Sheffield's typical home sold for £220,000 in 2025, Nottingham's for £200,000 — a 9.1% gap that looks like a simple "Sheffield costs more" story. It isn't. Pulled apart by property type, that gap swings from zero to 21.3% depending on what you're buying, based on 9,398 category-A Land Registry sales recorded across the two cities in 2025.
The headline number hides four different stories
Sheffield (metropolitan borough) and Nottingham (unitary authority) are both core cities with deep, comparably sized housing markets — big enough samples that the by-type split below is a genuine market signal, not noise.
| Property type | Sheffield median | Nottingham median | Gap (Nottingham vs Sheffield) | Sheffield share of sales | Nottingham share of sales |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All types | £220,000 | £200,000 | −9.1% | 100% | 100% |
| Detached | £375,000 | £295,000 | −21.3% | 15.6% | 18.0% |
| Semi-detached | £225,000 | £215,000 | −4.4% | 39.5% | 34.4% |
| Terraced | £192,000 | £175,000 | −8.9% | 31.8% | 35.2% |
| Flat | £140,000 | £140,000 | 0.0% | 13.0% | 12.4% |
Source: HM Land Registry Price Paid Data, 2025 category-A sales, median price by property type.
Where the gap vanishes: flats
The flat market is the outlier. £140,000 was the median flat sale in both cities in 2025 — not approximately the same figure, the identical one. A leasehold flat at 58 Oakdale Road, S7 1SL in Sheffield sold for £140,000 in August 2025; a leasehold flat at 23 Blyth Street, NG3 5HP in Nottingham sold for the same £140,000 in July 2025. Flats also make up a near-identical share of each city's sales (13.0% in Sheffield, 12.4% in Nottingham), so this isn't a case of one city selling far more flats at a depressed price — the two flat markets are comparable in size and land on the same number.
Where it's widest: detached houses
Detached houses tell the opposite story. Sheffield's detached median (£375,000) sits 21.3% above Nottingham's (£295,000) — more than double the headline all-type gap. This isn't a new-build effect skewing one city's figures: new-build sales make up only 5.4% of Sheffield's 2025 detached transactions and 0.6% of Nottingham's, and excluding them barely moves either median. The gap sits in the existing housing stock itself — plausibly Sheffield's larger supply of detached homes in its western suburbs and Peak-fringe areas, against Nottingham's more compact city boundary with less room for large detached plots. Semi-detached and terraced homes sit in between, each diverging from the headline gap by only a few percentage points.
What this costs a buyer
Using HMRC's current Stamp Duty Land Tax rates, a home mover pays £1,900 at Sheffield's £220,000 all-type median versus £1,500 at Nottingham's £200,000. A first-time buyer owes £0 at either city's median, since both sit well under the £300,000 relief ceiling. Illustrative monthly cost at 75% loan-to-value over 25 years, using the Bank of England's quoted 5-year-fix rate of 4.32% (unchanged since April 2026): roughly £900/month at Sheffield's all-type median against £818/month at Nottingham's — but for a flat bought at either city's identical £140,000 median, the repayment is identical too, at £573/month, before council tax, energy and insurance.
Running costs cut the other way. Nottingham's Band D council tax for 2026-27 is £2,755.39, against Sheffield's £2,510.16 — Nottingham is cheaper to buy a typical home in but £245 a year more expensive to tax it, echoing the "cheap to buy, costly to run" pattern already found in Nottingham's own house price guide.
The same pattern, a different shape
A three-way type-mix comparison of Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester found all three cities' headline medians sitting within 5.9% of each other while individual property types diverged by up to 41.9%, driven largely by each city selling a different mix of property types (Manchester, for example, sells far more flats and far fewer detached homes than Birmingham or Leeds). Sheffield and Nottingham don't fit that mix-driven explanation as neatly. Their flat shares of sales are nearly identical (13.0% vs 12.4%), yet it's the flat segment — not a type with a bigger composition difference — where the two cities' prices converge exactly to the pound, while detached houses, which also make up a similar share of sales in both cities, show the widest split. A sales-mix difference doesn't fully explain Sheffield and Nottingham the way it explained Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester; here the divergence looks more like a genuine difference in the detached housing stock itself, not an artefact of what each city happens to sell more of.
For a fuller picture of either city on its own, see Homecost's Sheffield house price guide, or browse more Cost Intelligence coverage.
Figures are based on 9,398 Land Registry category-A residential transactions recorded in Sheffield and Nottingham in 2025, current council tax rates for 2026-27, and the Bank of England's quoted mortgage rate as of 1 April 2026. Property prices and running costs vary by individual address and circumstances — speak to a qualified adviser before acting on your own case.