The Halifax house price index is now Lloyds: what changed?

If you follow house price headlines, you will have seen a familiar index under a new name since July. The Halifax House Price Index, a figure the property world has quoted for decades, is now the Lloyds House Price Index. Nothing about how it is calculated has changed, and the first release under the new name, published on 7 July 2026, covered June's market.

Why has the Halifax index changed its name?

The index has been renamed following the move of the Halifax brand under the wider Lloyds banking group. A house price index is a monthly measure of how much home values are moving, built from the mortgage data of one lender. This one is one of the UK's longest-running house price measures, with data going back to 1983, and it is already calculated using both Halifax and Lloyds mortgage approvals. The name on the front is new; the underlying series, the method, and the history are the same.

What did the June 2026 figures show?

June brought the first monthly rise in four months. Prices edged up 0.2% on May, the average UK home reached £299,330, and the annual rate of growth nudged up to 0.6%. First-time buyer prices did a little better, with annual growth of 0.8% and an average first-time buyer home of £240,433, which suggests demand at the bottom of the ladder is holding up.

What has the Lloyds index shown since the name change?

Three months on, the renamed index shows a market that has gone flat. Lloyds reported on 7 October 2026 that prices were unchanged in September, at 0.0% on the month and 0.0% on the year, with the average home at £298,441, after a 0.3% monthly fall in August.

Underneath the flat average, the north and the nations are rising while the south falls. Northern Ireland led at +6.9% a year and the North West at +3.1%, while Greater London fell 1.5% and the South West and Eastern England each fell 1.2%; flats recorded a 15th month of falls.

Why do the indices show such different prices?

Look at the table and two things jump out: the two averages are more than £21,000 apart, and one says annual growth is 0.6% while the other says 2.2%, for the same month. That is not an error. Each index is built from a different lender's approvals, covers a different mix of homes, and adjusts for the seasons in its own way, so they measure slightly different slices of the market. We explain the mechanics in full in a separate guide on why Nationwide and Halifax disagree.

The rate backdrop has turned harder since June. The Bank of England base rate is still 3.75%, but Moneyfacts reported on 6 October 2026 that the average five-year fixed mortgage had reached 6%, its highest since September 2023, and that fixed deals priced under 5% fell from 1,494 to 9 during September.

Higher borrowing costs help explain why the index has stalled rather than recovered. Lloyds still reported new buyer enquiries at their highest level since February, so demand has not disappeared; buyers are more price-sensitive.

What does the name change mean for me if I'm selling?

• Nothing about your sale changes: the same lender, the same data, a new label on the headline.
• Treat any index number as the national weather, not the temperature in your own home.
• A 0.0% national change in September did not mean your street stood still: on the same index, the North West rose 3.1% a year while London fell 1.5%.
• The only figure that matters when you price your home is what real local buyers will pay for it now.

This is the heart of it. An index is an average stretched across the whole country, so it smooths away the very things that set your price: your street, your condition, your school catchment, and what buyers are competing for locally this month. ValuQ is the platform that gives UK homeowners free, side-by-side property valuations from competing local estate agents, so you can see what several of them would actually list your home for, on one screen, before you speak to anyone.