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Childwickbury market report AL3, St Albans
The AL3 (Childwickbury) house price history in full, 1995 to 2026, in cash and in today's money. Everything below comes from 16,511 sales recorded by HM Land Registry in AL3 (St Albans) since 1995, real completion prices from real purchases, alongside the ONS's current rent figures. No valuations, no estimates, no asking prices.
Covers registered sales to July 2026 and ONS rents for May 2026. Refreshed monthly as new sales reach the register.
In short: the 2026 median for AL3 (St Albans) is £623,800, from 150 registered sales, up 5% on five years earlier; the mean is £654,700, and by floor area homes here have averaged about £6,570 per square metre over the last five years. Behind the figures sit 16,511 HM Land Registry entries going back to 1995, refreshed monthly, every one a completed sale rather than a valuation or an asking price.
The postcode district AL3 covering St Albans (west), Childwickbury, Flamstead sits in St Albans. A district is the workhorse unit for reading a market: local enough to be meaningful, busy enough that the medians rest on a steady flow of sales.
Where AL3 sits
Shaded by median price on the same scale as the average prices map. Click any shape to open it on the live map with every sale plotted at its address, or zoom in past street level to see the sold homes right here.
What a home in AL3 sells for
The 2026 median for AL3 is £623,800, taken from 150 registered sales. The mean, which is what most sites call the "average house price", is £654,700, nearly identical to it, meaning sales cluster closely around the typical figure.
What a square metre costs in AL3
Measured by floor area, the last five years of AL3 sales average about £6,570 per square metre. Price per square metre is the fair way to compare a one-bed flat with a four-bed house, and it comes from the Energy Performance Certificate on each sold home.
Set against the £285,000 England and Wales median, AL3 sits 119% above the national market.
The price of a typical AL3 home, 1995 to 2026
Two lines: the median in the money of its day, and the same years restated by ONS CPIH into today's money, which is the truer test of getting dearer. Hover for exact figures; click a legend entry to isolate a series.
See this chart as a table
| Year | Median (cash) | Median (today's £) | Sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | £623,800 | £623,800 | 150 |
| 2025 | £633,000 | £648,137 | 403 |
| 2024 | £618,000 | £657,061 | 350 |
| 2023 | £605,000 | £664,747 | 334 |
| 2022 | £608,000 | £712,949 | 431 |
| 2021 | £595,000 | £753,347 | 599 |
| 2020 | £551,500 | £715,583 | 432 |
| 2019 | £525,000 | £688,149 | 410 |
| 2018 | £500,000 | £666,509 | 388 |
| 2017 | £525,000 | £716,047 | 425 |
| 2016 | £490,000 | £685,515 | 466 |
| 2015 | £458,000 | £647,154 | 564 |
| 2014 | £424,500 | £602,227 | 600 |
| 2013 | £410,000 | £589,949 | 569 |
| 2012 | £360,000 | £529,875 | 462 |
| 2011 | £365,000 | £551,010 | 451 |
| 2010 | £343,000 | £537,912 | 470 |
| 2009 | £303,000 | £487,075 | 415 |
| 2008 | £332,500 | £545,038 | 339 |
| 2007 | £324,400 | £550,273 | 584 |
| 2006 | £285,000 | £494,724 | 713 |
| 2005 | £269,500 | £479,601 | 598 |
| 2004 | £250,000 | £454,049 | 692 |
| 2003 | £242,600 | £446,928 | 586 |
| 2002 | £226,500 | £426,158 | 760 |
| 2001 | £210,000 | £403,714 | 724 |
| 2000 | £187,500 | £367,969 | 595 |
| 1999 | £144,000 | £286,984 | 749 |
| 1998 | £130,000 | £262,414 | 607 |
| 1997 | £120,000 | £246,096 | 612 |
| 1996 | £98,000 | £206,678 | 584 |
| 1995 | £90,000 | £195,646 | 449 |
In cash terms the typical AL3 home went from £90,000 in 1995 to £623,800 in 2026, roughly 7 times the price. Adjusted for inflation it still comes to a real rise of roughly 219%, so homes here got dearer in substance, not only in cash. In inflation-adjusted terms the high-water mark was 2021. The market now sits about 17% below it, so a peak-time purchase has yet to recover its real value.
Year-on-year change in the AL3 median
Each bar is the change on the year before, in cash. The zero line is the boundary between rising and falling.
The strongest year on record here is 2000 (+30.2% on the year before); the weakest, 2009 (−8.9%). Single-year swings like these are why the annualised table below matters more than any one year's headline.
Growth per year, over one to twenty years
| Period | Cash, per year | Real terms, per year |
|---|---|---|
| 1 years (since 2025) | −1.5% | −3.8% |
| 5 years (since 2021) | +0.9% | −3.7% |
| 10 years (since 2016) | +2.4% | −0.9% |
| 20 years (since 2006) | +4.0% | +1.2% |
Each row is compound annual growth of the median; ONS CPIH supplies the real-terms deflator. Annualising irons out the cycle, which the chart above shows in full, and past growth records what happened rather than predicting anything.
Detached, semi, terraced, flat: four markets in one
A single median hides the split beneath it. Sales of terraced homes dominate the record here, 39% of the typed total. A detached home currently trades at £772,000 against £347,500 for a flat, 2.2 times the price.
Median by property type, AL3
One line per type, years with too few sales omitted. Hover for the year's figures; click a legend entry to isolate a type.
| Type | Median (2026) | Sales that year | All-time sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| Detached | £772,000 | 24 | 3,332 |
| Semi-detached | £650,000 | 40 | 4,297 |
| Terraced | £625,000 | 68 | 6,518 |
| Flats | £347,500 | 18 | 2,364 |
Transaction volumes
Sales per year, counted
Recorded sales per year. The dip after 2008 is the financial crisis; the last bar is still filling in as recent sales get registered.
Month by month, five years back
Monthly registrations. The sawtooth is seasonal; the register runs weeks behind completions at the right-hand edge.
The register shows 307 AL3 sales across the most recent twelve months of data. Like most of England and Wales, turnover never fully recovered from 2008: the market here averaged 657 sales a year before the financial crisis and 334 a year over the last five. Price without volume misleads: a median built on few sales jumps around, and one street can tilt it. Keep in mind too that the latest year is still filling in, since sales reach the register weeks or months after completion.
Rents around AL3
For renting purposes AL3 sits in St Albans. The ONS average private rent there is £1,925 a month (May 2026). A one-bed averages £1,266 a month here and a four-or-more-bed £2,897, so size does most of the work in setting the rent.
Average monthly rent by size, St Albans
ONS Price Index of Private Rents, May 2026.
£1,925 a month is £23,100 a year, which against the £623,800 median sold price makes a gross yield of 3.7%. Gross means before letting costs, voids, maintenance and tax: treat it as a ceiling. The ONS publishes rents by local authority, so neighbouring districts under the same authority share these numbers.
AL3 (Childwickbury): the questions that come up
Is AL3 (Childwickbury) a good place to buy a house?
How much did a house sell for in AL3 (Childwickbury)?
Are property prices falling in AL3 (Childwickbury)?
Will AL3 prices rise from here?
Nobody can tell you that, and this page will not pretend to. What the record shows: the median is up 5% over five years in cash but down 17% after inflation. If you are weighing a purchase, read the volume chart alongside the price one, and remember that every figure here is a completed sale, lagged by the weeks it takes the Land Registry to register it.
What is for sale in AL3 right now
Everything above is what homes in AL3 sold for. Turning to what is actually available: 76 homes on the market right now, from 9 agents publishing to HomesIndex, at a typical asking price 24% above the AL3 median sold price.
Of everything listed here, 17% asks less than the sold record of comparable homes. The comparison behind each listing uses recent recorded sales of similar homes close by.
"Under comparable sales" means the asking price sits below what similar homes nearby actually fetched. Treat it as the start of a conversation, never a valuation, and always view the home.
See every AL3 home for sale on the map →
Refreshed every Monday and Thursday from agents' own feeds to HomesIndex, so a sample of the market rather than all of it. An asking price remains an ask, not a sale.
The price of an extra bedroom in AL
Real sold prices by size across the AL area, straight from the Land Registry record. The jump between sizes is local: in some areas a third bedroom adds a quarter to the price, in others nearly four fifths, so a national rule of thumb will mislead you here.
| Type | 1 bed | 2 bed | 3 bed | 4 bed | 5 bed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Detached | — | £605,000 | £792,500 (+31%) | £1,160,000 (+46%) | £1,685,000 (+45%) |
| Semi-detached | £397,500 | £490,000 (+23%) | £640,000 (+31%) | £865,000 (+35%) | £1,150,000 (+33%) |
| Terraced | £375,000 | £440,000 (+17%) | £506,250 (+15%) | £739,000 (+46%) | £950,000 (+29%) |
| Flat | £250,000 | £335,000 (+34%) | £552,500 (+65%) | — | — |
Built from the last four years of recorded sales by form and bedroom count. Bedroom counts are estimated from EPC records (the register carries none), so expect a small number of homes one size adrift. Sizes with too few homes to be meaningful are left blank.
The risers and the fallers
AL3 ranks 5 of 10 in the AL area on five-year growth. The gap between the top and bottom of this chart is the difference between buying well and buying badly in the same city.
Five-year change in the median, AL area districts
The districts that gained and lost most in cash terms, each row linking through to its own report.
Inside AL3, sector by sector
Postcode sectors are the next slice down, each a group of streets with its own market report. Prices can differ sharply between two sectors a few minutes' walk apart.
| Sector | Median (latest) | Sales that year |
|---|---|---|
| AL3 4 | £687,500 | 27 |
| AL3 5 | £650,000 | 47 |
| AL3 6 | £727,000 | 16 |
| AL3 7 | £600,000 | 31 |
| AL3 8 | £460,000 | 29 |
How AL3 compares nearby
Same city, different markets. The neighbouring districts of the AL area, dearest first:
| District | Median | 5-year |
|---|---|---|
| AL5 | £725,000 | +2% |
| AL6 | £705,000 | -3% |
| AL4 | £638,000 | +9% |
| AL3 (this report) | £623,800 | +5% |
| AL8 | £560,000 | +27% |
| AL1 | £550,000 | +4% |
| AL2 | £545,000 | +5% |
| AL9 | £540,000 | -7% |
| AL7 | £403,000 | +9% |
| AL10 | £365,000 | +8% |
Thinking of selling in AL3? Get a rough value first
Start from what homes here actually sold for, not an estimate. Before booking a house valuation or flat valuation in AL3, use the average prices map for a rough value: zoom from AL3's shading down to the sold homes on your own street. The figures above are every recorded AL3 sale; agents price with this same Land Registry record, and now you have it too.
Local estate agents: one agent per district gets the featured spot on this report, free for founding agents. Claim AL3.
Go deeper
The AI answers from the same Land Registry data this report is built on, already scoped to AL3. Free after a one click sign in.
See every individual AL3 sale on the live map, mapped to the exact address, or zoom the average prices map from neighbourhood shading down to single homes. The report tool writes a custom answer to a specific question, and the mortgage and rent calculator on any sale runs the numbers on a real purchase.
About the numbers: everything is computed from HM Land Registry Price Paid Data (Crown copyright, OGL v3.0), geocoded to the address; today's-money figures use the ONS CPIH index, and rents are the ONS Price Index of Private Rents by local authority. These are medians of recorded sales, not valuations, and none of it is financial advice.