Local market reports › SE area › SE23 › SE23 2
Forest Hill market report SE23 2, London
The SE23 2 (Forest Hill) house price history in full, 1995 to 2026, in cash and in today's money. Everything below comes from 7,036 sales recorded by HM Land Registry in SE23 2 (London) 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 2026; rents are ONS figures for May 2026. The page rebuilds with each monthly release.
In short: a typical SE23 2 (London) home changed hands for £500,000 in 2026 (median of 58 registered sales, up 4% on five years earlier), with the mean at £617,600, and by floor area homes here have averaged about £6,630 per square metre over the last five years. Source: 7,036 completed sales on the HM Land Registry record since 1995, updated with each monthly release. No valuations, no asking prices.
SE23 2 is a postcode sector: one group of streets inside SE23 (London). This is as local as the public record gets, but sector medians move on fewer sales than a district's, so expect the lines to be lumpier.
Where SE23 2 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 SE23 2
In the SE23 2 property market, the 2026 median sale price is £500,000, from 58 registered sales; the mean, the "average house price" most sites quote, is £617,600, sitting well above it, the signature of a heavy top tail: a handful of expensive sales lifting the average.
What a square metre costs in SE23 2
A square metre of SE23 2 home has cost about £6,630 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.
For scale: the England and Wales median is £285,000, so SE23 2 trades 75% above the country as a whole.
A typical SE23 2 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 | £500,000 | £500,000 | 58 |
| 2025 | £540,000 | £552,913 | 167 |
| 2024 | £516,500 | £549,146 | 165 |
| 2023 | £482,000 | £529,600 | 143 |
| 2022 | £500,000 | £586,307 | 234 |
| 2021 | £482,500 | £610,907 | 225 |
| 2020 | £480,000 | £622,810 | 189 |
| 2019 | £450,000 | £589,842 | 178 |
| 2018 | £436,200 | £581,463 | 156 |
| 2017 | £490,000 | £668,311 | 165 |
| 2016 | £440,000 | £615,564 | 199 |
| 2015 | £392,000 | £553,896 | 224 |
| 2014 | £350,000 | £496,536 | 276 |
| 2013 | £280,000 | £402,892 | 261 |
| 2012 | £262,500 | £386,367 | 172 |
| 2011 | £250,000 | £377,404 | 161 |
| 2010 | £250,000 | £392,064 | 209 |
| 2009 | £230,000 | £369,727 | 103 |
| 2008 | £250,000 | £409,803 | 139 |
| 2007 | £235,000 | £398,625 | 326 |
| 2006 | £218,800 | £379,809 | 318 |
| 2005 | £187,000 | £332,785 | 266 |
| 2004 | £190,000 | £345,077 | 275 |
| 2003 | £173,200 | £319,076 | 280 |
| 2002 | £150,000 | £282,224 | 315 |
| 2001 | £130,000 | £249,918 | 271 |
| 2000 | £100,000 | £196,250 | 281 |
| 1999 | £80,000 | £159,436 | 339 |
| 1998 | £68,500 | £138,272 | 289 |
| 1997 | £65,500 | £134,327 | 271 |
| 1996 | £60,000 | £126,537 | 211 |
| 1995 | £58,000 | £126,083 | 170 |
In cash terms the typical SE23 2 home went from £58,000 in 1995 to £500,000 in 2026, roughly 9 times the price. Adjusted for inflation it still comes to a real rise of roughly 297%, so homes here got dearer in substance, not only in cash. The real-terms peak came in 2017, and today's median remains roughly 25% under it: a 2017 buyer is still waiting to get that price back in today's money.
Year-on-year change in the SE23 2 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 2001 (+30.0% on the year before); the weakest, 2018 (−11.0%). Single-year swings like these are why the annualised table below matters more than any one year's headline.
Annualised returns
| Period | Cash, per year | Real terms, per year |
|---|---|---|
| 1 years (since 2025) | −7.4% | −9.6% |
| 5 years (since 2021) | +0.7% | −3.9% |
| 10 years (since 2016) | +1.3% | −2.1% |
| 20 years (since 2006) | +4.2% | +1.4% |
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.
How many homes change hands in SE23 2
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 register shows 58 SE23 2 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 292 sales a year before the financial crisis and 153 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.
How SE23 2 trades
Only 58 sales completed here in the last twelve months of data, which makes SE23 2 a thin market. Each figure rests on few transactions, so single streets can swing the median and the charts deserve a sceptical squint.
Rents around SE23 2
The local authority for SE23 2 is Lewisham, and its ONS average private rent currently stands at £1,821 a month (May 2026 figures). Size sets most of the rent: one-beds average £1,450 a month here against £2,705 for four or more bedrooms.
Average monthly rent by size, Lewisham
ONS Price Index of Private Rents, May 2026.
Set against the £500,000 median sold price, £1,821 a month is £21,852 a year, a gross yield of 4.4%: gross, before letting costs, voids, maintenance and tax, so a ceiling rather than a promise. Rents are published at local-authority level, so nearby districts in the same authority share these figures.
Asked and answered: SE23 2 (Forest Hill)
Are property prices falling in SE23 2 (Forest Hill)?
Is SE23 2 (Forest Hill) a good place to buy a house?
How much did a house sell for in SE23 2 (Forest Hill)?
Where do SE23 2 prices go next?
No honest page predicts prices, so this one sticks to the record: the median is up 4% over five years in cash but down 18% after inflation. Anyone weighing a purchase should read the volume chart with the price chart, remembering that these are completed sales, registered weeks after the deals were actually struck.
What is for sale in SE23 right now
This is what you could actually buy today: 42 homes currently on the market from 8 agents publishing to HomesIndex.
These cover the whole SE23 district, not just SE23 2: live asking prices are collected per district.
Of everything listed here, 31% asks less than the sold record of comparable homes. Every listing is measured against recent recorded sales of similar nearby homes.
"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 SE23 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.
The price of an extra bedroom in SE
Real sold prices by size across the SE 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 | — | £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%) | — |
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. Sizes with too few homes to be meaningful are left blank.
The risers and the fallers
The spread across the SE area is the point: the same five years treated these districts very differently.
Five-year change in the median, SE area districts
The biggest risers and fallers in cash terms; every row links to that district's 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 1 | £527,500 | 36 |
| 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.
Thinking of selling in SE23 2? Get a rough value first
Ground the asking price in real sold prices first. The average prices map gives a rough value in a minute: start at SE23 2's shading and zoom to the sold homes on the street itself. Agents work from this same Land Registry record when they value; this page puts it in front of you before they arrive.
Estate agents working SE23 2: the featured spot on this report is free for founding agents, one per district. Claim SE23 2.
Keep digging
The AI answers from the same Land Registry data this report is built on, already scoped to SE23 2. Free after a one click sign in.
See every individual SE23 2 sale on the live map, mapped to the exact address, or zoom the average prices map from neighbourhood shading down to single homes. The report tool writes a custom answer to a specific question, and the mortgage and rent calculator on any sale 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.