Local market reports › BL
Bolton market report BL
The BL (Bolton) house price history in full, 1995 to 2026, in cash and in today's money. Everything below comes from 184,955 sales recorded by HM Land Registry in the BL postcode area (Bolton) since 1995, real completion prices from real purchases, alongside the ONS's current rent figures. No valuations, no estimates, no asking prices.
Sales recorded to July 2026; rents are ONS figures for May 2026. The page rebuilds with each monthly release.
In short: a typical the BL postcode area (Bolton) home changed hands for £210,000 in 2026 (median of 1,807 registered sales, up 17% on five years earlier), with the mean at £242,300, and by floor area homes here have averaged about £2,540 per square metre over the last five years. Source: 184,955 completed sales on the HM Land Registry record since 1995, updated with each monthly release. No valuations, no asking prices.
BL is the postcode area centred on Bolton, taking in 10 districts. Figures this wide smooth over big local differences, so use the district reports below for anywhere specific.
Where BL 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.
BL sold prices: where the market stands
1,807 sales were registered in BL in 2026, and the middle one of them, the median, went for £210,000. The mean works out at £242,300, well clear of it: the mark of a market where a small number of costly homes drag the average upwards.
House prices per square metre in BL
By floor space, homes in BL have sold for about £2,540 per square metre on average over the last five years: the like-for-like measure that lets you compare a small flat with a large house, from the Energy Performance Certificate floor areas behind each sale.
England and Wales as a whole trade at a £285,000 median, leaving BL 26% below the national figure.
A typical BL home, priced year by year (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 | £210,000 | £210,000 | 1,807 |
| 2025 | £220,000 | £225,261 | 4,953 |
| 2024 | £210,000 | £223,273 | 4,687 |
| 2023 | £190,000 | £208,764 | 4,281 |
| 2022 | £190,000 | £222,797 | 5,644 |
| 2021 | £180,000 | £227,903 | 6,483 |
| 2020 | £160,000 | £207,603 | 4,799 |
| 2019 | £148,000 | £193,993 | 5,431 |
| 2018 | £143,000 | £190,622 | 5,494 |
| 2017 | £136,000 | £185,490 | 5,653 |
| 2016 | £132,700 | £185,649 | 5,706 |
| 2015 | £127,500 | £180,158 | 5,244 |
| 2014 | £122,500 | £173,788 | 5,078 |
| 2013 | £116,000 | £166,912 | 4,306 |
| 2012 | £115,000 | £169,266 | 3,582 |
| 2011 | £110,000 | £166,058 | 3,824 |
| 2010 | £118,000 | £185,054 | 3,556 |
| 2009 | £117,500 | £188,882 | 3,421 |
| 2008 | £120,000 | £196,705 | 4,261 |
| 2007 | £125,000 | £212,035 | 8,302 |
| 2006 | £118,000 | £204,833 | 7,887 |
| 2005 | £108,000 | £192,196 | 6,921 |
| 2004 | £94,000 | £170,722 | 8,842 |
| 2003 | £73,000 | £134,484 | 8,800 |
| 2002 | £60,000 | £112,889 | 9,386 |
| 2001 | £55,000 | £105,735 | 8,336 |
| 2000 | £50,000 | £98,125 | 7,063 |
| 1999 | £49,000 | £97,654 | 6,940 |
| 1998 | £45,000 | £90,836 | 6,428 |
| 1997 | £45,000 | £92,286 | 6,416 |
| 1996 | £41,500 | £87,522 | 6,021 |
| 1995 | £41,200 | £89,562 | 5,403 |
In cash terms the typical BL home went from £41,200 in 1995 to £210,000 in 2026, roughly 5 times the price. Adjusted for inflation it still comes to a real rise of roughly 134%, 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 8% below it, so a peak-time purchase has yet to recover its real value.
Year-on-year change in the BL 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 2004 (+28.8% on the year before); the weakest, 2011 (−6.8%). 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) | −4.5% | −6.8% |
| 5 years (since 2021) | +3.1% | −1.6% |
| 10 years (since 2016) | +4.7% | +1.2% |
| 20 years (since 2006) | +2.9% | +0.1% |
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 terraced homes dominate the record here, 43% of the typed total. A detached home currently trades at £360,000 against £120,000 for a flat, 3.0 times the price.
Median by property type, BL
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 | £360,000 | 372 | 35,096 |
| Semi-detached | £230,000 | 609 | 56,900 |
| Terraced | £170,000 | 674 | 80,424 |
| Flats | £120,000 | 152 | 12,535 |
Sales activity in BL
The year-by-year sales count
Annual recorded sales. The post-2008 trough is the financial crisis; treat the final bar as provisional while registrations catch up.
The monthly pulse, last five years
Sales as they reached the register each month. Expect the seasonal sawtooth, and discount the newest months while late entries land.
BL recorded 3,956 sales in the last twelve months of data. Like most of England and Wales, turnover never fully recovered from 2008: the market here averaged 8,192 sales a year before the financial crisis and 4,274 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.
What homes rent for around BL
The local authority for BL is Bolton, the local authority covering most of the BL area (parts fall under Bury, where rents differ), and its ONS average private rent currently stands at £883 a month (May 2026 figures). A one-bed averages £646 a month here and a four-or-more-bed £1,433, so size does most of the work in setting the rent.
Average monthly rent by size, Bolton
ONS Price Index of Private Rents, May 2026.
£883 a month is £10,596 a year, which against the £210,000 median sold price makes a gross yield of 5.0%. 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.
What people ask about BL (Bolton)
Is BL (Bolton) a good place to buy a house?
How much did a house sell for in BL (Bolton)?
Are property prices falling in BL (Bolton)?
Will BL prices rise from here?
Nobody can tell you that, and this page will not pretend to. What the record shows: the median is up 17% over five years in cash but down 8% 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.
BL's current homes for sale
Everything above is what homes in BL sold for. This is what you could actually buy today: 1,497 homes currently on the market from 8 agents publishing to HomesIndex, at a typical asking price 17% above the BL median sold price.
24% of what is on the market here is asking below what comparable homes actually sold for. The comparison behind each listing uses recent recorded sales of similar homes close by.
"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 BL 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.
Bedroom by bedroom: BL prices by size
The Land Registry record, split by size: what each kind of home actually sold for across the BL area. How much a size step costs is a local fact: the third-bedroom premium runs from about a quarter to nearly four fifths depending on the area, and national rules of thumb miss it.
| Type | 1 bed | 2 bed | 3 bed | 4 bed | 5 bed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Detached | — | £279,995 | £365,000 (+30%) | £530,500 (+45%) | £775,000 (+46%) |
| Semi-detached | £180,000 | £209,000 (+16%) | £255,000 (+22%) | £337,500 (+32%) | £444,000 (+32%) |
| Terraced | £131,000 | £153,500 (+17%) | £180,000 (+17%) | £245,000 (+36%) | £358,000 (+46%) |
| Flat | £106,000 | £135,000 (+27%) | £208,500 (+54%) | — | — |
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
The spread across the BL area is the point: the same five years treated these districts very differently.
Five-year change in the median, BL area districts
The districts that gained and lost most in cash terms, each row linking through to its own report.
District by district
The area medians above hide a lot. Here is every BL district with enough sales to measure, dearest first; each links to its own full report.
| District | Median (2026) | 5-year | Sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| BL7 Belmont, Bromley Cross | £305,000 | +17% | 87 |
| BL0 Ramsbottom, Edenfield | £262,500 | +12% | 102 |
| BL8 Bury centre, Brandlesholme | £250,000 | +14% | 189 |
| BL5 Over Hulton, Westhoughton | £230,000 | +19% | 147 |
| BL6 Blackrod, Horwich | £215,000 | +8% | 201 |
| BL9 Bury centre, Heap | £210,000 | +22% | 246 |
| BL2 Bolton centre, Ainsworth | £205,000 | +24% | 207 |
| BL1 Bolton centre, Smithills | £188,000 | +25% | 281 |
| BL4 Farnworth, Kearsley Moses Gate | £186,000 | +33% | 143 |
| BL3 Bolton centre, Little Lever | £181,500 | +30% | 204 |
Before you sell in BL: what the record supports
Start from what homes here actually sold for, not an estimate. Before booking a house valuation or flat valuation in BL, use the average prices map for a rough value: zoom from BL's shading down to the sold homes on your own street. The figures above are every recorded BL 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 BL.
Go deeper
Behind the answers sits the same Land Registry record as this page, with BL already set as the subject. Free, one click sign in.
The live map plots every individual BL 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.
Method, briefly: HM Land Registry Price Paid Data (Crown copyright, OGL v3.0) supplies every sale, geocoded to address level; CPIH from the ONS restates prices in today's money; ONS local-authority figures supply the rents. Medians of real sales, not valuations. No part of this page is financial advice.