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Somerset House market report WC2R, London
The WC2R (Somerset House) 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: 467 sales registered with HM Land Registry in WC2R (London) 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 May 2026 and ONS rents for May 2026. Refreshed monthly as new sales reach the register.
In short: a typical WC2R (London) home changed hands for £575,000 in 2026 (median of 1 registered sales, down 41% on five years earlier), with the mean at £575,000, and by floor area homes here have averaged about £18,480 per square metre over the last five years. Source: 467 completed sales on the HM Land Registry record since 1995, updated with each monthly release. No valuations, no asking prices.
WC2R is a postcode district covering Somerset House, Temple (west) in London. It is the most useful size for market figures: tight enough to describe somewhere real, large enough that sales keep coming and the medians hold steady.
Where WC2R 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 WC2R
1 sales were registered in WC2R in 2026, and the middle one of them, the median, went for £575,000. The mean works out at £575,000, nearly identical to it, meaning sales cluster closely around the typical figure.
Price per square metre in WC2R
By floor space, homes in WC2R have sold for about £18,480 per square metre on average over the last five years: the like-for-like measure that lets you compare a small flat with a large house, from the Energy Performance Certificate floor areas behind each sale.
For scale: the England and Wales median is £285,000, so WC2R trades 102% above the country as a whole.
The price of a typical WC2R 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 | £575,000 | £575,000 | 1 |
| 2025 | £1,180,000 | £1,208,217 | 11 |
| 2024 | £1,925,000 | £2,046,670 | 6 |
| 2023 | £2,000,000 | £2,197,512 | 11 |
| 2022 | £1,950,000 | £2,286,598 | 5 |
| 2021 | £980,000 | £1,240,806 | 5 |
| 2020 | £1,825,000 | £2,367,975 | 7 |
| 2019 | £1,775,000 | £2,326,600 | 4 |
| 2018 | £1,886,200 | £2,514,340 | 76 |
| 2017 | £2,097,500 | £2,860,779 | 146 |
| 2016 | £1,275,000 | £1,783,738 | 21 |
| 2015 | £1,380,000 | £1,949,940 | 14 |
| 2014 | £1,581,800 | £2,244,060 | 17 |
| 2013 | £835,000 | £1,201,482 | 65 |
| 2012 | £887,000 | £1,305,553 | 11 |
| 2010 | £475,000 | £744,922 | 3 |
| 2009 | £595,000 | £956,468 | 3 |
| 2008 | £1,425,000 | £2,335,876 | 4 |
| 2007 | £485,000 | £822,695 | 5 |
| 2006 | £405,000 | £703,028 | 3 |
| 2005 | £575,000 | £1,023,268 | 1 |
| 2004 | £472,500 | £858,152 | 22 |
| 2003 | £152,500 | £280,942 | 1 |
| 2002 | £395,000 | £743,189 | 3 |
| 2001 | £305,000 | £586,347 | 3 |
| 2000 | £675,000 | £1,324,688 | 3 |
| 1999 | £336,500 | £670,627 | 3 |
| 1998 | £700,000 | £1,413,000 | 7 |
| 1997 | £565,000 | £1,158,701 | 2 |
| 1996 | £205,000 | £432,336 | 1 |
| 1995 | £170,000 | £369,554 | 3 |
In cash terms the typical WC2R home went from £170,000 in 1995 to £575,000 in 2026, roughly 3.4 times the price. Even after inflation that is a real rise of about 56%: homes here genuinely became dearer, not merely more expensive on paper. In inflation-adjusted terms the high-water mark was 2017. The market now sits about 80% below it, so a peak-time purchase has yet to recover its real value.
Year-on-year change in the WC2R 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 (+209.8% on the year before); the weakest, 2003 (−61.4%). 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) | −51.3% | −52.4% |
| 5 years (since 2021) | −10.1% | −14.3% |
| 10 years (since 2016) | −7.7% | −10.7% |
| 20 years (since 2006) | +1.8% | −1.0% |
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
Annual recorded sales. The post-2008 trough is the financial crisis; treat the final bar as provisional while registrations catch up.
Month by month, five years back
Registrations by month. The repeating sawtooth is seasonality, and the right-hand edge always dips because the register lags completions.
WC2R recorded 17 sales in the last twelve months of data. Unusually, activity here runs above its pre-2008 level: 7 sales a year over the last five years against 5 before the financial crisis. 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.
What kind of market WC2R is
Only 17 sales completed here in the last twelve months of data, which makes WC2R a thin market. Each figure rests on few transactions, so single streets can swing the median and the charts deserve a sceptical squint. 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. In its area's price order WC2R comes 12 of 14, towards the cheaper end of the table.
What tenants pay around WC2R
For renting purposes WC2R sits in Westminster. The ONS average private rent there is £3,163 a month (May 2026). Size sets most of the rent: one-beds average £2,517 a month here against £5,378 for four or more bedrooms.
Average monthly rent by size, Westminster
ONS Price Index of Private Rents, May 2026.
Set against the £575,000 median sold price, £3,163 a month is £37,956 a year, a gross yield of 6.6%: 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.
WC2R (Somerset House): the questions that come up
Are property prices falling in WC2R (Somerset House)?
Is WC2R (Somerset House) a good place to buy a house?
How much did a house sell for in WC2R (Somerset House)?
What happens to WC2R prices now?
That question has no honest answer, only evidence. The evidence: the median is down 41% over five years in cash but down 54% 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.
What you could buy in WC2R now
Everything above is what homes in WC2R sold for. Turning to what is actually available: 6 homes on the market right now, from 3 agents publishing to HomesIndex, at a typical asking price 97% above the WC2R median sold price.
Of everything listed here, 0% asks less than the sold record of comparable homes. Every listing is measured against recent recorded sales of similar nearby homes.
See every WC2R 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 WC
The Land Registry record, split by size: what each kind of home actually sold for across the WC area. How much a size step costs is a local fact: the third-bedroom premium runs from about a quarter to nearly four fifths depending on the area, and national rules of thumb miss it.
| Type | 1 bed | 2 bed | 3 bed | 4 bed | 5 bed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flat | £495,000 | £860,000 (+74%) | £1,405,000 (+63%) | — | — |
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
WC2R ranks 14 of 14 in the WC 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.
Five-year change in the median, WC area districts
The biggest risers and fallers in cash terms; every row links to that district's report.
Inside WC2R, sector by sector
Below district level sit the sectors, street groups with reports of their own, and the gaps between neighbouring ones can be sharp.
| Sector | Median (latest) | Sales that year |
|---|---|---|
| WC2R 0 | £1,600,000 | 1 |
| WC2R 1 | £575,000 | 1 |
How WC2R compares nearby
Same city, different markets. The neighbouring districts of the WC area, dearest first:
| District | Median | 5-year |
|---|---|---|
| WC1A | £5,162,500 | +29% |
| WC2B | £2,300,000 | +43% |
| WC2A | £2,060,000 | +18% |
| WC1B | £1,650,000 | +50% |
| WC2N | £1,200,000 | +24% |
| WC2H | £855,000 | -14% |
| WC2E | £800,000 | +37% |
| WC1X | £793,000 | -29% |
| WC1E | £770,000 | -17% |
| WC1V | £763,000 | +35% |
| WC1R | £590,000 | -28% |
| WC2R (this report) | £575,000 | -41% |
| WC1N | £530,000 | -13% |
| WC1H | £445,000 | +13% |
Selling in WC2R? Start from the sold record
Ground the asking price in real sold prices first. The average prices map gives a rough value in a minute: start at WC2R'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.
Local estate agents: one agent per district gets the featured spot on this report, free for founding agents. Claim WC2R.
Dig further
The AI answers from the same Land Registry data this report is built on, already scoped to WC2R. Free after a one click sign in.
The live map plots every individual WC2R 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.