Local market reports › SE area › SE23 › SE23 1
Forest Hill market report SE23 1, London
The SE23 1 (Forest Hill) house price history in full, 1995 to 2026, in cash and in today's money. Everything below comes from 5,205 sales recorded by HM Land Registry in SE23 1 (London) since 1995, real completion prices from real purchases, alongside the ONS's current rent figures. No valuations, no estimates, no asking prices.
Covers registered sales to 2026 and ONS rents for May 2026. Refreshed monthly as new sales reach the register.
In short: the typical home in SE23 1 (London) sold for £527,500 in 2026, the median of 36 registered sales, up 11% on five years earlier. The mean was £648,300, and by floor area homes here have averaged about £6,940 per square metre over the last five years. The figures cover 5,205 sales recorded by HM Land Registry since 1995 and refresh with each monthly release: completed sale prices, not valuations or asking prices.
A postcode sector like SE23 1 is a single group of streets within SE23 (London), the finest slice the public record supports. Fewer sales stand behind each figure than at district level, so the lines jump about more.
Where SE23 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 SE23 1
The 2026 median for SE23 1 is £527,500, taken from 36 registered sales. The mean, which is what most sites call the "average house price", is £648,300, 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 SE23 1
Per square metre, SE23 1 homes have averaged around £6,940 over the last five years of sales. The floor areas behind the figure come from Energy Performance Certificates, and the by-the-metre view is the fair comparison across home sizes.
England and Wales as a whole trade at a £285,000 median, leaving SE23 1 85% above the national figure.
The price of a typical SE23 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 | £527,500 | £527,500 | 36 |
| 2025 | £535,000 | £547,793 | 147 |
| 2024 | £485,000 | £515,655 | 119 |
| 2023 | £485,000 | £532,897 | 96 |
| 2022 | £517,800 | £607,180 | 178 |
| 2021 | £475,000 | £601,411 | 163 |
| 2020 | £503,800 | £653,691 | 122 |
| 2019 | £495,000 | £648,827 | 142 |
| 2018 | £500,000 | £666,509 | 111 |
| 2017 | £488,500 | £666,265 | 140 |
| 2016 | £450,000 | £629,554 | 162 |
| 2015 | £422,000 | £596,286 | 169 |
| 2014 | £400,500 | £568,179 | 183 |
| 2013 | £305,000 | £438,865 | 161 |
| 2012 | £275,000 | £404,766 | 169 |
| 2011 | £250,000 | £377,404 | 121 |
| 2010 | £250,000 | £392,064 | 168 |
| 2009 | £238,700 | £383,712 | 94 |
| 2008 | £252,500 | £413,901 | 113 |
| 2007 | £264,500 | £448,666 | 250 |
| 2006 | £218,000 | £378,420 | 226 |
| 2005 | £195,000 | £347,021 | 171 |
| 2004 | £191,000 | £346,893 | 222 |
| 2003 | £165,000 | £303,970 | 227 |
| 2002 | £160,000 | £301,039 | 241 |
| 2001 | £127,500 | £245,112 | 207 |
| 2000 | £98,500 | £193,306 | 196 |
| 1999 | £84,500 | £168,404 | 218 |
| 1998 | £77,000 | £155,430 | 185 |
| 1997 | £69,200 | £141,915 | 178 |
| 1996 | £59,400 | £125,272 | 170 |
| 1995 | £55,000 | £119,562 | 120 |
In cash terms the typical SE23 1 home went from £55,000 in 1995 to £527,500 in 2026, roughly 10 times the price. Even after inflation that is a real rise of about 341%: homes here genuinely became dearer, not merely more expensive on paper. Measured in today's money the market peaked in 2018; the current median sits about 21% below that. Someone who bought at the 2018 peak has not yet seen that price back in real terms.
Year-on-year change in the SE23 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 2014 (+31.3% on the year before); the weakest, 2023 (−6.3%). Single-year swings like these are why the annualised table below matters more than any one year's headline.
The long view: annualised growth
| Period | Cash, per year | Real terms, per year |
|---|---|---|
| 1 years (since 2025) | −1.4% | −3.7% |
| 5 years (since 2021) | +2.1% | −2.6% |
| 10 years (since 2016) | +1.6% | −1.8% |
| 20 years (since 2006) | +4.5% | +1.7% |
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.
The turnover behind the prices
The year-by-year sales count
Recorded sales per year. The dip after 2008 is the financial crisis; the last bar is still filling in as recent sales get registered.
Over the last twelve months of data, 36 sales completed in SE23 1. Like most of England and Wales, turnover never fully recovered from 2008: the market here averaged 218 sales a year before the financial crisis and 115 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.
Reading the SE23 1 market
This is a thin market: 36 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 rental side of SE23 1
SE23 1 falls under Lewisham, where the ONS puts the average private rent at £1,821 a month (May 2026 figures). The spread runs from £1,450 a month for a typical one-bed to £2,705 at four-plus bedrooms, which is size doing most of the pricing.
Average monthly rent by size, Lewisham
ONS Price Index of Private Rents, May 2026.
£1,821 a month is £21,852 a year, which against the £527,500 median sold price makes a gross yield of 4.1%. 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.
SE23 1 (Forest Hill): the questions that come up
How much did a house sell for in SE23 1 (Forest Hill)?
Are property prices falling in SE23 1 (Forest Hill)?
Is SE23 1 (Forest Hill) a good place to buy a house?
Real searches this page gets asked
A lot of searches that reach this page are full postcodes, SE23 1PZ 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 SE23 1 prices now?
Nobody can tell you that, and this page will not pretend to. What the record shows: the median is up 11% over five years in cash but down 12% 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 SE23 right now
The live side of the market holds 42 homes at the moment, listed by 8 agents publishing to HomesIndex.
These cover the whole SE23 district, not just SE23 1: live asking prices are collected per district.
31% of current listings sit under the prices comparable homes actually fetched. Each listing is compared with recent recorded sales of similar homes nearby.
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 SE23 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.
Moving up a bedroom in SE: the cost
The Land Registry record, split by size: what each kind of home actually sold for across the SE area. 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 | — | £516,250 | £795,000 (+54%) | £1,325,000 (+67%) | £2,025,000 (+53%) |
| Semi-detached | £375,000 | £480,000 (+28%) | £613,025 (+28%) | £870,000 (+42%) | £1,390,000 (+60%) |
| Terraced | £405,000 | £475,000 (+17%) | £630,000 (+33%) | £878,697 (+39%) | £1,275,000 (+45%) |
| Flat | £345,000 | £465,000 (+35%) | £645,000 (+39%) | £885,000 (+37%) | — |
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. Where too few homes exist to say anything meaningful, the cell is blank.
The risers and the fallers
The spread across the SE area is the point: the same five years treated these districts very differently.
Winners and losers across the SE area, five years
Cash-terms risers and fallers across the area; click any row for that district's full report.
Other sectors in SE23
Sector boundaries hide real price steps. The rest of SE23, one report each:
| Sector | Median (latest) | Sales that year |
|---|---|---|
| SE23 2 | £500,000 | 58 |
| SE23 3 | £460,000 | 61 |
Zoom out to the full SE23 district report for the type split, monthly volumes and how SE23 compares with its neighbours.
Selling in SE23 1? Start from the sold record
The sold record beats any estimate as a starting point. Before a house valuation or flat valuation in SE23 1, open the average prices map and zoom from the SE23 1 shading down to the sold homes on your own street. Every recorded SE23 1 sale is on this page; the same Land Registry record is what agents price from, and it is now in your hands.
For local estate agents: each district report carries one featured-agent spot, free while founding places last. Claim SE23 1.
Take it further
The AI answers from the same Land Registry data this report is built on, already scoped to SE23 1. Free after a one click sign in.
The live map plots every individual SE23 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.
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.