Local market reports › BL area › BL3 › BL3 1
Bolton centre market report BL3 1, Bolton
The BL3 1 (Bolton centre) house price history in full, 1995 to 2026, in cash and in today's money. Underneath every chart here sit 5,135 registered sales in BL3 1 (Bolton) 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 2026; rents are ONS figures for May 2026. The page rebuilds with each monthly release.
In short: the middle 2026 sale in BL3 1 (Bolton) came in at £202,500, out of 60 registered, up 19% on five years earlier, and the mean stands at £210,400, and by floor area homes here have averaged about £2,370 per square metre over the last five years. The record behind it is 5,135 completed sales lodged with HM Land Registry since 1995, monthly refreshed, with no valuations or asking prices anywhere in the figures.
BL3 1 is one sector of BL3 (Bolton): a handful of streets, and the most local view the sold record can give. The price of that locality is lumpier charts, because each year's median rests on fewer sales.
Where BL3 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 buyers actually paid in BL3 1
Across 60 registered 2026 sales, the typical (median) BL3 1 home went for £202,500. The mean is £210,400, almost on top of it, so sales bunch tightly around the typical price.
House prices per square metre in BL3 1
A square metre of BL3 1 home has cost about £2,370 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.
Against a national (England and Wales) median of £285,000, BL3 1 runs 29% below it.
The price of a typical BL3 1 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 | £202,500 | £202,500 | 60 |
| 2025 | £220,000 | £225,261 | 137 |
| 2024 | £200,000 | £212,641 | 134 |
| 2023 | £185,000 | £203,270 | 113 |
| 2022 | £180,000 | £211,071 | 145 |
| 2021 | £170,000 | £215,242 | 161 |
| 2020 | £150,000 | £194,628 | 137 |
| 2019 | £155,000 | £203,168 | 156 |
| 2018 | £138,000 | £183,957 | 149 |
| 2017 | £135,000 | £184,126 | 151 |
| 2016 | £125,000 | £174,876 | 162 |
| 2015 | £117,800 | £166,451 | 146 |
| 2014 | £110,000 | £156,054 | 140 |
| 2013 | £104,000 | £149,646 | 129 |
| 2012 | £96,000 | £141,300 | 92 |
| 2011 | £104,500 | £157,755 | 97 |
| 2010 | £102,800 | £161,217 | 98 |
| 2009 | £108,000 | £173,611 | 110 |
| 2008 | £132,500 | £217,195 | 114 |
| 2007 | £122,000 | £206,946 | 303 |
| 2006 | £110,500 | £191,814 | 244 |
| 2005 | £120,000 | £213,552 | 217 |
| 2004 | £100,000 | £181,620 | 275 |
| 2003 | £70,000 | £128,957 | 217 |
| 2002 | £54,500 | £102,541 | 246 |
| 2001 | £49,200 | £94,584 | 232 |
| 2000 | £47,500 | £93,219 | 186 |
| 1999 | £45,000 | £89,683 | 182 |
| 1998 | £41,100 | £82,963 | 143 |
| 1997 | £42,000 | £86,134 | 169 |
| 1996 | £39,000 | £82,249 | 156 |
| 1995 | £38,000 | £82,606 | 134 |
In cash terms the typical BL3 1 home went from £38,000 in 1995 to £202,500 in 2026, roughly 5 times the price. Even after inflation that is a real rise of about 145%: homes here genuinely became dearer, not merely more expensive on paper. In inflation-adjusted terms the high-water mark was 2025. The market now sits about 10% below it, so a peak-time purchase has yet to recover its real value.
Year-on-year change in the BL3 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 2004 (+42.9% on the year before); the weakest, 2009 (−18.5%). 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) | −8.0% | −10.1% |
| 5 years (since 2021) | +3.6% | −1.2% |
| 10 years (since 2016) | +4.9% | +1.5% |
| 20 years (since 2006) | +3.1% | +0.3% |
The table annualises median growth over each period, with the real column deflated by ONS CPIH. Smoothing hides the cycle (see the chart above for it), and none of this forecasts: it is the record.
Sales activity in BL3 1
Sales per year, counted
Recorded sales per year. The dip after 2008 is the financial crisis; the last bar is still filling in as recent sales get registered.
The register shows 60 BL3 1 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 240 sales a year before the financial crisis and 118 a year over the last five. Price without volume misleads: a median built on few sales jumps around, and one street can tilt it. Keep in mind too that the latest year is still filling in, since sales reach the register weeks or months after completion.
The rental side of BL3 1
BL3 1 falls under Bolton, where the ONS puts the average private rent at £883 a month (May 2026 figures). The spread runs from £646 a month for a typical one-bed to £1,433 at four-plus bedrooms, which is size doing most of the pricing.
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 £202,500 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.
How BL3 1 trades
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. Against the BL3 district median, BL3 1 sits 12% higher, marking it as a dearer pocket of the district.
BL3 1 (Bolton centre): the questions that come up
Is BL3 1 (Bolton centre) a good place to buy a house?
How much did a house sell for in BL3 1 (Bolton centre)?
Are property prices falling in BL3 1 (Bolton centre)?
Real searches this page gets asked
A lot of searches that reach this page are full postcodes, BL3 1NG among them. A full postcode is a street segment of a dozen or so homes, below even sector level; the medians on this page are the context, and the live map shows every recorded sale at those exact addresses.
Search phrases quoted verbatim from Google Search Console for this site (last 16 months); each is answered from the page's own Land Registry figures.
What happens to BL3 1 prices now?
The record answers a different question than "what happens next": the median is up 19% over five years in cash but down 6% after inflation. Put the volume chart beside the price chart before drawing conclusions, and allow for the register's lag behind actual completions.
What you could buy in BL3 now
This is what you could actually buy today: 134 homes currently on the market from 8 agents publishing to HomesIndex.
These cover the whole BL3 district, not just BL3 1: live asking prices are collected per district.
Of everything listed here, 23% asks less than the sold record of comparable homes. 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 BL3 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.
Moving up a bedroom in BL: the cost
What homes of each size actually sold for across the BL 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 | — | £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%) | — | — |
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. Where too few homes exist to say anything meaningful, the cell is 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.
Other sectors in BL3
Sector boundaries hide real price steps. The rest of BL3, one report each:
| Sector | Median (latest) | Sales that year |
|---|---|---|
| BL3 2 | £151,000 | 29 |
| BL3 3 | £165,000 | 51 |
| BL3 4 | £242,000 | 51 |
| BL3 5 | £160,000 | 5 |
| BL3 6 | £132,500 | 8 |
Zoom out to the full BL3 district report for the type split, monthly volumes and how BL3 compares with its neighbours.
Thinking of selling in BL3 1? Get a rough value first
Start from what homes here actually sold for, not an estimate. Before booking a house valuation or flat valuation in BL3 1, use the average prices map for a rough value: zoom from BL3 1's shading down to the sold homes on your own street. The figures above are every recorded BL3 1 sale; agents price with this same Land Registry record, and now you have it too.
Estate agents working BL3 1: the featured spot on this report is free for founding agents, one per district. Claim BL3 1.
Go deeper
Behind the answers sits the same Land Registry record as this page, with BL3 1 already set as the subject. Free, one click sign in.
The live map plots every individual BL3 1 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.