London house prices, borough by borough: is yours falling?

The headline: London prices didn't crash. They stopped.

Median prices track whatever happened to sell that year — a cheap year looks like a crash, an expensive year looks like a boom. Price per square metre measures the substance. 84% of London's register sales matched to an EPC floor area.

• +28.6% then zero: the London square metre rose from £5,181 (2015) to £6,664 (2022) — then moved +0.6% in three years (£6,605, £6,620, £6,624).
• 2026 is the first real dip: −3.9% (£6,624 → £6,364). That's the whole cash "crash" — the medians' −5% headline is mostly cheaper homes doing more of the selling.
• Inflation is the real crash. Prices flat in cash since 2022 with ~20% inflation = roughly a fifth of real value gone, silently. No chart of nominal prices will ever show it.
• Flats stalled first and longest: £6,787/m² in 2017, £6,639/m² now — −2.2% over nine years, cash. Terraced did the decade's work: +40.2% (£4,639 → £6,502 by 2025).

Why every headline says "crash" and the square metre says "stop"

What the medians say — and why they mislead

Median sold price by year: flats cheaper than in 2018, houses at records. True as far as it goes — but compare it with the square metre above to see how much is mix.

2026 is year-to-date; the register lags completions by weeks to months, so the newest points always firm up slightly late.

Every borough: the median verdict vs the square-metre verdict

Peak = best calendar-year median since 2015; last 12 months = July 2025 – June 2026 (fully registered); sorted by median fall. The last two columns are the same test run on the square metre — where the two percentages disagree, the difference is mix, not value. Every borough name opens the map there — see what's actually for sale before the register catches up.

Read the two percentage columns together: Hammersmith's median is −16.3% but its square metre only −5.5% — two-thirds of that "crash" is mix. Tower Hamlets (−14.2%), Westminster (−19.3%) and K&C (−13.0%) are falling for real. Waltham Forest is the only borough at a square-metre record (+2.0%). Outside prime, almost every borough sits within 3% of its £/m² peak: stopped, not fallen. (The City of London — too few sales for this table — is the biggest faller of all: −31% per m² since 2018.) Cash prices; adjust for inflation and everything here is falling in real terms.

Borough spotlight: Hammersmith & Fulham

The pattern of the falling boroughs in one picture: the top end breaks first, the middle follows, volumes stay normal.

• Down 22% from peak: median £836k in 2023 → £650k so far in 2026.
• The fall is top-down: the 75th-percentile price collapsed from £1.39m (2024) to £940k (2026) — −32% — while the cheaper quartile fell 13%. Expensive homes broke first.
• Flats: a lost decade. Median flat £570k this year vs £615k in 2015 — less, in cash, than eleven years ago.
• New builds price like another market: £1.08m median (301 sales, riverside towers) vs £700k for existing homes.
• Volumes are normal (~2,300 sales/yr) — this is repricing, not a frozen market.

The price per square metre — the honest measure

Medians hide what's selling. So we matched every sale to its Energy Performance Certificate (73% matched) and priced the square metre itself. It tells a different story.

• A square metre of Hammersmith has cost ~£10,000 for eleven years: £9,853 in 2015 → £9,337 now, −5.2% in cash. Adjust for inflation and the borough quietly lost roughly a third of its real value while the headlines said "stable".
• The 2026 fall is real but a third the size the medians shout: £/m² −7.8% from 2024 (£10,125 → £9,337) vs −21% on the raw median. The gap is composition — smaller, cheaper homes doing more of the selling.
• Like-for-like confirms it isn't a mix trick: flats-only £/m² is −13.3% from its 2017 peak (£10,455 → £9,063); terraced-only rose +8.9% to 2025 (£9,759 → £10,625), then fell −7.8% this year. Same borough, same type, same unit — both series tell the same story.
• Homes over 100m² inverted the usual rule: small homes normally cost more per square metre; since 2021, big H&F homes command the premium (£10,481 vs £9,667 in 2025) — family-house scarcity in numbers. Small homes' £/m² is −10.5% from its 2017 peak.
• Both sizes cracked in 2026 — big −7.4%, small −4.5% — genuine repricing, not composition.

Borough spotlight: Kensington & Chelsea — where the crash is real

The perfect test case: London's hardest-falling median, put through the square-metre check. Hammersmith's fall was mostly mix. K&C's isn't.

• The square metre confirms a real crash: −17.6% from the 2022 level (£15,777 → £13,000), and the peak was all the way back in 2016 (£15,917). K&C has been falling in slow motion for a decade — add inflation and roughly 40% of its real value is gone since 2016.
• But the −33% median headline is still half mix: the median swung from +21% (2018) to −19% (2026) as the expensive end traded, then stopped trading. The square metre never boomed in between — it just slid. Watch the two lines above diverge and reconverge: that gap is the mood, not the value.
• Like-for-like agrees: flats-only £/m² −20.3% from its 2016 peak (£15,449 → £12,319); terraced-only −12.8% from 2022 (£19,824 → £17,284). Every cut of the data falls.
• 2026 is the worst single year yet: £/m² −9.5% versus 2025 (£14,370 → £13,000). The slow crash is accelerating, not bottoming.

Area spotlight: Peckham (SE15)

Not falling like prime, not rising like the outer east — Peckham is two markets wearing one postcode.

• The houses gentrified, the flats didn't. Terraced homes are up 40% on the decade (£640k → a £895k peak in 2024); flats sold this year at £395k — BELOW their 2017 level of £425k.
• The top end is still setting records: the 75th-percentile price hit £825k in 2026, the highest in the series, and Peckham now has £2.71m house sales (41 Lyndhurst Way, SE15, Dec 2025).
• The overall median has been flat since 2020 (£520–540k) — an average of one half rerating and the other half stuck.

The proof, per square metre

"The houses drove it" is a claim until you price the square metre. Here it is, like-for-like:

• Confirmed — the houses did it: a terraced square metre is up 40.3% since 2015 (£5,968 → £8,374 in 2025, holding £8,205 this year). A flat square metre rose +29% to 2017 (£7,188) and has gone nowhere for nine years — £6,528 now, −9.2% below that 2017 peak.
• The convergence stat: in 2015 a Peckham terraced square metre cost 40% of a Kensington flat's. Today it costs 67%. One went up while the other crashed — the gap between "emerging" and "prime" London has never been thinner in the register.

What's driving the record boroughs? Houses. Not flats, not new-builds.

Medians by property type in the four strongest boroughs, 2019 vs the last 12 months. New-builds are only 3% or less of sales there — this is existing family houses repricing.

Flats moved +1% to +5% even in the record boroughs (Redbridge's +15% is the lone exception, off a low base). London's real split isn't just inner vs outer — it's houses vs flats.

You've seen the data. Now go see the homes.

Everything above is history — sold, registered, done. The map is what's for sale today, video-first, no gatekeeping. Start where the story is:

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