Updated August 2026
London's housing market has had a rocky ride lately, with average prices down 3.3% across the capital in the year to February 2026 - the weakest performance of any English region. But "the London market" is really 33 different markets wearing one coat, and South London's boroughs are telling a different story to the one we'd have told a couple of years ago.
We're revisiting our South London analysis with fresh Land Registry data, and the headline this time isn't about which boroughs are booming - it's about which ones are correcting, and why that matters if you're sourcing sites in the area.
Key Highlights
- South London's priciest boroughs (Wandsworth, Merton, Lambeth) are seeing the steepest annual price falls, while several of the more affordable boroughs (Greenwich, Sutton, Bromley) are still edging upward.
- Wandsworth remains the most expensive South London borough at £678,034, but is down 6.0% year-on-year - the biggest fall in the group.
- London's overall affordability ratio sits at 10.6 (average home price to average earnings) - still the least affordable region in England, though improved from its 2021 peak.
- The old "South West outperforms" pattern from our previous analysis no longer holds; if anything, it's reversing.
The Population Backdrop
Before we get into prices, it's worth setting the scene. London's population grew by around 8.5% over the past decade, with outer boroughs growing faster than inner ones - but the next ten years look set to tell a different story in places. Explore how South London's boroughs compare, both over the last decade and in the forecasts ahead:
Some boroughs that grew steadily over the last ten years are forecast to shrink over the next ten, and vice versa - which is worth bearing in mind before assuming population growth alone explains where prices are heading next.
The Long View: A Decade of Growth
Zoom out, and South London's house price story over the past decade has been one of outer boroughs catching up. Explore how growth compared borough by borough, and across Inner versus Outer London, between 2012 and 2022:
Outer London saw stronger growth than Inner London over this period. But a decade of strong growth is exactly the kind of thing that leaves a market more exposed when conditions shift - which brings us to where things stand today.
The South London Picture in 2026
Using the most recent HM Land Registry UK House Price Index data (February 2026), here's how the 11 South London boroughs we're tracking - Merton, Croydon, Sutton, Wandsworth, Bexley, Bromley, Lambeth, Lewisham, Greenwich, Kingston upon Thames, and Southwark - actually stack up:
| Borough | Average Price | Annual Change |
|---|---|---|
| Wandsworth | £678,034 | -6.0% |
| Merton | £604,042 | -3.8% |
| Kingston upon Thames | £569,910 | 0.0% |
| Southwark | £566,892 | -2.6% |
| Lambeth | £552,190 | -3.0% |
| Bromley | £515,200 | +1.2% |
| Lewisham | £491,154 | +0.3% |
| Greenwich | £473,900 | +2.5% |
| Sutton | £457,497 | +1.7% |
| Bexley | £406,173 | +0.2% |
| Croydon | £389,585 | -2.9% |
Wandsworth still tops the table by some distance, just as it did when we first looked at this in 2023. But look at the annual change column, and a different pattern emerges.
Where Prices Are Falling Fastest - and Why That's Interesting
The three boroughs seeing the steepest year-on-year falls - Wandsworth (-6.0%), Merton (-3.8%), and Lambeth (-3.0%) - are also three of the four most expensive boroughs on this list. That's a genuine shift from the growth story we told back in 2023, when Wandsworth's Nine Elms regeneration was driving prices up and up.
It's not hard to see why. Premium property tends to be more sensitive to higher borrowing costs and buyer caution, because there's simply more room for prices to move before a home becomes "unaffordable enough" to put people off. When the market cools, it's often the top of the range that feels it first.
Croydon is the exception to watch here - it's down 2.9% despite sitting at the more affordable end, so this isn't a clean "cheap boroughs are immune" story either. But the overall pattern is clear: this is a correction concentrated at the top, not a uniform decline.
Where Prices Are Holding Up
Greenwich (+2.5%), Sutton (+1.7%), and Bromley (+1.2%) are all still seeing modest annual growth, alongside smaller gains in Lewisham and Bexley. None of these are dramatic increases, but in a market where London overall is down 3.3%, holding flat or slightly positive is arguably the more notable result.
Kingston upon Thames is sitting almost exactly flat (0.0%), which might be the most telling figure of all - a borough that's neither riding a correction nor benefiting from one, just holding its ground while the market around it moves.
What This Means for Affordability
London remains the least affordable region in England by some margin, with average homes selling for 10.6 times average earnings - compared with 5.0 times in the North East. That figure has actually improved since the 2021 peak, as earnings have grown faster than prices nationally, but London is still the outlier: across the country, only Tower Hamlets and Barking and Dagenham have affordability ratios below 10 among all London boroughs.
We'd love to give you a precise borough-by-borough affordability breakdown to match our 2023 analysis, but the underlying data is only published as a large dataset rather than in an easily citable table, so we're not going to guess at specific figures here. What we can say with confidence is the regional picture: London's affordability gap remains wide, and that gap is a real factor in why premium boroughs may be seeing softer demand right now.
What This Means for Developers
If you're sourcing or assessing sites in South London, the practical takeaway isn't "avoid the expensive boroughs" - it's that the relationship between price and momentum has flipped from what it was a couple of years ago. A borough being expensive no longer means it's the safest bet for near-term value growth, and a borough being more affordable doesn't automatically mean it's underperforming. Croydon disproves the second point on its own.
Worth remembering too: this data reflects the last 12 months of recorded sales, not where a market is heading next. Regeneration projects, transport upgrades, and planning policy (see our coverage of the draft London Plan's green belt proposals, some of which touch South London boroughs like Croydon) can all shift the picture faster than average price data alone will show.
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