Cardiff vs Swansea vs Newport: cost to buy and run a home in 2026

The three big South Wales cities do not line up the way you might expect. Cardiff is the most expensive of the three to buy a home in — but the cheapest to run. Swansea is the cheapest to buy, yet carries the highest annual council tax bill. Newport sits in the middle on both counts.

Using HM Land Registry sale records for 2025 and published 2026-27 council tax rates, here is how the cost of ownership splits across the three cities. All figures were pulled on 24 June 2026.

The headline: median sale prices

The figures below are median sale prices for standard residential transactions (detached, semi-detached, terraced and flats) completed during 2025, drawn from HM Land Registry Price Paid Data and filtered to each city's local authority.

Cardiff is roughly £63,000 dearer than Swansea at the median — about 30% more — with Newport between them. The three cities also differ in shape: Cardiff is a terrace-led market, while semi-detached houses were the single largest type sold in both Newport and Swansea.

For a deeper district-by-district breakdown, see the individual guides to the average house price in Cardiff, Swansea's housing market and Newport house prices.

What you pay to buy: Land Transaction Tax

Wales replaced Stamp Duty with Land Transaction Tax (LTT) in April 2018. LTT is collected by the Welsh Revenue Authority and uses different thresholds: there is no tax on the first £225,000 of a main-residence purchase, then 6% on the slice from £225,000 to £400,000, and higher rates above that (Welsh Revenue Authority, 2026). Wales has no first-time buyer relief — instead it offers a higher universal nil-rate band.

At each city's median price, the LTT bill for someone buying a main home looks like this:

Swansea's median sits below the £225,000 nil-rate threshold, so a buyer at the typical Swansea price pays no Land Transaction Tax at all. Newport's median is only just over the threshold, so the bill is small. Cardiff, the dearest of the three, carries the largest LTT charge — though at 1.00% it is still modest.

How this compares with England

Because all three medians fall below £350,000, buyers here pay less transaction tax than they would on an identically priced home in England. That £350,000 figure is exact: it is the price at which Welsh LTT and English Stamp Duty produce the same bill for a mover — both £7,500. Below it, Wales is cheaper; above it, England is.

For more on how the £350,000 crossover works and how the two regimes diverge above it, see our guide to the cost of relocating across the England–Wales border, and the wider explainer on how Land Transaction Tax compares with Stamp Duty and Scotland's LBTT.

What you pay to run: council tax

This is where the ranking flips. Council tax in Wales is set by each authority and charged on nine bands (A–I) based on 2003 valuations. Band D is the standard reference point. For 2026-27 (gov.wales):

All three sit comfortably below the Welsh average of £2,283. But the order is the reverse of the purchase-price ranking: Cardiff, the dearest city to buy in, has the lowest council tax in the whole of Wales, while Swansea — the cheapest to buy — has the highest Band D of the three. The gap between Cardiff and Swansea is £225 a year, or about £19 a month, every year of ownership.

The reason is structural. Council tax tracks each authority's budget and tax base, not current house prices, and the bands are frozen on decades-old valuations. A city with a large commercial tax base and a bigger population to spread costs across — as Cardiff has — can set a lower Band D than a smaller authority, regardless of what homes there sell for.

The all-in monthly picture

Putting the two together: at the Bank of England's average quoted rate for a 75% loan-to-value five-year fix (4.32% in April 2026), a 25-year repayment mortgage on 75% of each city's median price, plus council tax at Band D, gives an approximate monthly figure. Your own rate will depend on your lender, deposit and credit profile.

On the all-in monthly cost — the number that actually lands in a household budget — Cardiff is about £239 a month dearer than Swansea, with Newport in between. The mortgage gap drives most of that, but the council tax line partly offsets it: Swansea's higher Band D claws back roughly £18 a month of its lower purchase price. This excludes energy, buildings insurance and maintenance, which vary property by property.

Energy: the running-cost wildcard

Monthly running cost is not just council tax. Energy efficiency varies sharply between the three cities, and that feeds directly into bills. Looking at the full set of domestic Energy Performance Certificates on record for each authority, the share rated C or above (the more efficient end of the A–G scale) is:

Newport has the greenest housing stock of the three — a reflection of newer building, including the Glan Llyn urban village on the former Llanwern steelworks site and other M4-corridor schemes. Swansea's older stock skews toward lower bands. A note of caution: the modelled annual running cost printed on an EPC is anchored to the assessor's price assumptions at inspection and can differ substantially from a real 2026 bill — the band is a more reliable guide than the pounds figure.

Prices in context

The most recent UK House Price Index release (covering March 2026, ONS) shows all three city indices higher than a year earlier. Newport led at +5.3% year-on-year, ahead of the Wales-wide +2.9%, while Cardiff (+1.2%) and Swansea (+1.4%) rose more gently. These are published index movements, not a prediction of where prices go next.

The pattern, in one line

There is no clean "cheap city, expensive city" story across South Wales. Cardiff is dearest to buy but cheapest to run; Swansea is cheapest to buy but dearest to run; Newport is the middle child on both axes. Which city is "cheapest" depends entirely on whether you are weighing the day-one cost of buying or the year-after-year cost of living there.

See the numbers for a specific street

The tables above use city-wide medians. The real cost of any individual home depends on its exact price, council tax band and energy rating. You can see the true cost of any Cardiff street — or any postcode in Newport (try NP20 5EX) or Swansea (SA1 6RF) — by entering it into the Homecost tool, which combines the mortgage at today's rate, the council tax band and the energy profile into a single monthly figure.

For more city-by-city analysis, browse our regional price guides. This comparison is based on HM Land Registry Price Paid Data (2025 transactions), gov.wales 2026-27 council tax levels and Bank of England quoted rates; the underlying figures behind every Homecost guide are summarised on the blog index.

This article is general information, not financial, tax or legal advice. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and rules can change. Speak to a qualified adviser before acting.