How to use price per square metre when you buy your first home

Every property listing tells you the asking price. Almost none tell you the price per square metre. That is the number that lets you compare two homes honestly. A £450,000 two-bed flat and a £450,000 three-bed terrace are not the same purchase, and until you divide by floor area you have no way of saying which one is dear.

This guide is about doing that division, using the median price per square metre actually paid in the area you are buying in. All the figures below come from HM Land Registry sold prices matched to Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) floor areas, over a rolling 12 months of sales unless stated otherwise. None of them is typed into this article: every district figure is read from the same dataset the district page it links to reads, as this page renders (sales to July 2026), so the two can never disagree. They are what people paid, not what anyone is asking.

Step 1: find the median for the area

Start with the district page for the outward code you are searching in. The headline figure is the median price per m²: half the matched sales were above it, half below. Some real examples, all from 12 months of registered sales:

• DE1, Derby: £2,230/m² across 111 matched sales (12 months)
• GL1, Gloucester: £2,580/m² across 362 matched sales (12 months)
• CF11, Canton in Cardiff: £3,100/m² across 411 matched sales (12 months)
• NR1, Norwich: £3,110/m² across 333 matched sales (12 months)
• LS6, Meanwood in Leeds: £3,220/m² across 271 matched sales (12 months)
• M4, central Manchester: £3,410/m² across 258 matched sales (12 months)
• EX1, Exeter: £3,610/m² across 296 matched sales (12 months)
• BS1, Redcliffe in Bristol: £4,870/m² across 125 matched sales (12 months)

London entry points sit higher, but the spread inside the capital is wider than most people expect: IG11, Barking is £4,640/m², CR7, Thornton Heath £4,740/m², SE28, Thamesmead £4,840/m² and RM10, Dagenham £4,900/m², against E17, Walthamstow at £7,780/m² and SW11, Battersea at £9,250/m². That is one city. Which outward code you search moves the price of a square metre further than anything you are likely to negotiate on a single flat.

Step 2: work out the £/m² of the home you are viewing

Divide the asking price by the internal floor area. The floor area is on the property’s EPC, which is free to look up on the Energy Performance of Buildings Register and is usually the same figure the surveyor will use. If the listing quotes square feet, divide by 10.7639 to get square metres (1 m² = 10.7639 ft²), or switch any RealScout area page to ft².

Step 3: use the middle 60%, not just the median

Every area page shows the middle 60% of matched sales (the 20th to 80th percentile, p20–p80). It is the honest measure of how much variation an area contains. In SW11 that band runs £7,220–£11,400/m²: the distance between an ordinary flat and a good house, inside one district. In M4 it is £2,800–£4,350/m².

Practically: if a flat prices out above p80 for its district, the premium has to come from something you can name: a river view, a new lease, a garden, an unusually good street. If you cannot name it, you are probably paying for the presentation.

Are leasehold and freehold the same market?

Flats and houses trade on different per-square-metre curves, and which way round the gap falls depends on the area: in plenty of districts the leasehold median is the higher of the two. Check the tenure split rather than assuming it. Over 12 months:

Compare like with like. A leasehold flat should be measured against the leasehold median, and then adjusted in your head for the two things the sold-price data cannot see: the years left on the lease and the annual service charge. A short lease is a repair bill with a deadline.

How much is a new build worth paying up for?

New-build homes usually sell at a premium per square metre over existing stock, and the size of that premium is measurable: the new-build median against the same district’s resale median, over the same 12 months. It is not a constant, and it is not always positive. The two medians side by side are the whole argument:

Some of that premium buys real things: a warranty, insulation, low running costs, no chain. Some of it is simply what a show home extracts from a buyer who has nothing to compare against. Knowing which district you are in tells you how hard to negotiate. In a district where new builds are barely dearer than the existing stock, the premium is a much easier purchase to justify.

Where does the same budget buy more space?

The most useful thing about a per-square-metre view is that it turns your budget into a number of square metres: divide the one by the other and you have the floor area you are actually shopping for. Take £250,000 to GL1’s £2,580/m², to SN1, Swindon Old Town’s £2,890/m², to S11, Sheffield’s £3,580/m² and to E15, Stratford’s £6,110/m² and you get four different homes for the same money, from a family house down to a small flat. Same budget, one division, and the answer is a floor area rather than a feeling.

Which stamp duty relief is worth planning around?

In England and Northern Ireland, first-time buyer relief means Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT, the tax on the purchase) is nil up to £300,000 and 5% on the slice from £300,001 to £500,000. Above £500,000 the relief is withdrawn completely and the standard rates apply: 0% to £125,000, 2% to £250,000, then 5%. So a £510,000 purchase costs a first-time buyer £15,500 in SDLT where £500,000 costs £10,000. Wales charges Land Transaction Tax instead, on its own bands. Every RealScout area page shows both the standard and first-time buyer figures at the local median price on its affordability tab.

What will price per square metre not tell you?

It describes past sales in an area. It says nothing about a particular building: it cannot see condition, aspect, noise, the state of the roof, the neighbours, or the lease. It is drawn from EPC floor areas, which occasionally contain mistakes. And in small areas with few matched sales the figure is fragile. That is why each page carries a confidence level and shows the underlying transactions, so you can look at the actual sales instead of an average.

Use it the way a surveyor would: as the reference point you argue from. Find the median, price the home you want against it, and make the seller explain the difference.