Local market reports › BL area › BL2
Bolton centre market report BL2, Bolton
The BL2 (Bolton centre) house price history in full, 1995 to 2026, in cash and in today's money. Every figure on this page comes from the public record: 20,150 sales registered with HM Land Registry in BL2 (Bolton) 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.
Covers registered sales to July 2026 and ONS rents for May 2026. Refreshed monthly as new sales reach the register.
In short: the typical home in BL2 (Bolton) sold for £205,000 in 2026, the median of 207 registered sales, up 24% on five years earlier. The mean was £220,800, and by floor area homes here have averaged about £2,490 per square metre over the last five years. The figures cover 20,150 sales recorded by HM Land Registry since 1995 and refresh with each monthly release: completed sale prices, not valuations or asking prices.
BL2 is the postcode district covering Bolton centre, Ainsworth, Bradley Fold in Bolton. 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 BL2 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.
The going rate for a home in BL2
Take the 207 registered 2026 sales in BL2 and the middle price, the median, is £205,000. The mean lands at £220,800, modestly above it, the usual shape of a market with an expensive tail.
Price per square metre in BL2
A square metre of BL2 home has cost about £2,490 on average across the last five years of sales, using the floor area on each home's Energy Performance Certificate: the measure that puts a studio and a five-bed on the same footing.
England and Wales as a whole trade at a £285,000 median, leaving BL2 28% below the national figure.
The price of a typical BL2 home, 1995 to 2026
One line records the median as paid; the other restates every year in today's money via ONS CPIH, the honest measure of getting dearer. Hover for year figures, click the legend to isolate a line.
See this chart as a table
| Year | Median (cash) | Median (today's £) | Sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | £205,000 | £205,000 | 207 |
| 2025 | £210,000 | £215,022 | 596 |
| 2024 | £206,600 | £219,658 | 500 |
| 2023 | £185,000 | £203,270 | 496 |
| 2022 | £187,500 | £219,865 | 595 |
| 2021 | £165,800 | £209,924 | 716 |
| 2020 | £145,000 | £188,140 | 585 |
| 2019 | £140,000 | £183,506 | 596 |
| 2018 | £141,000 | £187,956 | 637 |
| 2017 | £130,000 | £177,307 | 595 |
| 2016 | £125,000 | £174,876 | 658 |
| 2015 | £122,100 | £172,527 | 570 |
| 2014 | £120,000 | £170,241 | 511 |
| 2013 | £115,000 | £165,474 | 385 |
| 2012 | £108,000 | £158,963 | 341 |
| 2011 | £105,000 | £158,510 | 437 |
| 2010 | £105,000 | £164,667 | 371 |
| 2009 | £107,400 | £172,646 | 373 |
| 2008 | £115,000 | £188,509 | 439 |
| 2007 | £120,000 | £203,553 | 962 |
| 2006 | £107,000 | £185,738 | 746 |
| 2005 | £95,000 | £169,062 | 775 |
| 2004 | £84,000 | £152,560 | 913 |
| 2003 | £63,000 | £116,061 | 996 |
| 2002 | £56,500 | £106,304 | 1,002 |
| 2001 | £51,000 | £98,045 | 895 |
| 2000 | £47,000 | £92,238 | 713 |
| 1999 | £47,800 | £95,263 | 793 |
| 1998 | £45,500 | £91,845 | 710 |
| 1997 | £45,200 | £92,696 | 712 |
| 1996 | £44,000 | £92,794 | 726 |
| 1995 | £43,000 | £93,475 | 599 |
In cash terms the typical BL2 home went from £43,000 in 1995 to £205,000 in 2026, roughly 5 times the price. Inflation explains only part of it: in today's money the rise is still about 119%, a genuine increase in what a home here costs. In inflation-adjusted terms the high-water mark was 2022. The market now sits about 7% below it, so a peak-time purchase has yet to recover its real value.
Year-on-year change in the BL2 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 (+33.3% on the year before); the weakest, 2009 (−6.6%). 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, 43% of the typed total. A detached home currently trades at £320,000 against £170,000 for a flat, 1.9 times the price.
Median by property type, BL2
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 | £320,000 | 37 | 3,169 |
| Semi-detached | £212,500 | 92 | 7,703 |
| Terraced | £160,000 | 71 | 8,656 |
| Flats | £170,000 | 7 | 622 |
Annualised returns
| Period | Cash, per year | Real terms, per year |
|---|---|---|
| 1 years (since 2025) | −2.4% | −4.7% |
| 5 years (since 2021) | +4.3% | −0.5% |
| 10 years (since 2016) | +5.1% | +1.6% |
| 20 years (since 2006) | +3.3% | +0.5% |
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.
Transaction volumes
How many homes change hands
Each bar is a year's recorded sales. 2008's dip is the financial crisis, and the newest bar always grows for a while as late registrations arrive.
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.
BL2 recorded 477 sales in the last twelve months of data. Like most of England and Wales, turnover never fully recovered from 2008: the market here averaged 875 sales a year before the financial crisis and 479 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 BL2
For renting purposes BL2 sits in Bolton. The ONS average private rent there is £883 a month (May 2026). 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 £205,000 median sold price makes a gross yield of 5.2%. 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.
Reading the BL2 market
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.
Asked and answered: BL2 (Bolton centre)
Are property prices falling in BL2 (Bolton centre)?
Is BL2 (Bolton centre) a good place to buy a house?
How much did a house sell for in BL2 (Bolton centre)?
Are BL2 prices heading up or down?
Prediction is not this page's business. Its business is the record, which says: the median is up 24% over five years in cash and flat 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 BL2 now
Everything above is what homes in BL2 sold for. This is what you could actually buy today: 251 homes currently on the market from 7 agents publishing to HomesIndex, at a typical asking price 7% above the BL2 median sold price.
Of everything listed here, 23% asks less than the sold record of comparable homes. Every listing is measured against recent recorded sales of similar nearby homes.
The "under comparable sales" label measures each asking price against real nearby sales of similar homes: an opening position for a conversation rather than a valuation. The home itself still needs looking at.
See every BL2 home for sale on the map →
These asking prices come live from estate agents publishing feeds to HomesIndex, refreshed each Monday and Thursday. They are a sample of the market rather than its entirety, and an asking price is not a sale price.
The price of an extra bedroom in BL
What homes of each size actually sold for across the BL area, 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 | — | £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%) | — | — |
Four years of recorded sales, split by built form and bedroom count. The register does not state bedrooms, so sizes come from each home's EPC record and a few homes will land one size out. Blank cells mean too few homes for the figure to mean anything.
The risers and the fallers
BL2 ranks 4 of 10 in the BL 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 BL area, five years
Cash-terms risers and fallers across the area; click any row for that district's full report.
Inside BL2, sector by sector
The next slice down is the postcode sector: a group of streets, each with its own report. Two sectors a short walk apart can trade at sharply different prices.
| Sector | Median (latest) | Sales that year |
|---|---|---|
| BL2 1 | £205,000 | 17 |
| BL2 2 | £163,000 | 31 |
| BL2 3 | £265,000 | 46 |
| BL2 4 | £260,000 | 29 |
| BL2 5 | £185,000 | 29 |
| BL2 6 | £170,000 | 55 |
How BL2 compares nearby
Same city, different markets. The neighbouring districts of the BL area, dearest first:
| District | Median | 5-year |
|---|---|---|
| BL7 | £305,000 | +17% |
| BL0 | £262,500 | +12% |
| BL8 | £250,000 | +14% |
| BL5 | £230,000 | +19% |
| BL6 | £215,000 | +8% |
| BL9 | £210,000 | +22% |
| BL2 (this report) | £205,000 | +24% |
| BL1 | £188,000 | +25% |
| BL4 | £186,000 | +33% |
| BL3 | £181,500 | +30% |
Selling in BL2? Start from the sold record
Start from what homes here actually sold for, not an estimate. Before booking a house valuation or flat valuation in BL2, use the average prices map for a rough value: zoom from BL2's shading down to the sold homes on your own street. The figures above are every recorded BL2 sale; agents price with this same Land Registry record, and now you have it too.
For local estate agents: each district report carries one featured-agent spot, free while founding places last. Claim BL2.
Keep digging
Answers come from the same Land Registry data behind this report, and the AI knows you are asking about BL2. Free, with a one click sign in.
Two maps carry on from here: every BL2 sale at its exact address, and the average prices map from area shading down to single homes. The report tool answers a specific question in writing, and each sale's mortgage and rent calculator prices 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.