How to check sold house prices on any street

Asking prices tell you what a seller hopes to get. Sold prices tell you what buyers actually paid. If you want to know whether a home is fairly priced, the second number is the one that matters, and in England and Wales it is public, free and easy to find once you know where to look.

Where sold prices come from

Every completed sale in England and Wales is registered with HM Land Registry, which publishes the price, the date and the address as open data. Property portals show the same figures with their own design on top. In Scotland the equivalent records are held by Registers of Scotland, and Northern Ireland has its own register.

Two things to keep in mind. Sales usually appear a few weeks to a couple of months after completion, so the most recent deals in a fast-moving area may not show yet. And the record shows the price only: not the size, the condition or whether the kitchen was new.

How to read them properly

Looking up one street is a start, but a single sale can mislead. Use a few rules of thumb:

A faster way to see the whole area

Proptel publishes a free guide for every postcode district in England and Wales: the median sold price over the last 12 months, prices by property type, ten years of trend, the highest and most affordable streets and the latest recorded sales, alongside schools, crime and flood warning areas. Search by town, village or postcode at proptel.co.uk/area.

When you have a specific home in mind, a Proptel report goes one step further: it compares that address with similar recent sales nearby, adjusts for likely costs and gives you a suggested offer with the working shown.