Local market reports › AL area › AL8
Lemsford market report AL8, Welwyn Garden City
The AL8 (Lemsford) house price history in full, 1995 to 2026, in cash and in today's money. Underneath every chart here sit 6,454 registered sales in AL8 (Welwyn Garden City) 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 recorded to August 2026; rents are ONS figures for May 2026. The page rebuilds with each monthly release. Page updated 19 October 2026.
In short: the middle 2026 sale in AL8 (Welwyn Garden City) came in at £558,200, out of 80 registered, up 27% on five years earlier, and the mean stands at £596,500, and by floor area homes here have averaged about £5,760 per square metre over the last five years. The record behind it is 6,454 completed sales lodged with HM Land Registry since 1995, monthly refreshed, with no valuations or asking prices anywhere in the figures.
AL8 is the postcode district covering Welwyn Garden City (west), Lemsford in Welwyn Garden City. 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 AL8 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.
AL8 sold prices: where the market stands
The 2026 median for AL8 is £558,200, taken from 80 registered sales. The mean, which is what most sites call the "average house price", is £596,500, somewhat above it, as happens wherever a market carries an expensive tail.
AL8 prices by floor area
The last five years of sales put AL8 at roughly £5,760 per square metre. That figure, built from each sale's Energy Performance Certificate floor area, is the one that makes a small flat and a big house comparable.
Against a national (England and Wales) median of £285,000, AL8 runs 96% above it.
A typical AL8 home, priced year by year (1995 to 2026)
Year by year: the median as it was recorded, and the same figure brought into today's money with ONS CPIH, which is where "did homes get dearer" actually gets answered. Hover shows each year; the legend isolates a series.
See this chart as a table
| Year | Median (cash) | Median (today's £) | Sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | £558,200 | £558,200 | 80 |
| 2025 | £495,000 | £506,837 | 174 |
| 2024 | £485,000 | £515,655 | 151 |
| 2023 | £575,000 | £631,785 | 135 |
| 2022 | £513,800 | £602,489 | 210 |
| 2021 | £441,200 | £558,616 | 206 |
| 2020 | £532,000 | £690,281 | 168 |
| 2019 | £414,000 | £542,655 | 180 |
| 2018 | £435,000 | £579,863 | 157 |
| 2017 | £415,000 | £566,018 | 177 |
| 2016 | £424,000 | £593,180 | 205 |
| 2015 | £362,600 | £512,354 | 192 |
| 2014 | £375,000 | £532,003 | 227 |
| 2013 | £360,000 | £518,004 | 195 |
| 2012 | £300,000 | £441,563 | 139 |
| 2011 | £331,200 | £499,985 | 144 |
| 2010 | £307,500 | £482,239 | 146 |
| 2009 | £262,500 | £421,971 | 181 |
| 2008 | £282,000 | £462,258 | 112 |
| 2007 | £267,500 | £453,755 | 230 |
| 2006 | £267,400 | £464,172 | 230 |
| 2005 | £235,000 | £418,205 | 253 |
| 2004 | £245,800 | £446,421 | 242 |
| 2003 | £220,000 | £405,293 | 195 |
| 2002 | £200,000 | £376,298 | 267 |
| 2001 | £170,000 | £326,816 | 268 |
| 2000 | £150,000 | £294,375 | 229 |
| 1999 | £130,000 | £259,083 | 265 |
| 1998 | £111,000 | £224,061 | 286 |
| 1997 | £97,000 | £198,927 | 277 |
| 1996 | £95,000 | £200,351 | 303 |
| 1995 | £89,500 | £194,559 | 230 |
In cash terms the typical AL8 home went from £89,500 in 1995 to £558,200 in 2026, roughly 6 times the price. Inflation explains only part of it: in today's money the rise is still about 187%, a genuine increase in what a home here costs. Measured in today's money the market peaked in 2020; the current median sits about 19% 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 AL8 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 2020 (+28.5% on the year before); the weakest, 2021 (−17.1%). Single-year swings like these are why the annualised table below matters more than any one year's headline.
Detached, semi, terraced, flat: four markets in one
A single median hides the split beneath it. Sales of terraced homes dominate the record here, 35% of the typed total. A detached home currently trades at £948,800 against £296,200 for a flat, 3.2 times the price.
Median by property type, AL8
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 | £948,800 | 14 | 1,230 |
| Semi-detached | £680,500 | 22 | 1,737 |
| Terraced | £466,800 | 30 | 2,235 |
| Flats | £296,200 | 14 | 1,252 |
Growth per year, over one to twenty years
| Period | Cash, per year | Real terms, per year |
|---|---|---|
| 1 year (since 2025) | +12.8% | +10.1% |
| 5 years (since 2021) | +4.8% | 0.0% |
| 6 years (since 2020) | +0.8% | −3.5% |
| 10 years (since 2016) | +2.8% | −0.6% |
| 20 years (since 2006) | +3.7% | +0.9% |
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.
Sales activity in AL8
Sales per year, counted
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 144 AL8 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 239 sales a year before the financial crisis and 150 a year over the last five. Watch the volume as closely as the price. Thin years make jumpy medians, where one street's sales can move the figure, and the newest year is always incomplete because registrations trail completions by weeks or months.
Reading the AL8 market
This is a thin market: 144 sales in the last twelve months of data. With that few transactions, one street selling well (or one block of cheap transfers) can move the median, so read the year lines as a range rather than a verdict. The record here is jumpy: year-on-year moves of ten per cent or more are common in the chart above, mostly a function of which homes happened to sell rather than the market lurching.
Rents around AL8
For renting purposes AL8 sits in Welwyn Hatfield. The ONS average private rent there is £1,482 a month (May 2026). Size sets most of the rent: one-beds average £1,041 a month here against £2,294 for four or more bedrooms.
Average monthly rent by size, Welwyn Hatfield
ONS Price Index of Private Rents, May 2026.
Against the £558,200 median purchase price, a rent of £1,482 a month (£17,784 a year) works out at a 3.2% 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 AL8 (Lemsford)
Is AL8 (Lemsford) a good place to buy a house?
How much did a house sell for in AL8 (Lemsford)?
Are property prices falling in AL8 (Lemsford)?
Where do AL8 prices go next?
Nobody can tell you that, and this page will not pretend to. What the record shows: the median is up 27% over five years in cash and flat 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 AL8 right now
Everything above is what homes in AL8 sold for. The live side of the market holds 121 homes at the moment, listed by 5 agents publishing to HomesIndex, at a typical asking price 21% above the AL8 median sold price.
Set against 144 registered sales in the last twelve months, the 121 homes on the market here are roughly 10 months of supply at last year's pace, and more in reality, since only agents who publish to HomesIndex are counted. A queue that long means homes are being offered faster than they are taken, and the pricing power sits with the buyer.
12% of current listings sit under the prices comparable homes actually fetched. Each listing is compared with recent recorded sales of similar homes nearby.
"Under comparable sales" compares each asking price with what similar homes nearby actually sold for. It is a starting point for a conversation, not a valuation. Always look at the home itself.
See every AL8 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.
What is for sale against what sells in AL8
Flats are 22% of what sold in AL8 over 2024 and 2025 but only 0% of what is listed now: they sell, and there are few to choose from, so a good one is unlikely to hang about.
| Type | Share of homes for sale now | Share of sales, 2024 and 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Detached | 33% | 17% |
| Semi-detached | 32% | 28% |
| Terraced | 35% | 34% |
| Flats | 0% | 22% |
The listing shares count homes published to HomesIndex by agents today; the sales shares count HM Land Registry registrations. Listings typed only as "house", "bungalow" or similar, which the register would file under one of the four forms, are excluded from the listing side (12 of them here).
When homes in AL8 change hands
Across the 876 sales completed in AL8 from 2021 to 2025, June was the busiest month for completions (11.3% of the total) and April the quietest (4.7%). The gap between the two is wide enough to plan around: completion follows the agreed sale by weeks, so the busiest month for completions points to deals done earlier, and a seller wanting several bidders should list ahead of it.
Sales by month, 2021 to 2025
| Month | Sales | Share |
|---|---|---|
| January | 58 | 6.6% |
| February | 66 | 7.5% |
| March | 81 | 9.2% |
| April | 41 | 4.7% |
| May | 72 | 8.2% |
| June | 99 | 11.3% |
| July | 69 | 7.9% |
| August | 88 | 10.0% |
| September | 71 | 8.1% |
| October | 80 | 9.1% |
| November | 76 | 8.7% |
| December | 75 | 8.6% |
The price of an extra bedroom in AL
Real sold prices by size across the AL area, straight 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%) |
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
AL8 ranks 1 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.
Winners and losers across the AL area, five years
The biggest risers and fallers in cash terms; every row links to that district's report.
Inside AL8, 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 AL8 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 | £650,000 | +11% |
| AL3 | £622,500 | +5% |
| AL1 | £560,000 | +6% |
| AL8 (this report) | £558,200 | +27% |
| AL9 | £540,000 | -7% |
| AL2 | £530,000 | +2% |
| AL7 | £401,200 | +8% |
| AL10 | £367,500 | +9% |
Selling a home in AL8? Price it on the evidence
Start from what homes here actually sold for, not an estimate. Before booking a house valuation or flat valuation in AL8, use the average prices map for a rough value: zoom from AL8's shading down to the sold homes on your own street. The figures above are every recorded AL8 sale; agents price with this same Land Registry record, and now you have it too.
Dig further
The AI answers from the same Land Registry data this report is built on, already scoped to AL8. Free after a one click sign in.
The live map plots every individual AL8 sale at its exact address, and the average prices map zooms from neighbourhood shading to single homes. For a specific question, the report tool writes a custom answer, and any sale's mortgage and rent calculator 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.