A typical home in Balham sells for about £720,000, and the typical home is a flat. Terraces cost well over a million. Detached houses barely come up for sale at all. Prices have dropped over the past year, from a height most first-time buyers still cannot see over.
The Land Registry recorded 368 sales in the year to May 2026, at a median of about £723,000. Flats made up 239 of those, at a median of £580,000. The 102 terraced houses went for a median of £1,251,249, the 23 semis for £1,589,500, and the four detached houses for £2,097,500. The jump from flat to terrace is where most Balham house hunts end, usually with the buyer going back to look at flats again.
The official house price index for the area put average prices down about 6% in the twelve months to May 2026, with flats down about 7%. Those are published falls over a single year, and on a flat at these prices they amount to a meaningful sum. The buyer who reads them as a bargain should remember the index also has prices roughly level over five years, so the drop has cancelled out the gains and left the starting point where it was.
Band D is the most common council tax band, and 15% of homes are in bands A or B. Wandsworth's band D bill comes to about £1,028 a year. It is the one line on a Balham household budget that won't make anyone wince.
Renting costs about £2,600 a month on average across the Wandsworth borough as of April 2026, a mean from the official rental price index that rose about 4% over the year. By size, Wandsworth's average runs to about £1,910 for a one-bedroom home, £2,430 for two bedrooms, £2,770 for three and £3,790 for four or more. Sellers spent the year taking less while landlords asked for more, so the tenant saving up a deposit is chasing a target that moved toward them while their rent moved away.
Household income here is high and the prices are higher. The Office for National Statistics models average gross household income, before tax, at about £90,600 for the financial year to March 2023, averaged across the area's neighbourhoods. That is a strong figure on paper. Set against a £580,000 flat, it still means a large deposit, two incomes or a parent with a spare bit of equity. The income is three years old and counted before the tax office has had its share, which flatters it on both counts.
Of the sales that could be matched to an energy certificate's floor area, 61% of them, the median price was about £9,400 per square metre, across 226 sales with a typical floor area of 97 square metres. Ask the seller for the floor area on the certificate itself, because a loft room with a sloping ceiling counts very differently on a certificate and in a marketing description.
The 2021 census counted homes by bedrooms: about 21% had one bedroom, 32% had two, 21% had three and 26% had four or more. Two-bedroom homes are the largest group, and most of them are flats, which is why a growing family in Balham tends to meet the terrace price at the same moment it meets the second child.
Houses in Balham are expensive, and the past year's fall has trimmed the bill without changing who can pay it. Anyone here on one income is buying a flat, and anyone wanting a garden is buying a terrace at seven figures.