Your house did not gain £40,000. Cash terms, real terms, and which to trust

“Up 30% in ten years” sounds like a verdict. It is actually half a sentence, because the pound doing the measuring was itself shrinking the whole time. A house that rose 30% in cash over a decade in which prices in general rose 30% did not gain anything: it kept pace, in a more expensive world. Every trend chart on this site therefore comes in two versions, cash terms, the prices actually paid, and real terms, the same series restated in today’s money using the ONS CPIH inflation index, and the honest reading usually needs both.

The same decade, two verdicts

Over the ten years to June 2026, from the quarterly medians on each district’s page:

• LS6, Meanwood in Leeds: +6.1% a year cash, +2.6% a year real. Genuine growth by either measure.
• M4, central Manchester: +3.7% cash, +0.3% real. A decade of headlines about a boom; in today’s money, roughly flat.
• E14, Isle of Dogs: -0.1% cash, -3.4% real. Owners who feel they broke even lost about a third of their purchasing power.
• SW11, Battersea: +1.0% cash, -2.3% real. Prime London’s quiet decade, visible only after the adjustment.

The pattern generalises: most of urban England outside a few strong regional centres spent the decade flat-to-falling in real terms while nominal prices crept up. Both statements are true. Which one matters depends entirely on the question you are asking.

Which version answers which question

Cash terms answers questions denominated in pounds you will actually exchange: what you will owe, what the mortgage covers, whether the sale clears the loan, what stamp duty costs. Debt does not inflation-adjust, which is inflation’s one great kindness to borrowers.

Real terms answers questions about value: did this area actually get more expensive, is that premium a growth story or a memory, how does a house compare against anything else you could have done with the money. Anyone selling you an area on its ten-year cash chart is, knowingly or not, showing you inflation and calling it growth.

How the adjustment is done here

The real-terms series restates every quarterly median in current prices using CPIH, the ONS’s broadest consumer-price index, so a pound in 1995 and a pound today buy the same basket. Districts with too short a published series say so rather than showing a half-adjusted line, and the toggle sits directly on every trend chart, cash is the default, because the prices are the record; real is one click, because the truth usually is. The glossary defines both, and the methodology page states the sources.

Check your own area’s decade both ways on its district page, or see the movers both ways in the league tables. Figures: HM Land Registry sold prices matched to EPC floor areas, June 2026 dataset.