How every number is made

Sales come from HM Land Registry's Price Paid Data: every sale registered in England and Wales since 1995, with price, date of transfer, full address and postcode, property type, whether the home was new, and tenure. Published monthly under the Open Government Licence.

Rents come from the Office for National Statistics' Price Index of Private Rents: average monthly rents by local authority, bedroom count and house type, official statistics since May 2026. They are modelled from letting data, not registered contracts.

Nothing is taken from property portals, listings, asking prices, developer price lists or agent submissions. If it was not registered, it is not in a report.

Reports use standard price paid entries only (category A): sales at full market value to a private individual. Category B entries, which include repossessions, buy-to-lets bought by companies and transfers under a power of sale, are excluded. Property types are flats, terraced, semi-detached and detached; the register's "other" type is excluded. Scotland and Northern Ireland keep separate registers and are not covered.

Currently in the database: 318 local authorities, 2,196 postcode districts, 61,972 streets and 2,492,909 registered sales since January 2023.

Local authorities are the register's district field, spelled as today's councils: abolished districts (for example Allerdale, Harrogate, Mendip) roll into the councils that replaced them in 2023, and "City of Westminster" is Westminster. This is also the grain of ONS rents.

Postcode districts (SW11, LS6) are the outward half of the postcode. A district gets its own report once it has thirty registered sales in twenty-four months, filed under the council holding most of its sales.

Streets are the register's street name within a postcode district. A street carries a report once it has five registered sales in thirty-six months.

Medians, never averages. Every sale price in a report is the median of the registered sales in that month. Medians are not pulled by a single mansion or a mispriced record.

Outlier trimming. Within each local authority and property type, sales priced below the 1st or above the 99th percentile of that group are excluded before anything is computed.

Small samples. A month resting on fewer than thirty sales still shows its median, with a note saying how many sales it rests on. New-build and established medians need at least five sales on each side.

The England & Wales median used as a benchmark is computed across every category A sale for the same month and property type, with the same trimming.

A sale appears in Price Paid Data when the Land Registry registers it, two weeks to several months after completion, and new-build completions register latest of all. Of the sales added in a typical monthly release, under a third are dated that month and more than four in ten are older than two months.

So the headline month sits three months back, counts are labelled "registered so far" and are never compared with last year's counts, and the newest months on a chart will rise as later releases fill them in. Prices are usable earlier than counts.

Sales are current through July 31, 2026. Rents are current through July 31, 2026.

Rent figures are the ONS average monthly rent for the local authority and house type, shown as an annual figure. A postcode district or street report shows its council's figure; there is no registered rent at finer grain in open data, so none is claimed.

Gross yield is that annual rent divided by the median sale price for the same council or district, month and property type. It is indicative: a council-wide average rent against a local median price, before service charges, ground rent, fees, voids or financing.

The register marks each sale as a newly built home or an established one. Reports show the new-build share of a month's sales and, where both sides have five records, the median price on each side. Because new builds register late, a recent month's share understates them.

A street report lists the street's registered sales over the last twenty-four months as recorded: date, property type, price and new-build status. Addresses are public in Price Paid Data; names of buyers and sellers are not published and never appear.

Price Paid Data carries no floor area, so reports do not show price per square foot. Floor areas exist in Energy Performance Certificates; whether they may be joined to sales for market statistics is a licensing question BrickBrief has put to the certificate register's publisher. If it is permitted, per-square-foot figures will appear with the share of sales they rest on beside them.

There is no licence number for estate agents in England and Wales. When an agent enters a Companies House number, it is checked against the public register and the letterhead shows "Company verified" only when the number matches an active company. Redress-scheme membership is the agent's own declaration.

A report is not a valuation, an appraisal or investment advice. It is a summary of what the Land Registry registered and what the ONS measured. BrickBrief is not affiliated with HM Land Registry or the Office for National Statistics. Agents add their own letterhead; the numbers underneath are the same for everyone.