How we define "best value"
A cheap area is not automatically good value — if prices are flat or falling, you're buying into a market with no momentum. Equally, an expensive area is not automatically bad value if it's growing fast relative to its price. The most useful lens is the combination of two things:
1. Price relative to the London average. The London-wide average sold price in 2024 sits at around £540,000. Any borough trading meaningfully below this is relatively affordable in London terms.
2. Price growth since 2018. We use 2018 as our baseline — six years of data that spans both the post-Brexit uncertainty, the pandemic, and the 2022–23 rate-rise correction. Boroughs that still grew through all of that are demonstrating underlying demand strength.
The sweet spot: priced below the London average, growing at or above the London average rate since 2018.
The data: London boroughs ranked by price
The table below ranks London boroughs by their 2024 average sold price. The growth column shows cumulative price change from 2018 to 2024. Highlighted rows are boroughs that are both below the London average and have outperformed the citywide growth rate.
| Borough | Avg price 2024 | Avg price 2018 | Growth 2018–24 | vs London avg | Sales 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barking & Dagenham Value | £339,000 | £285,000 | +18.9% | −37% | 1,247 |
| Bexley Value | £419,000 | £358,000 | +17.0% | −22% | 1,389 |
| Havering Value | £421,000 | £360,000 | +16.9% | −22% | 1,456 |
| Sutton Value | £437,000 | £374,000 | +16.8% | −19% | 876 |
| Enfield Value | £449,000 | £393,000 | +14.2% | −17% | 1,234 |
| Croydon | £443,000 | £393,000 | +12.7% | −18% | 2,105 |
| Greenwich Rising fast | £463,000 | £389,000 | +19.0% | −14% | 1,654 |
| Lewisham Value | £471,000 | £408,000 | +15.4% | −13% | 1,543 |
| Hillingdon | £492,000 | £418,000 | +17.7% | −9% | 1,678 |
| Waltham Forest Rising fast | £489,000 | £403,000 | +21.3% | −9% | 987 |
| Bromley | £511,000 | £441,000 | +15.9% | −5% | 1,789 |
| Southwark | £524,000 | £461,000 | +13.7% | −3% | 1,987 |
| Wandsworth | £671,000 | £597,000 | +12.4% | +24% | 2,341 |
| Islington | £724,000 | £641,000 | +12.9% | +34% | 1,102 |
| Camden | £812,000 | £723,000 | +12.3% | +50% | 934 |
| Westminster | £1,043,000 | £968,000 | +7.8% | +93% | 789 |
| Kensington & Chelsea | £1,487,000 | £1,391,000 | +6.9% | +175% | 542 |
Why outer east and south-east London is outperforming
The boroughs showing the strongest combination of value and growth share a common pattern: they sit in the arc of regeneration and infrastructure investment that has gradually extended out from Zone 2 over the past decade. Waltham Forest benefited from the Walthamstow regeneration and spillover from Hackney and Stoke Newington as those markets hit ceiling prices. Greenwich has seen continued development on the Peninsular and rising demand from buyers priced out of Bermondsey and New Cross.
This is a market pattern that has repeated itself across inner London over twenty years: an area is considered unfashionable, prices lag, investment follows, buyers arrive, prices catch up. The question is where the cycle is currently mid-turn.
What this doesn't tell you: street-level variation
Borough averages flatten enormous street-level variation. Within Lewisham, for example, the average sold price on streets near Honor Oak Park runs significantly above the borough average — while streets further towards Catford trade well below it. A borough ranking tells you which market to investigate; street-level data tells you whether the specific property you're looking at is priced fairly.
Things this data can't answer
HM Land Registry records the sale price at completion. It does not record rental income, which means we cannot calculate gross rental yield from this data alone — you would need to cross-reference rental market data separately. Similarly, the data reflects all property types aggregated: a borough where half the sales are new-build flats will look different from one where most transactions are established Victorian terraces.
For buy-to-let investors specifically, the cheapest borough is not necessarily the best bet. Rental yield depends on achievable rent, not just entry price — and high-turnover boroughs with active rental demand (inner south-east and east) sometimes generate stronger yields than the absolute cheapest areas.
Finally: transport, schools, and regeneration planning all influence where growth will continue — none of which is in this dataset. Use this as a starting screen; do the local research before committing.
Methodology
All figures are derived from HM Land Registry Price Paid data, covering residential sales in Greater London from 2018 to 2024. Borough-level averages are calculated as the mean of street-level average prices for streets with a valid postcode, weighted by transaction count. Only boroughs with 50 or more sales in 2024 are included. Growth is calculated as the percentage change in the borough's average sold price between 2018 and 2024. The London average is the mean across all included boroughs.