Last week we published London's Two-Speed Market: What the 2025 Data Actually Shows — an analysis of what really happened to London property prices in 2025, beneath the flat headline median.
Every number in that article came from five queries to OpenProp. No spreadsheets. No data downloads. No prior knowledge of the dataset.
This guide shows you exactly what we asked, what came back, and how we read the results — so you can replicate the analysis yourself, or run the same structure against a different borough, a different year, or a different question entirely.
Query 1 — Set the baseline: what did the London market actually do?
What was the median property price in London in 2025, and how does it compare to the last five years?
What came back:
| Year | Transactions | Median price |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 143,371 | £492,500 |
| 2022 | 122,585 | £513,825 |
| 2023 | 96,088 | £510,000 |
| 2024 | 105,244 | £510,000 |
| 2025 | 87,589 | £507,000 |
How we read it:
Two numbers stood out immediately — not just the median, but the transaction count. The 2025 volume of 87,589 is the lowest in the dataset since 2018 (excluding 2020). That context matters: a falling volume in a flat-median market means the same price is being achieved with fewer buyers. Sellers are not gaining — they are holding on.
The five-year gain of roughly 5.5% nominal, against inflation well above that, frames the rest of the analysis: London buyers have been paying more in pounds for less in real terms.
Swap "London" for any borough — "What was the median price in Islington in 2025, and how does it compare to the last five years?" The same table structure comes back, but for one borough. Run it for two boroughs side by side to see divergence at the local level.
Query 2 — Find the geographic split: which boroughs moved?
Which London boroughs saw the biggest price growth in 2025 compared to 2024?
What came back:
A full ranked table of all 33 boroughs. The top and bottom looked like this:
| Borough | 2024 median | 2025 median | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bromley | £480,000 | £510,000 | +6.2% |
| Waltham Forest | £500,000 | £525,000 | +5.0% |
| Havering | £430,000 | £450,000 | +4.7% |
| … | |||
| Hammersmith & Fulham | £775,000 | £667,000 | −13.9% |
| City of London | £920,000 | £796,250 | −13.5% |
| Kensington & Chelsea | £1,200,000 | £1,050,000 | −12.5% |
How we read it:
The pattern was immediate: every borough in the top five is outer London or outer-south London. Every borough in the bottom five is prime central. That is not noise — it is a structural divergence that has been building since 2022 and reached its clearest expression in 2025.
Kensington & Chelsea falling £150,000 in a single year while Bromley rises £30,000 is not two boroughs having a bad or good year. It is two entirely different markets operating under different demand conditions, sitting inside the same city boundary.
You can ask the same question for a longer window — "Which London boroughs saw the biggest price growth over the last three years?" — to see whether the 2025 pattern is a one-year event or a sustained trend. (Spoiler: it is sustained.)
Query 3 — Break down by property type: the flat vs house story
Compare median flat prices versus terraced house prices in London from 2020 to 2025.
What came back:
| Year | Flats | Terraced houses |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | £435,500 | £500,000 |
| 2021 | £424,235 | £530,000 |
| 2022 | £439,000 | £580,000 |
| 2023 | £435,000 | £563,000 |
| 2024 | £432,000 | £565,000 |
| 2025 | £420,000 | £562,500 |
How we read it:
This was the sharpest finding in the entire analysis. Flat prices in London have fallen 3.6% in nominal terms over five years — in a period with significant inflation, the real loss is considerably larger. Terraced houses rose 12.5% over the same period.
A 16 percentage point gap between two property types in the same city, over five years, is structural — not a blip. Service charge uncertainty, cladding remediation, and leasehold reform anxiety are all in the picture. Whatever the cause, the divergence is clear in the official transaction record.
Run the same query for a single borough — "Compare flat prices versus terraced house prices in Hackney from 2020 to 2025." You may find the flat discount is larger or smaller in different boroughs. Areas with a high proportion of post-2000 new-build flats tend to show the steepest divergence.
Query 4 — Test a common assumption: has the new-build premium survived?
Compare new build vs resale prices in London in 2025.
What came back:
| Type | 2025 median | Transactions |
|---|---|---|
| New build | £505,000 | 2,941 |
| Resale | £507,500 | 84,648 |
How we read it:
The new-build median came in fractionally below resale — the opposite of the historical norm, where new builds typically commanded a 20–30% premium. Two caveats are worth noting: new builds are only 3.4% of total transactions, so the sample is thin; and developer incentives (stamp duty contributions, furniture packages) reduce the effective cost to buyers without reducing the registered price.
But the direction is clear. For buyers, the traditional objection to new-build — paying a significant premium over equivalent resale — is weaker than it has been in years.
Ask the same question for a specific borough with active development — "Compare new build vs resale prices in Tower Hamlets in 2025." Boroughs with large new-build pipelines often show more interesting splits than the London-wide average.
Query 5 — Cross-check the volume story for a specific borough
One extra query we ran that did not make it into the published article — checking whether the volume decline was uniform or concentrated:
How many properties sold in Kensington and Chelsea each year from 2018 to 2025?
What came back:
A year-by-year count showing that transaction volume in Kensington & Chelsea fell sharply from 2022 onwards — much more steeply than the London-wide decline. A falling median in a thin market is a different signal from a falling median in an active one. In K&C, the price falls are happening on lower and lower volumes, which makes them harder to reverse quickly.
Run this volume check for any borough before drawing conclusions from its median trend. "How many properties sold in [borough] each year from 2018 to 2025?" costs one query and changes how you read everything else.
The pattern behind all five queries
Look at the structure:
- Start London-wide — establish the baseline and the volume context.
- Find the geographic split — where is the market diverging?
- Find the property type split — what does your budget actually buy, and is it holding value?
- Test a specific assumption — new build premium, leasehold discount, postcode variation.
- Check volume alongside price — a median without a transaction count is an incomplete signal.
That sequence works for any research question about the London market. You do not need five queries — even two or three, in the right order, produce something more grounded than any asking price or estate agent estimate.
All of it comes from the official Land Registry record. No models. No sentiment surveys. Just what buyers actually paid.
Want to start? The tool is on the homepage. Data: HM Land Registry Price Paid Data (Crown copyright, OGL v3.0), Greater London, 2010–present.