buying an additional property. Band D figures are MHCLG council tax levels for 2026-27.

For scale, a 10% deposit at the sector medians would be £25,000 (IG11 8) to £30,000 (RM1 2), against £53,000 at the London-wide median; lenders set their own deposit requirements.

Just above the line the bill builds gradually, at 5% of the slice over £300,000. At £312,500, the median in SM6 0 (Wallington, in Sutton), an eligible first-time buyer would owe £625. At £320,000, the median in CR0 9 (Croydon), the figure is £1,000, and at £350,000 it is £2,500. Fifteen London sectors have a median between £300,001 and £350,000, so the five sit at the head of a much longer list of sectors just beyond the line.

Council tax follows a different logic. Band D is a benchmark, not what any particular home pays: the bill depends on the band the home was placed in at the 1991 valuation, and Band A is by law two-thirds of Band D (Local Government Finance Act 1992). On the benchmark, Barking and Dagenham (£2,198.51) and Greenwich (£2,107.86) sit below the £2,410.97 mean across 296 English authorities, while Havering (£2,424.66) and Croydon (£2,599.91) sit above it, Croydon by £188.94 a year. For how the two costs compare across the capital, see first-time buyer stamp duty in years of council tax across London's 33 boroughs.

How thin the list is

Of the 982 London sectors with at least one sale in 2025, 788 had 30 or more. The table counts how many of those 788 had a median at or under each figure.

£300,000 and £500,000 are the current nil-rate ceiling and relief cut-off. £425,000 was the nil-rate ceiling until 31 March 2025 (HMRC); it is included to show how much narrower the current test is when applied to the same 2025 sales. Three further sectors with 10 to 29 sales also had medians at or under £300,000. They are left out because a median from so few sales moves too easily. How the relief tapers between £300,000 and £500,000 is set out in first-time buyer relief between £300,000 and £500,000.

Flats widen the list, but not by much

Since flats drive the low medians, a flat-only median is the fairer test of that market. Of 509 London sectors with at least 30 flat sales in 2025, 53 (10.4%) had a flat median at or under £300,000, and nine had one at or under £250,000. Sectors in Croydon account for 15 of the 53, Bexley for 6, and Sutton and Havering for 5 each.

In the five sectors above, 247 of the 248 flats sold were leasehold, so service charges, ground rent and the length of the lease sit outside the price data. Freehold and leasehold explained covers what those add. For how far London flats and houses sit apart borough by borough, see the London flat-versus-house price gap.

How stable is the list?

Sectors close to £300,000 move in and out of the group. Seven sectors met the test in 2024, and three of them (IG11 8, RM1 2 and RM1 3) meet it again in 2025. CR0 2, the largest sample of the five, had a median of £304,000 across 170 sales in 2024 and £294,500 across 172 in 2025.

The 2025 total also straddles the rule change. March 2025 alone accounted for 16,529 London sales, against roughly 5,000 to 7,500 in most other months, ahead of the 1 April 2025 change from the £425,000 ceiling (April itself recorded 2,736). Restricting the count to sales from 1 April to 31 December 2025, four of 723 sectors had a median at or under £300,000: IG11 8 (£250,000, 37 sales), RM1 2 (£268,000, 55) and CR0 2 (£290,000, 116), all from the full-year list, plus N9 0 in Enfield (£292,500, 32 sales), whose median across all 49 sales in the year was £360,000. RM1 3 (28 sales) and SE18 5 (21) fall below the 30-sale floor in that window, with medians of £210,000 and £281,500.

What the data cannot show

HM Land Registry records the price paid, not who bought. The data cannot show how many first-time buyers bought in these sectors or whether any claimed relief. The medians describe completed sales in 2025, not asking prices or what is on the market now, and they are not valuations of any property. Counts in the Land Registry file also rise slightly as late registrations are added, so figures fetched on other dates can differ marginally.

Whether relief applies depends on the buyers' circumstances, and a conveyancer confirms it at completion. This is general information, not advice. Speak to a qualified adviser before acting.

Check a postcode yourself

Homecost shows what was paid on individual streets and the all-in monthly cost of a postcode. Try CR0 2AB in Croydon, IG11 8AA in Barking or RM1 2AB in Romford.

For the wider picture, see the cheapest postcodes in England for first-time buyers, the same sector-level approach in Birmingham's first-time buyer foothold sectors, the true cost of buying a £300k home, and how much deposit you need. More area guides are in Regional Prices.

Based on 84,850 HM Land Registry transactions in Greater London in 2025 and 2026-27 council tax Band D for 296 English authorities. Data sources for every guide are listed on the Homecost blog.