Local market reports › AL area › AL5 › AL5 1
AL5 1 local market report Harpenden
Every figure on this page comes from the public record: 3,915 sales registered with HM Land Registry in AL5 1 (Harpenden) since 1995, each one a completed purchase at a real price, plus current rental figures from the ONS. Nothing here is a valuation, an estimate or an asking price.
Sales data to 2026. Rents: ONS, May 2026. Regenerated with every monthly data refresh.
AL5 1 is a postcode sector: one group of streets inside AL5 (Harpenden). This is as local as the public record gets, but sector medians move on fewer sales than a district's, so expect the lines to be lumpier.
Where AL5 1 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 AL5 1 sells for
The 2026 median in AL5 1 is £740,000, from 17 registered sales; the mean, £766,300, sits almost on top of it, so sales bunch tightly around the typical price.
For scale: the England and Wales median is £273,500, so AL5 1 trades 171% above the country as a whole.
The price of a typical AL5 1 home, 1995 to 2026
The median as recorded at the time, and each year restated in today's money (ONS CPIH), the sharper test of whether homes really got dearer. Hover for the year-by-year figures; click a legend entry to isolate a series.
See this chart as a table
| Year | Median (cash) | Median (today's £) | Sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | £740,000 | £740,000 | 17 |
| 2025 | £700,000 | £700,000 | 91 |
| 2024 | £695,000 | £721,670 | 103 |
| 2023 | £695,000 | £745,801 | 102 |
| 2022 | £695,000 | £795,934 | 117 |
| 2021 | £655,000 | £809,946 | 166 |
| 2020 | £667,500 | £845,868 | 106 |
| 2019 | £607,500 | £777,690 | 114 |
| 2018 | £572,500 | £745,330 | 126 |
| 2017 | £555,000 | £739,286 | 111 |
| 2016 | £550,000 | £751,485 | 129 |
| 2015 | £541,800 | £747,684 | 108 |
| 2014 | £481,200 | £666,723 | 118 |
| 2013 | £407,500 | £572,658 | 109 |
| 2012 | £390,000 | £560,625 | 109 |
| 2011 | £381,000 | £561,731 | 105 |
| 2010 | £395,000 | £604,994 | 127 |
| 2009 | £312,500 | £490,614 | 91 |
| 2008 | £345,000 | £552,320 | 75 |
| 2007 | £351,000 | £581,489 | 142 |
| 2006 | £296,000 | £501,818 | 196 |
| 2005 | £287,000 | £498,816 | 143 |
| 2004 | £290,000 | £514,396 | 119 |
| 2003 | £250,000 | £449,804 | 170 |
| 2002 | £225,500 | £414,368 | 150 |
| 2001 | £206,000 | £386,776 | 170 |
| 2000 | £180,000 | £345,000 | 140 |
| 1999 | £156,200 | £304,028 | 148 |
| 1998 | £145,000 | £285,857 | 119 |
| 1997 | £129,000 | £258,374 | 139 |
| 1996 | £110,000 | £226,567 | 157 |
| 1995 | £106,500 | £226,108 | 98 |
In cash terms the typical AL5 1 home went from £106,500 in 1995 to £740,000 in 2026, roughly 7 times the price. Even after inflation that is a real rise of about 227%: homes here genuinely became dearer, not just more expensive on paper. Measured in today's money the market peaked in 2020; the current median sits about 13% below that. Someone who bought at the 2020 peak has not yet seen that price back in real terms.
Year-on-year change in the AL5 1 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 2010 (+26.4% on the year before); the weakest, 2009 (−9.4%). 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 years (since 2025) | +5.7% | +5.7% |
| 5 years (since 2021) | +2.5% | −1.8% |
| 10 years (since 2016) | +3.0% | −0.2% |
| 20 years (since 2006) | +4.7% | +2.0% |
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.
Transaction volumes
How many homes change hands
Recorded sales per year. The dip after 2008 is the financial crisis; the last bar is still filling in as recent sales get registered.
AL5 1 recorded 17 sales in the last twelve months of data. Like most of England and Wales, turnover never fully recovered from 2008: the market here averaged 154 sales a year before the financial crisis and 86 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.
What homes rent for around AL5 1
AL5 1 falls under St Albans, where the ONS puts the average private rent at £1,925 a month (May 2026 figures). 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.
Set against the £740,000 median sold price, £1,925 a month is £23,100 a year, a gross yield of 3.1%: gross, before letting costs, voids, maintenance and tax, so a ceiling rather than a promise. Rents are published at local-authority level, so nearby districts in the same authority share these figures.
Will AL5 1 prices rise from here?
Nobody can tell you that, and this page will not pretend to. What the record shows: the median is up 13% over five years in cash but down 9% 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.
The risers and the fallers
The spread across the AL area is the point: the same five years treated these districts very differently.
Five-year change in the median, AL area districts
The biggest risers and fallers in cash terms; every row links to that district's report.
Other street groups in AL5
Prices can differ sharply between two sectors a few minutes' walk apart. The rest of AL5, each linking to its own report:
| Sector | Median (latest) | Sales that year |
|---|---|---|
| AL5 2 | £1,055,000 | 12 |
| AL5 3 | £725,600 | 9 |
| AL5 4 | £495,800 | 18 |
| AL5 5 | £605,000 | 24 |
Zoom out to the full AL5 district report for the type split, monthly volumes and how AL5 compares with its neighbours.
Dig further
Answers come from the same Land Registry data behind this report, and the AI knows you are asking about AL5 1. Free, with a one click sign in.
See every individual AL5 1 sale on the live map, mapped to the exact address, or the quick-reference AL5 1 price page. 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.
How this page is made: the statistics are computed from HM Land Registry Price Paid Data (Crown copyright, OGL v3.0), geocoded to address level; inflation adjustment uses the ONS CPIH index; rents are the ONS Price Index of Private Rents at local-authority level. Medians of recorded sales, not valuations. Nothing on this page is financial advice.