Forget London: the towns where flats are selling for far less

Research by ValuQ: we analysed sold prices for 24 representative English towns on HM Land Registry's Price Paid data, comparing the average flat and the average house in the year to March 2026 with the year before, to find where flat sellers have fared worst.

What did this week's house price figures say?

In the first week of June 2026 the main indices all reported a near-flat national market. Nationwide put annual growth at 1.7% on 1 June. Halifax reported on 5 June that the average home edged down 0.1% in May to £298,806, with annual growth of 0.5%. Zoopla had annual growth at 1.5% in late May, with buyer demand down 10% on a year earlier.

A national average blends every region and every type of home into one figure. Underneath it, the flat market and the house market have pulled apart, and not evenly across the country. A two-speed market is one where two parts of the same market move in opposite directions at the same time.

Which towns have seen flats fall the most?

Manchester sits at the bottom of the 24 towns we analysed, with the average flat selling for 17.1% less than a year earlier while the city's houses rose 1.8%. The big regional cities, Birmingham and Derby, are close behind. Expensive commuter towns appear too: in Slough the average flat fell 10.6% while houses rose 4.9%, and in Reading flats fell 10.0%.

Why isn't it London?

London is the place everyone names when flats struggle, and London flats did fall, by 7.6% on this measure. But 10 of the 24 towns fell harder. The widest splits between houses and flats were in Portsmouth (houses up 11.3%, flats down 7.8%) and Manchester (houses up 1.8%, flats down 17.1%), gaps of more than 18 percentage points inside a single town in a single year.

Two things are driving it. Big cities have had waves of cheaper new-build flats completing, and the cladding and leasehold problems that have dogged flats since 2017 still weigh on demand. Averages can be pulled down where lots of cheaper new flats sell, which is part of the Manchester and Birmingham story. Even so, the direction is unmistakable, because houses rose or held in the same towns where flats fell.

ValuQ Property Watch is our weekly look at the numbers behind the property headlines.

The national average tells a flat owner in Manchester or Slough that the market barely moved. It moved a long way against them. If you own a flat, you cannot price off last year, and you cannot price off the house down the road.

What does it mean if you own a flat?

• Price to today's market, not to what your flat would have fetched a year ago. In most of these towns that means a lower number than you expect.
• Do not anchor to house prices nearby. Houses and flats in the same town are now two different markets.
• Buyers have the upper hand in the weakest towns, so a realistic asking price sells while an aspirational one sits.
• It is not falling everywhere. Flats rose 4.2% in Luton and 1.5% in Southend-on-Sea over the same year, so local detail beats the national headline.

The way to know which side of the line your own home sits on is a current valuation. Evren Ergin, founder of ValuQ, said: "The house market and the flat market have split, sometimes inside the same postcode, and a single headline number hides it completely. The only number that helps a seller is what their own home is worth today."

ValuQ gives UK homeowners free, side-by-side property valuations from competing local estate agents, so a flat owner sees what their own home is worth in today's market, not what a national average did.

How we did this

ValuQ analysed HM Land Registry Price Paid data for 24 representative English towns, comparing the average (mean) sold price of flats and of houses in the 12 months to 31 March 2026 with the 12 months before. Houses combine terraced, semi-detached and detached homes; the small 'other' category is excluded. Average sold prices reflect the homes that actually changed hands, so in cities with many new-build flats completing the average is pulled down partly by the mix of what sold. The most recent weeks of Land Registry data are still being registered and will fill in over time. These are sold prices, not asking prices.