House price statistics for small areas in England and Wales: year ending December 2020

• The median price paid for residential properties in Lower-layer Super Output Areas (LSOAs) in England ranged from £24,000 (within Hartlepool) to £5,800,000 (within Westminster) in the year ending December 2020.

• The median price paid for residential properties in LSOAs in Wales ranged from £46,250 (within Rhondda Cynon Taf) to £600,000 (within Cardiff) in the year ending December 2020.

• The number of residential property sales in England fell by 21.7% to 619,518 between the year ending December 2019 and the year ending December 2020; the number of residential property sales in Wales fell by 28.7% to 32,469 over the same period.

In the year ending December 2020, the median price paid for residential properties in Lower-layer Super Output Areas (LSOAs) in England ranged from £24,000 (within Hartlepool) to £5,800,000 (within Westminster). Last year, the most expensive LSOA, based on median price paid, was in Westminster.

In the year ending December 2020, the median price paid for residential properties in LSOAs in Wales ranged from £46,250 (within Rhondda Cynon Taf) to £600,000 (within Cardiff). Last year, the most expensive LSOA, based on median price paid, was in Cardiff.

Figure 1 maps the geographic distribution of house prices across LSOAs in England and Wales in the year ending December 2020.

Figure 1: Median price paid for all dwellings by Lower-layer Super Output Area

England and Wales, year ending December 2020

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There were more LSOAs in which the median price paid was £1 million or more in the year ending December 2020 than in the previous year (420 LSOAs, up from 332). Out of the 420 LSOAs in which the median price paid was £1 million or more, 333 were in London (this represents 6.9% of London’s LSOAs).

The number of residential property transactions recorded by HM Land Registry in England and Wales fell by 22.1% to 651,987 in the year ending December 2020, from 836,762 in the previous year. This was the fourth consecutive year in which the number of property transactions decreased, and is the lowest number of sales since the year ending December 2009, when 624,476 property transactions took place. The decrease in residential property transactions reflects the advice to not move house during the tightest movement restrictions as a result of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

The number of residential property transactions in England fell by 21.7% to 619,518 while in Wales, the number fell by 28.7% to 32,469.

Flats and maisonettes saw the largest percentage decrease, with 31.0% less transactions.

Some regions saw the number of transactions in the year ending December 2020 fall below the level seen in the year ending December 2009, following the economic downturn.

The nominal total housing market value in England and Wales was £211.1 billion in the year ending December 2020; a decrease of £41.4 billion (16.4%) on the previous year. It is also 24.3% less than the highest level of housing market value, which was in the year ending December 2007. London contributed the most to the decrease in nominal total housing market value, decreasing by £7.8 billion.

In the year ending December 2020, the East of England had the highest housing market value relative to the peak in 2007 (with an index of 81.4). The North East had the lowest housing market value relative to the peak in 2007 (with an index of 57.8).

Lower-layer Super Output Area (LSOA)

A Lower-layer Super Output Area (LSOA) is a geographic hierarchy designed to improve the reporting of small area statistics in England and Wales. There are 34,753 LSOAs in England and Wales, each containing between 400 and 1,200 households. More information can be found by visiting the Census geography page.

Housing market value

The housing market value refers to the total value of residential property transactions in an area. It is determined by a combination of property prices and the number of property transactions. This can be used to provide an overview of the scale of the property transaction economy.

Nominal housing market value

The nominal market value refers to housing market value statistics that have not been adjusted to take account of price inflation. They therefore present the simple total transactional value of all property sales.

Index

An index is a statistical measure of change in a variable, for example, housing market value over time.

Data collection

The house price statistics for small areas (HPSSAs) use data from HM Land Registry to provide statistics on the price paid and number of residential property transactions for properties that were sold in England and Wales. Properties sold at a discount to the market level, such as properties sold under the Right to Buy scheme, are not included in these statistics.

HPSSAs are updated quarterly, adding a new 12-month period to the data. The use of rolling annual data removes seasonal effects (that is, peaks and troughs in property transactions at particular times of the year) and reduces the impact of registration lag (that is, where transactions are registered by HM Land Registry sometime after the date on which they are completed).

Differences to other house price statistics

There are two sets of official statistics for house prices. In addition to these HPSSAs, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) also produces the UK House Price Index (UK HPI). The HPSSAs measure the number of property transactions and the price paid for properties sold in a given period, whereas the UK HPI provides a measure of the changing value of properties in the housing market. The differences and uses of these outputs are explained in more detail in Section 5 of the House price statistics for small areas Quality and Methodology Information (QMI) report.

Quality

More quality and methodology information on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses, and how the data were created is available in the House price statistics for small areas QMI.

Proposed changes

The House Price Statistics for Small Areas provide annual statistics that are updated quarterly. We are considering changing this to a single, annual publication where we provide data for the year. For example, instead of having "year ending March 2020", "year ending June 2020", "year ending September 2020" and "year ending December 2020" we would only publish "year ending December 2020" to cover the whole of 2020. Before we make this change, we would like feedback on this from our users. If you have any feedback about this proposed change, please contact hpi@ons.gov.uk.

Detailed geographic coverage

The smallest areas for which statistics are presented are Lower-layer Super Output Areas (LSOAs), of which there are 34,753 in England and Wales, each containing around 600 households. More detailed statistics are presented for other geographies including Middle-layer Super Output Areas (MSOAs). There are 7,201 MSOAs in England and Wales, each containing around 3,000 households. Statistics for these Super Output Areas (SOAs) therefore provide a detailed geographic understanding of the number of and price paid for properties that were sold at market value.

Use of the time series

With each quarterly publication, we revise the entire time series of house price statistics for small areas (HPSSAs) back to the year ending December 1995. This is to reflect the fact that HM Land Registry can make amendments to the historical underlying data used to produce these statistics. The data in this release should be used rather than all previously published HPSSA data. This is to ensure that residential property transactions added to or edited in the HM Land Registry Price Paid Data are included, especially in more recent periods to which changes are more likely to relate. If a geography change is made, the entire series reflects the new structure, avoiding geographic breaks in the time series.