Housing market report · October 2026
A housing market report for Marlow and postcode district SL7
2,247 open-market sales in SL7 since January 2019, read from HM Land Registry Price Paid Data. 251 of them in the twelve months to 30 September 2026.
01
The twelve months to 30 September 2026
Marlow's typical sale over the last twelve months was £650,100, which is 4.4% below the twelve months before it. Over the same period the upper quartile rose 5.0%. The middle of the market softened and the top did not.
HM Land Registry Price Paid Data, postcode district SL7, 1 October 2025 to 30 September 2026. Repossessions, company transfers and other non-market sales are excluded.
02
1 October 2025 to 30 September 2026
251 open-market sales registered in SL7 in the year, against 289 in the twelve months before. Volume fell 13.1%. The median fell 4.4%. The upper quartile rose 5.0%.
| Last 12 months | Previous 12 months | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales | 251 | 289 | −13.1% |
| Median | £650,100 | £680,000 | −4.4% |
| Mean | £754,612 | £805,218 | −6.3% |
| Lower quartile | £465,000 | £500,000 | |
| Upper quartile | £940,000 | £895,000 | +5.0% |
| 90th percentile | £1,250,000 | £1,300,000 | |
| Highest | £5,150,000 | £5,300,000 | |
| Lowest | £160,000 | £180,000 |
The median sale was £650,100. The mean was £754,612, roughly £105,000 higher. The gap is the work of a thin top tail: three sales in the year passed £2m and one reached £5,150,000. The median describes the typical Marlow sale. The mean describes the arithmetic of those few large ones.
The median fell 4.4%. The upper quartile rose 5.0%.
The softening sits in the middle of the market. Above £940,000, where a quarter of Marlow sales happen, prices went the other way. Section 05 shows where in the stock that split falls.
03
1 July 2026 to 30 September 2026
Land Registry records a sale when it is registered, not when it completes, and that lag runs weeks to months. July, August and September 2026 currently show 15, 22 and 12 sales against a running rate near 25 a month. The most recent months are still filling as sales register, so volumes for the last quarter will rise.
The prices move with them. 49 sales is a small sample, and the sales still to register are not spread evenly across the price range.
| Last 3 months | Same 3 months 2025 | |
|---|---|---|
| Sales | 49 | 75 |
| Median | £740,000 | £720,000 |
| Mean | £804,456 | £773,037 |
| Lower quartile | £580,000 | £485,000 |
| Upper quartile | £965,000 | £898,000 |
| Highest | £1,800,000 | £2,000,000 |
The quarter's median of £740,000 is the highest half-year median in the whole six-year series. What it shows is that the sales which have registered so far in the quarter sit towards the larger end of Marlow's stock: the lower quartile jumped from £485,000 to £580,000, which is a change in the mix rather than a change in what a given home is worth.
What it does not show is that the market has turned. A part quarter of 49 sales cannot carry that conclusion, and this report does not draw it. The figure to watch is the full year in section 02.
04
Calendar years, 2019 to 2026
A strong 2021 and 2022, a dip through 2023, a recovery in 2024, a softer 2025, and 2026 running ahead of all of them on median while doing less volume.
| Year | Sales | Median | Mean | Lower quartile | Upper quartile |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 261 | £565,000 | |||
| 2020 | 249 | £585,000 | |||
| 2021 | 419 | £605,000 | £710,139 | £457,000 | £822,000 |
| 2022 | 325 | £672,000 | £816,357 | £455,000 | £916,000 |
| 2023 | 240 | £660,000 | £781,414 | £485,000 | £905,000 |
| 2024 | 301 | £680,000 | £815,564 | £500,000 | £890,000 |
| 2025 | 297 | £650,000 | £751,738 | £480,000 | £875,000 |
| 2026 to 25 Sep | 155 | £700,000 | £798,301 | £475,000 | £995,000 |
2019 and 2020 are given for context. Mean and quartile figures for those two years are not carried in this report.
On median, 2021 to 2026 to date reads £605,000 to £700,000, a rise of 15.7%. Comparing full years only, 2021 to 2025, the rise is 7.4%. Both are our own arithmetic on two figures from the table above, not a published index.
Postcode district SL7, 2019 to 2026. The 2026 bar is a part year and is drawn open-topped.
Volume is the larger story. 419 sales registered in 2021. The run rate now is near 250 a year, and 2026 stands at 155 with the last three months still filling. Marlow is pricing a little higher on fewer transactions than it did five years ago.
Postcode district SL7, 2021 H1 to 2026 H2. The closing segment is a part period.
The half-year series is the cleanest view of the price trend because it smooths the month-to-month noise without hiding a turn. It shows a market that has traded in a band between £630,000 and £695,000 for four years. The final point is a part period and is drawn as one.
| Period | Median | Sales | Period | Median | Sales |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 H1 | £590,000 | 253 | 2024 H1 | £685,000 | 124 |
| 2021 H2 | £632,500 | 166 | 2024 H2 | £675,000 | 177 |
| 2022 H1 | £643,500 | 129 | 2025 H1 | £670,000 | 126 |
| 2022 H2 | £690,000 | 196 | 2025 H2 | £630,000 | 171 |
| 2023 H1 | £685,000 | 107 | 2026 H1 | £695,000 | 106 |
| 2023 H2 | £650,000 | 133 | 2026 H2 | £740,000 | 49, part period |
05
By property type, last 12 months
Detached homes are 36.3% of Marlow's sales and set the top of the market. Flats and maisonettes are 19.9% and set the bottom. Between them sit the terraces, which are the town's largest single band of family housing after the detached.
| Type | Sales | Share | Median | Mean | Lower quartile | Upper quartile | Median change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Detached | 91 | 36.3% | £940,000 | £1,080,602 | £765,000 | £1,200,000 | +9.3% |
| Semi-detached | 42 | 16.7% | £624,500 | £701,012 | £540,000 | £785,000 | −8.8% |
| Terraced | 68 | 27.1% | £577,500 | £634,626 | £470,000 | £690,000 | +0.4% |
| Flat / maisonette | 50 | 19.9% | £345,000 | £369,513 | £250,000 | £415,000 | −1.3% |
Change column compares the median with the previous twelve months, when detached read £860,000 on 113 sales, semi-detached £685,000 on 65, terraced £575,000 on 67 and flats £349,475 on 44.
Postcode district SL7. Last twelve months against the previous twelve, with the change on the right.
Detached medians rose 9.3%. Semi-detached fell 8.8%.
Detached moved from £860,000 to £940,000. Semi-detached moved from £685,000 to £624,500. The two halves of the same town's family housing went opposite ways in the same twelve months, and nothing in the wider backdrop separates them.
Part of the semi-detached fall is a change in what sold rather than a fall in what a given house is worth: volume dropped from 65 sales to 42, and its upper quartile fell from £863,000 to £785,000, so the larger semis that used to trade did not trade this year. For an owner the practical point is that a detached valuation and a semi-detached valuation in Marlow are now moving on different evidence and should not be set off the same town-wide figure.
06
Distribution, last 12 months
Three in five Marlow sales land below £750,000. Two in five land above it. The two bottom bands are almost exactly the same size, which is why the median sits where it does.
Postcode district SL7, 1 October 2025 to 30 September 2026. 251 sales.
The shape matters for anyone setting a guide price. Marlow has real depth either side of £500,000 and real depth between £750,000 and £1.5m. Above £1.5m it has ten sales a year, and a home priced there is competing in a market of tens rather than hundreds.
07
Buckinghamshire, labelled as such
There is no reliable Marlow figure for pounds per square foot in open data. Land Registry Price Paid Data carries no floor area, so one cannot be derived from the sales in this report, and the sources that publish a town-level rate could not be reached. The figures below are county figures.
Buckinghamshire, October 2025 to September 2026. Plumplot, derived from HM Land Registry Price Paid Data. These are county rates, not Marlow rates.
Marlow transacts above the county average on every measure in this report that the two share, so the Marlow rate will sit above £430 a square foot. This report does not put a number on it, because any number it printed would be an estimate dressed as a measurement.
For the direction of travel, the same source puts the county at £4.6k per square metre in every year from 2022 to 2025 and £4.5k in 2026. England and Wales reads £3.6k in 2026. The county rate has been flat for four years and is about a quarter above the national one.
08
The high-value segment
Exactly 100 homes sold at £750,000 or more in the twelve months to 30 September 2026. Two in every five Marlow sales. Their median was £1,000,000.
| Last 12 months | Previous 12 months | |
|---|---|---|
| Sales | 100 | 120 |
| Share of all sales | 39.8% | 41.5% |
| Median | £1,000,000 | £975,000 |
| Mean | £1,149,627 | £1,212,110 |
| Lower quartile | £880,000 | £850,000 |
| Upper quartile | £1,250,000 | £1,300,000 |
| 90th percentile | £1,550,000 | £2,050,000 |
| Highest | £5,150,000 | £5,300,000 |
| Type | Sales | Share of segment | Median |
|---|---|---|---|
| Detached | 72 | 72.0% | £1,000,000 |
| Terraced | 13 | 13.0% | £975,000 |
| Semi-detached | 12 | 12.0% | £997,500 |
| Flat / maisonette | 3 | 3.0% | £825,000 |
Detached homes are 72% of the segment and all four types appear in it, which is the thing a town-wide average hides: a Marlow terrace at £975,000 and a Marlow semi at £997,500 are ordinary events, not outliers.
Eight years of the segment
Postcode district SL7, 2019 to 2026. The 2026 bar is a part year and is drawn open-topped.
| Year | Sales at £750k and above | Share of all sales | Median | Mean |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 69 | 26.4% | £1,020,000 | £1,101,198 |
| 2020 | 73 | 29.3% | £975,000 | £1,291,049 |
| 2021 | 134 | 32.0% | £950,000 | £1,161,930 |
| 2022 | 124 | 38.2% | £1,062,500 | £1,317,011 |
| 2023 | 88 | 36.7% | £1,012,500 | £1,251,465 |
| 2024 | 124 | 41.2% | £967,500 | £1,245,455 |
| 2025 | 112 | 37.7% | £972,500 | £1,157,653 |
| 2026 to 25 Sep | 70 | 45.2% | £1,000,000 | £1,169,767 |
Marlow has not got dearer at the top. More of what sells is at the top.
The segment's median has moved inside a band between £950,000 and £1,062,500 across eight years and reads £1,000,000 now. Its share of all sales has gone from 26.4% in 2019 to 45.2% in 2026 to date. The price of a large Marlow house has held; the proportion of the town's transactions that are large Marlow houses has risen by about two thirds.
The mechanism is visible in section 04: volume fell from 419 sales in 2021 to a run rate near 250, and the fall landed hardest on the cheaper half of the market. The top of Marlow keeps transacting. The bottom of it transacts less than it used to.
| Price | Street | Date | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| £5,150,000 | Quarry Wood Road, SL7 1RE | 7 May 2026 | Detached |
| £3,400,000 | West Street, SL7 2BY | 11 Dec 2025 | Detached |
| £2,500,000 | Spinfield Lane West, SL7 2DB | 9 Jan 2026 | Detached |
| £1,995,000 | Quarry Wood, SL7 1RF | 8 Apr 2026 | Detached |
| £1,950,000 | Wethered Park, SL7 2BH | 16 Oct 2025 | Detached |
| £1,950,000 | Moyleen Rise, SL7 2DP | 20 Apr 2026 | Detached |
| £1,800,000 | Henley Road, SL7 2ED | 1 Sep 2026 | Detached |
| £1,800,000 | School Lane, SL7 2HJ | 28 Jan 2026 | Terraced |
| £1,765,000 | Spinfield Lane, SL7 2LD | 20 Jul 2026 | Detached |
| £1,550,000 | Frieth Road, SL7 2QU | 4 Aug 2026 | Detached |
Street and postcode only. House names are on the public record but are not printed here. Dates are registration dates.
09
Against the county, the region and the country
Marlow's median of £650,100 sits against a Buckinghamshire average of £477,000 and an England average of £293,525. The typical Marlow home is worth roughly 2.2 times the England figure.
| Area | Figure | Measure | Change on the year | Period | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marlow, SL7 | £650,100 | Median | −4.4% | Oct 2025 to Sep 2026 | Land Registry Price Paid |
| Buckinghamshire | £477,000 | Average | 0.0% | Aug 2026 | ONS |
| South East | £379,953 | Average | −0.8% | Aug 2026 | UK House Price Index |
| England | £293,525 | Average | +0.4% | Aug 2026 | UK House Price Index |
| United Kingdom | £273,037 | Average | +0.9% | Aug 2026 | UK House Price Index |
Ours is a median, the comparators are averages. A median is the middle sale of the set. An average is the arithmetic mean of all of them, and in a market with a long top tail it sits above the median. Marlow's own mean, £754,612, is about £105,000 above its median.
So the ratio above is an order of magnitude, not a precise multiple. Compared mean to mean, the gap between Marlow and England would be wider than 2.2 times, not narrower.
| Type | Buckinghamshire average | Marlow median |
|---|---|---|
| Detached | £852,000 | £940,000 |
| Semi-detached | £470,000 | £624,500 |
| Terraced | £378,000 | £577,500 |
| Flat / maisonette | £233,000 | £345,000 |
County figures are ONS averages for August 2026. Marlow figures are Land Registry medians for the twelve months to 30 September 2026. The two are different measures over different periods and are set side by side for scale, not for arithmetic.
The county flat figure fell 2.7% on the year. Buckinghamshire's average rent reads £1,486 a month and rose 5.8%. Across the United Kingdom, mortgage approvals in August 2026 ran at 54,900 against a six-month average of 60,100, which is the clearest single sign of why transaction volumes are where they are.
| Town | Median |
|---|---|
| Marlow | £650,100 |
| Amersham | £740,000 |
| Princes Risborough | £520,000 |
| Chesham | £462,500 |
| High Wycombe | £425,000 |
| Aylesbury | £373,000 |
Twelve-month medians. Marlow is our own figure from Land Registry Price Paid Data. The five comparator towns are taken from Construction Capital's Q3 2026 Marlow review, an automatically generated page also derived from Land Registry data. We have not rebuilt those five from source.
10
Postcode district SL7
Postcode district SL7 is the Marlow post town. Every one of the 2,540 Land Registry transactions recorded in it since January 2019 carries the town value MARLOW, so for this report the postcode district and the post town are the same area. The pin marks the town centre; the district reaches into the Chilterns to the north and along the Thames to either side of it.
Base map: Esri light grey canvas. Attribution is carried in the lower right of the image.
11
How this report was built
The sales figures in this report come from HM Land Registry Price Paid Data for postcode district SL7, downloaded on 29 October 2026 and covering 2,247 open-market sales since January 2019. Repossessions, company transfers and other non-market sales are excluded, which is why these figures run below the ones the portals publish.
Land Registry records a sale when it registers rather than when it completes, so the most recent months are still filling and those volumes will rise. Where a figure comes from somewhere else it is named on the page. Square-foot rates are published at county level only; no reliable Marlow-level rate exists in open data.
All sources fetched 29 October 2026. Percentage changes and ratios described as our arithmetic are calculated from the figures in the tables on this page.
Dennis de Bono
This report describes 251 sales. It cannot tell you what your own house is worth, because that turns on the plot, the condition, the aspect and what else is available the week it goes on. If you want that figure, ask for it and I will work it off the comparable evidence for your road rather than off a town-wide median.