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Blackmore End market report AL4, St Albans
The standing AL4 (Blackmore End) property market report, rebuilt from the full public record every month. Underneath every chart here sit 15,147 registered sales in AL4 (St Albans) since 1995, the HM Land Registry record of what buyers really paid, with ONS figures covering rents. Nothing is a valuation, an estimate or an asking price.
Sales data to August 2026. Rents: ONS, May 2026. Regenerated with every monthly data refresh. Page updated 19 October 2026.
In short: 149 registered 2026 sales put the AL4 (St Albans) median at £650,000, up 11% on five years earlier, with a mean of £681,900, and by floor area homes here have averaged about £6,520 per square metre over the last five years. Everything rests on 15,147 completed HM Land Registry sales since 1995, refreshed monthly; valuations and asking prices play no part.
AL4 is the postcode district covering St Albans (east), Blackmore End, Colney Heath in St Albans. Districts are a practical way to slice a market: small enough to mean something locally, big enough to have a steady flow of sales to measure.
Where AL4 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 AL4 homes really sell for
The 2026 median for AL4 is £650,000, taken from 149 registered sales. The mean, which is what most sites call the "average house price", is £681,900, practically level with it: prices here bunch tightly around the middle.
AL4 prices by floor area
Averaged across five years of sales, floor space in AL4 costs about £6,520 per square metre. Each sale's Energy Performance Certificate supplies the floor area, and pricing by the metre is what lets flats and houses share one scale.
England and Wales as a whole trade at a £285,000 median, leaving AL4 128% above the national figure.
AL4's median sold price, 1995 to 2026
The cash median beside its inflation-adjusted twin (ONS CPIH). The adjusted line answers the harder question, whether homes really got dearer. Hover for the figures; the legend toggles each series.
See this chart as a table
| Year | Median (cash) | Median (today's £) | Sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | £650,000 | £650,000 | 149 |
| 2025 | £638,800 | £654,076 | 412 |
| 2024 | £645,000 | £685,767 | 338 |
| 2023 | £660,800 | £726,058 | 358 |
| 2022 | £660,000 | £773,925 | 465 |
| 2021 | £587,000 | £743,218 | 575 |
| 2020 | £550,000 | £713,636 | 364 |
| 2019 | £550,000 | £720,918 | 368 |
| 2018 | £537,500 | £716,498 | 341 |
| 2017 | £517,000 | £705,136 | 355 |
| 2016 | £480,000 | £671,525 | 377 |
| 2015 | £450,000 | £635,850 | 450 |
| 2014 | £413,500 | £586,622 | 456 |
| 2013 | £355,000 | £510,810 | 459 |
| 2012 | £355,000 | £522,516 | 363 |
| 2011 | £355,000 | £535,913 | 403 |
| 2010 | £345,000 | £541,049 | 439 |
| 2009 | £290,000 | £466,177 | 369 |
| 2008 | £302,500 | £495,861 | 271 |
| 2007 | £307,200 | £521,097 | 628 |
| 2006 | £263,700 | £457,750 | 596 |
| 2005 | £257,500 | £458,246 | 550 |
| 2004 | £244,500 | £444,060 | 594 |
| 2003 | £225,000 | £414,505 | 482 |
| 2002 | £220,000 | £413,928 | 695 |
| 2001 | £175,000 | £336,429 | 645 |
| 2000 | £185,000 | £363,063 | 680 |
| 1999 | £152,500 | £303,925 | 840 |
| 1998 | £128,000 | £258,377 | 657 |
| 1997 | £102,200 | £209,592 | 592 |
| 1996 | £92,200 | £194,446 | 502 |
| 1995 | £88,000 | £191,298 | 374 |
In cash terms the typical AL4 home went from £88,000 in 1995 to £650,000 in 2026, roughly 7 times the price. Even after inflation that is a real rise of about 240%: homes here genuinely became dearer, not merely more expensive on paper. Measured in today's money the market peaked in 2022; the current median sits about 16% below that. Someone who bought at the 2022 peak has not yet seen that price back in real terms.
Year-on-year change in the AL4 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 2002 (+25.7% on the year before); the weakest, 2001 (−5.4%). Single-year swings like these are why the annualised table below matters more than any one year's headline.
Annualised returns
| Period | Cash, per year | Real terms, per year |
|---|---|---|
| 1 year (since 2025) | +1.8% | −0.6% |
| 5 years (since 2021) | +2.1% | −2.6% |
| 6 years (since 2020) | +2.8% | −1.5% |
| 10 years (since 2016) | +3.1% | −0.3% |
| 20 years (since 2006) | +4.6% | +1.8% |
Compound annual growth of the median sold price; the real column deflates by ONS CPIH. Annualised figures smooth the cycle (the chart above shows the cycle), and past growth is a record, not a forecast.
Detached, semi, terraced, flat: four markets in one
A single median hides the split beneath it. Sales of semi-detached homes dominate the record here, 32% of the typed total. A detached home currently trades at £870,000 against £275,000 for a flat, 3.2 times the price.
Median by property type, AL4
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 | £870,000 | 33 | 3,896 |
| Semi-detached | £745,000 | 59 | 4,821 |
| Terraced | £456,200 | 36 | 3,529 |
| Flats | £275,000 | 21 | 2,901 |
Sales activity in AL4
How many homes change hands
Annual recorded sales. The post-2008 trough is the financial crisis; treat the final bar as provisional while registrations catch up.
The last five years, month by month
Registrations by month. The repeating sawtooth is seasonality, and the right-hand edge always dips because the register lags completions.
The register shows 305 AL4 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 609 sales a year before the financial crisis and 344 a year over the last five. Volume matters as much as price: when few homes change hands, the median gets jumpy and a single street can move the figure. The most recent year is always still filling in, because sales appear in the Land Registry weeks or months after completion.
Reading the AL4 market
Among the 10 measurable districts of its area, AL4 ranks 3 by median price: firmly in the dearer tier.
What tenants pay around AL4
For renting purposes AL4 sits in St Albans. The ONS average private rent there is £1,925 a month (May 2026). Size sets most of the rent: one-beds average £1,266 a month here against £2,897 for four or more bedrooms.
Average monthly rent by size, St Albans
ONS Price Index of Private Rents, May 2026.
Against the £650,000 median purchase price, a rent of £1,925 a month (£23,100 a year) works out at a 3.6% gross yield, a ceiling figure that ignores letting costs, voids, maintenance and tax. Because rents are local-authority statistics, districts sharing the authority share the figure.
What people ask about AL4 (Blackmore End)
Are property prices falling in AL4 (Blackmore End)?
Is AL4 (Blackmore End) a good place to buy a house?
How much did a house sell for in AL4 (Blackmore End)?
What happens to AL4 prices now?
Prediction is not this page's business. Its business is the record, which says: the median is up 11% over five years in cash but down 13% after inflation. Read the volume chart with the price chart before acting on either, remembering that registrations trail the deals themselves by weeks.
What you could buy in AL4 now
Everything above is what homes in AL4 sold for. This is what you could actually buy today: 28 homes currently on the market from 7 agents publishing to HomesIndex, at a typical asking price 17% below the AL4 median sold price.
Set against 305 registered sales in the last twelve months, the 28 homes on the market here are roughly 5 weeks of supply at last year's pace, and more in reality, since only agents who publish to HomesIndex are counted. That is a thin shelf: buyers here are choosing from little, and a well priced home is unlikely to wait long.
21% of current listings sit under the prices comparable homes actually fetched. Every listing is measured against recent recorded sales of similar nearby homes.
- Woodcock Hill, Sandridge, St Albans, Hertfordshire
- Furse Avenue, St. Albans, Hertfordshire
- Roestock Gardens, Colney Heath, St. Albans, Hertfordshire
"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 AL4 home for sale on the map →
Live asking prices from estate agents who publish a feed to HomesIndex, refreshed every Monday and Thursday: a sample of the market, not every home for sale. Asking prices are not sale prices.
The AL4 sales calendar
June is when AL4 changes hands most (12.1% of the 2,148 sales dated 2021 to 2025); April is the quiet end at 5.6%. That is a marked seasonal rhythm. A sale completes weeks after it is agreed, so the busy month reflects deals struck earlier in the year; a seller who wants competition should be on the market ahead of it.
Sales by month, 2021 to 2025
| Month | Sales | Share |
|---|---|---|
| January | 147 | 6.8% |
| February | 149 | 6.9% |
| March | 247 | 11.5% |
| April | 121 | 5.6% |
| May | 156 | 7.3% |
| June | 259 | 12.1% |
| July | 156 | 7.3% |
| August | 173 | 8.1% |
| September | 209 | 9.7% |
| October | 191 | 8.9% |
| November | 176 | 8.2% |
| December | 164 | 7.6% |
Moving up a bedroom in AL: the cost
What homes of each size actually sold for across the AL area, from the Land Registry record. Size steps are fiercely local. A third bedroom adds a quarter to the price in some areas and close to four fifths in others, which is why no national rule of thumb survives contact with a real market.
| Type | 1 bed | 2 bed | 3 bed | 4 bed | 5 bed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Detached | £528,750 | £610,000 (+15%) | £717,500 (+18%) | £875,000 (+22%) | £1,250,000 (+43%) |
| Semi-detached | £417,000 | £475,000 (+14%) | £589,000 (+24%) | £717,000 (+22%) | £950,000 (+32%) |
| Terraced | £325,000 | £427,000 (+31%) | £456,000 (+7%) | £555,000 (+22%) | £600,000 (+8%) |
| Flat | £236,874 | £310,000 (+31%) | £380,000 (+23%) | £550,000 (+45%) | £760,000 (+38%) |
Medians of recorded sales over the last four years, by built form and bedroom count. Sold homes carry no advertised bedroom count, so sizes are estimated from their EPC records; a small number of homes will sit one size out. Blank cells mean too few homes for the figure to mean anything.
The risers and the fallers
AL4 ranks 2 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.
AL area districts: five years of change
The biggest risers and fallers in cash terms; every row links to that district's report.
Inside AL4, sector by sector
Below district level sit the sectors, street groups with reports of their own, and the gaps between neighbouring ones can be sharp.
How AL4 compares nearby
Same city, different markets. The neighbouring districts of the AL area, dearest first:
| District | Median | 5-year |
|---|---|---|
| AL5 | £734,500 | +3% |
| AL6 | £710,000 | -2% |
| AL4 (this report) | £650,000 | +11% |
| AL3 | £622,500 | +5% |
| AL1 | £560,000 | +6% |
| AL8 | £558,200 | +27% |
| AL9 | £540,000 | -7% |
| AL2 | £530,000 | +2% |
| AL7 | £401,200 | +8% |
| AL10 | £367,500 | +9% |
Selling in AL4? Start from the sold record
Ground the asking price in real sold prices first. The average prices map gives a rough value in a minute: start at AL4's shading and zoom to the sold homes on the street itself. Agents work from this same Land Registry record when they value; this page puts it in front of you before they arrive.
Dig further
Behind the answers sits the same Land Registry record as this page, with AL4 already set as the subject. Free, one click sign in.
See every individual AL4 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.