How to find what a house sold for
When a home in England or Wales changes hands for money, the sale is registered with HM Land Registry. The price, the date and the address then go into a public record called Price Paid Data. That record goes back to January 1995.
This means you can look up what almost any house or flat sold for, free of charge. You only need the address or the postcode. This guide explains where to look, what you will see and why a recent sale might not show up yet.
Where sold prices come from
Sold prices come from the transfer deed that is sent to HM Land Registry after a sale completes. The deed states the price paid. HM Land Registry adds the sale to Price Paid Data and publishes new records every month under the Open Government Licence, so anyone can use them.
The record covers residential sales in England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own land registers, so their sales are not in this data.
These are completed sales. They are not asking prices from property portals and they are not valuations. The figure is what the buyer actually paid on the day the sale completed.
What a sold price record shows
Each record is one sale. It shows the price, the date the sale completed and the full address, including the flat number where there is one. It also shows the type of property (detached, semi-detached, terraced, flat or other), whether it was newly built, and whether it was sold as freehold or leasehold.
It does not show the number of bedrooms, the floor area, the condition of the property or who bought it. Two sales on the same street can be very different homes, so read a single price with that in mind. Our guide to what the Land Registry price data includes goes through every field.
Checklist
- Have the full address or postcode ready
- Check the date of each sale, not just the price
- Compare like with like: same property type, similar size
- Note whether a sale was a new build
- Allow two to eight weeks for a recent sale to appear
- Look at several nearby sales, not just one
Looking up a single address
If you want the price for one particular home, search by its address. HM Land Registry offers a free search on GOV.UK for sold prices in England and Wales. Enter the postcode or street and you will see the sales recorded there, with the newest first.
If a home has sold more than once since 1995, each sale appears as its own record. That lets you see what it sold for each time, which is a simple way to see how its price has moved over the years.
Looking at a whole street or postcode
Often the more useful question is not what one house sold for but what homes nearby are selling for. For that, look at all the sales on a street or in a postcode district over the last year or so.
A typical price for an area is best shown as a median: the middle price when all the sales are lined up from cheapest to dearest. One very large or very cheap sale cannot drag it far. Our guide to average and median house prices explains the difference, and comparing streets and postcodes covers how to compare areas fairly.
Why a recent sale may be missing
A sale does not appear on the day it completes. The buyer's conveyancer has to send the paperwork to HM Land Registry, and the sale has to be registered before it is published. This usually takes from two to eight weeks, and sometimes longer.
So if you know a house sold last month, it may not show yet. Check again after the next monthly release. Our guide on why sold prices take months to appear explains the timing in full.
A small number of sales never appear at all. Transfers that were not a sale for money, such as gifts or a transfer between partners on divorce, are left out. So are right to buy sales at a discount.
Reading the price in context
A sold price tells you what one buyer paid on one date. It is a fact, but it needs context before you rely on it. Check the date: a sale from several years ago reflects the market at the time. Check the property type: a flat and a detached house on the same street are not comparable. Check whether it was a new build, as new homes often sell at different prices from older ones nearby.
As an example, if a terraced house on your street sold for £300,000 two years ago, and three similar terraced houses nearby have sold for around £320,000 this year, the recent sales give a clearer picture of today's prices than the older one alone. The figures here are only for illustration.
Prices for your postcode
The postcode and street pages on House Price Monitor are free to read and show the typical sold price and recent trends, built only from HM Land Registry data. You can find yours on the postcodes page.
The full monthly report for a postcode district lists every sale with its address, price and date. It costs £4.99 a month and the first report is free when you sign up. See pricing for details. Estate agents and brokers can use the professional plan for up to five postcodes and valuation packs of comparable sales.
Other guides
Why sold prices take months to appear
What the Land Registry price data includes
How to estimate your home's value from sold prices