Local market reports › W area › W8
Kensington market report W8, London
The W8 (Kensington) house price history in full, 1995 to 2026, in cash and in today's money. The raw material for this page is 13,035 HM Land Registry entries for W8 (London), going back to 1995: each an actual purchase at an actual price. Rents come from the ONS. Valuations, estimates and asking prices appear nowhere in it.
Sales data to August 2026. Rents: ONS, May 2026. Regenerated with every monthly data refresh. Page updated 19 October 2026.
In short: the middle 2026 sale in W8 (London) came in at £1,150,000, out of 72 registered, down 44% on five years earlier, and the mean stands at £2,238,600, and by floor area homes here have averaged about £17,800 per square metre over the last five years. The record behind it is 13,035 completed sales lodged with HM Land Registry since 1995, monthly refreshed, with no valuations or asking prices anywhere in the figures.
W8 is the postcode district covering Kensington in London. 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 W8 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.
W8 sold prices: where the market stands
The W8 median stands at £1,150,000 for 2026, built from 72 registered sales; the mean, the figure usually quoted as the "average house price", is £2,238,600, a long way above it, which tells you a few very expensive sales are pulling the average up.
House prices per square metre in W8
Per square metre, W8 homes have averaged around £17,800 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.
The national median for England and Wales is £285,000, which puts W8 304% above the country at large.
The price of a typical W8 home, 1995 to 2026
Year by year: the median as it was recorded, and the same figure brought into today's money with ONS CPIH, which is where "did homes get dearer" actually gets answered. Hover shows each year; the legend isolates a series.
See this chart as a table
| Year | Median (cash) | Median (today's £) | Sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | £1,150,000 | £1,150,000 | 72 |
| 2025 | £1,627,500 | £1,666,418 | 290 |
| 2024 | £1,700,000 | £1,807,449 | 265 |
| 2023 | £1,950,000 | £2,142,574 | 239 |
| 2022 | £1,900,000 | £2,227,967 | 327 |
| 2021 | £2,054,100 | £2,600,756 | 322 |
| 2020 | £1,855,000 | £2,406,901 | 206 |
| 2019 | £1,825,000 | £2,392,138 | 229 |
| 2018 | £2,030,000 | £2,706,028 | 241 |
| 2017 | £1,962,500 | £2,676,653 | 274 |
| 2016 | £1,750,000 | £2,448,267 | 263 |
| 2015 | £1,700,000 | £2,402,100 | 300 |
| 2014 | £1,575,000 | £2,234,413 | 359 |
| 2013 | £1,600,000 | £2,302,240 | 350 |
| 2012 | £1,350,000 | £1,987,031 | 301 |
| 2011 | £1,125,000 | £1,698,317 | 321 |
| 2010 | £968,500 | £1,518,857 | 334 |
| 2009 | £950,000 | £1,527,133 | 289 |
| 2008 | £950,000 | £1,557,251 | 265 |
| 2007 | £885,000 | £1,501,206 | 449 |
| 2006 | £725,000 | £1,258,507 | 615 |
| 2005 | £620,000 | £1,103,350 | 520 |
| 2004 | £636,000 | £1,155,100 | 648 |
| 2003 | £470,000 | £865,854 | 435 |
| 2002 | £475,000 | £893,708 | 605 |
| 2001 | £482,000 | £926,620 | 535 |
| 2000 | £465,000 | £912,563 | 647 |
| 1999 | £400,000 | £797,179 | 760 |
| 1998 | £350,000 | £706,500 | 640 |
| 1997 | £311,000 | £637,798 | 707 |
| 1996 | £266,200 | £561,404 | 702 |
| 1995 | £260,000 | £565,200 | 525 |
In cash terms the typical W8 home went from £260,000 in 1995 to £1,150,000 in 2026, roughly 4 times the price. Even after inflation that is a real rise of about 103%: homes here genuinely became dearer, not merely more expensive on paper. In inflation-adjusted terms the high-water mark was 2018. The market now sits about 58% below it, so a peak-time purchase has yet to recover its real value.
Year-on-year change in the W8 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 (+35.3% on the year before); the weakest, 2026 (−29.3%). 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 year (since 2025) | −29.3% | −31.0% |
| 5 years (since 2021) | −11.0% | −15.1% |
| 6 years (since 2020) | −7.7% | −11.6% |
| 10 years (since 2016) | −4.1% | −7.3% |
| 20 years (since 2006) | +2.3% | −0.4% |
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.
Detached, semi, terraced, flat: four markets in one
A single median hides the split beneath it. Sales of flats dominate the record here, 75% of the typed total. In 2025, the last year both were recorded here, a detached home traded at £2,678,000 against £1,338,000 for a flat, 2.0 times the price.
Median by property type, W8
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 | £2,678,000 (2025) | – | 59 |
| Semi-detached | £5,050,000 (2025) | – | 305 |
| Terraced | £3,500,000 | 14 | 2,904 |
| Flats | £850,000 | 56 | 9,713 |
The turnover behind the prices
Sales per year, counted
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
Registrations by month. The repeating sawtooth is seasonality, and the right-hand edge always dips because the register lags completions.
The register shows 160 W8 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 557 sales a year before the financial crisis and 239 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.
What kind of market W8 is
Flats dominate what actually sells, at 69% of last year's transactions, and the headline median follows them. House buyers should lean on the type split above rather than the overall figure. 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. Among the 25 measurable districts of its area, W8 ranks 6 by median price: firmly in the dearer tier.
What tenants pay around W8
W8 falls under Kensington and Chelsea, where the ONS puts the average private rent at £3,591 a month (May 2026 figures). The spread runs from £2,567 a month for a typical one-bed to £5,497 at four-plus bedrooms, which is size doing most of the pricing.
Average monthly rent by size, Kensington and Chelsea
ONS Price Index of Private Rents, May 2026.
£3,591 a month is £43,092 a year, which against the £1,150,000 median sold price makes a gross yield of 3.7%. 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.
Asked and answered: W8 (Kensington)
How much did a house sell for in W8 (Kensington)?
Are property prices falling in W8 (Kensington)?
Is W8 (Kensington) a good place to buy a house?
Are W8 prices heading up or down?
That question has no honest answer, only evidence. The evidence: the median is down 44% over five years in cash but down 56% after inflation. Weigh the volume chart alongside the price one before deciding anything, and bear in mind every figure is a completed sale that reached the register weeks after completion.
W8's current homes for sale
Everything above is what homes in W8 sold for. Turning to what is actually available: 24 homes on the market right now, from 8 agents publishing to HomesIndex, at a typical asking price 159% above the W8 median sold price.
At the pace of the last twelve months' registered sales (160 in W8), the 24 homes listed here amount to about 8 weeks of supply. Not every agent publishes to HomesIndex, so the true figure is higher.
8% of what is on the market here is asking below what comparable homes actually sold for. 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 W8 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.
Month by month: when W8 sells
Across the 1,443 sales completed in W8 from 2021 to 2025, March was the busiest month for completions (11.7% of the total) and July the quietest (6.0%). The gap between the two is wide enough to plan around: completion follows the agreed sale by weeks, so the busiest month for completions points to deals done earlier, and a seller wanting several bidders should list ahead of it.
Sales by month, 2021 to 2025
| Month | Sales | Share |
|---|---|---|
| January | 121 | 8.4% |
| February | 101 | 7.0% |
| March | 169 | 11.7% |
| April | 105 | 7.3% |
| May | 110 | 7.6% |
| June | 142 | 9.8% |
| July | 87 | 6.0% |
| August | 150 | 10.4% |
| September | 133 | 9.2% |
| October | 119 | 8.2% |
| November | 105 | 7.3% |
| December | 101 | 7.0% |
The price of an extra bedroom in W
Real sold prices by size across the W 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 | — | — | — | £1,230,000 | £1,600,500 (+30%) |
| Semi-detached | — | £593,250 | £749,000 (+26%) | £920,000 (+23%) | £1,237,500 (+35%) |
| Terraced | £515,000 | £670,000 (+30%) | £875,000 (+31%) | £1,175,000 (+34%) | £1,550,000 (+32%) |
| Flat | £440,000 | £583,265 (+33%) | £850,000 (+46%) | £1,125,687 (+32%) | £2,369,000 (+110%) |
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
W8 ranks 22 of 25 in the W 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.
W area districts: five years of change
Cash-terms risers and fallers across the area; click any row for that district's full report.
Inside W8, 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.
How W8 compares nearby
Same city, different markets. The neighbouring districts of the W area, dearest first:
| District | Median | 5-year |
|---|---|---|
| W1S | £5,846,000 | +14% |
| W1K | £4,042,500 | -1% |
| W1B | £3,250,000 | -24% |
| W1J | £1,700,000 | +14% |
| W1G | £1,450,000 | -14% |
| W8 (this report) | £1,150,000 | -44% |
| W1U | £1,066,900 | -18% |
| W1H | £951,400 | -36% |
| W11 | £945,000 | -21% |
| W1T | £835,000 | -45% |
| W4 | £825,000 | +6% |
| W1W | £775,000 | -6% |
| W1D | £765,000 | +24% |
| W2 | £750,000 | -21% |
| W13 | £707,500 | +9% |
| W10 | £665,000 | -8% |
| W6 | £650,000 | -13% |
| W12 | £629,600 | -16% |
| W9 | £625,000 | -9% |
| W5 | £620,000 | +8% |
| W14 | £575,000 | -22% |
| W7 | £572,000 | +6% |
| W1F | £532,500 | -56% |
| W3 | £440,000 | -22% |
Thinking of selling in W8? 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 W8'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.
Dig further
Behind the answers sits the same Land Registry record as this page, with W8 already set as the subject. Free, one click sign in.
Two maps carry on from here: every W8 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.
About the numbers: everything is computed from HM Land Registry Price Paid Data (Crown copyright, OGL v3.0), geocoded to the address; today's-money figures use the ONS CPIH index, and rents are the ONS Price Index of Private Rents by local authority. These are medians of recorded sales, not valuations, and none of it is financial advice.