About £260,000 for a typical house, which in Devon terms is the sound of a door still being open. Terraces go for a good deal less than that. Detached houses go for a good deal more. Roughly a third of a thousand homes changed hands here in a year, so this is a market with actual traffic rather than four sales and a rumour. Nobody has discovered Barnstaple, and the prices are the proof.
In the year to May 2026, the Land Registry recorded 356 sales in Barnstaple at a median of £260,000. The split by type is where the useful information lives. Flats came in at a median of £154,000 across 48 sales, terraces at £210,000 across 119, semi-detached houses at £276,000 across 71, and detached houses at £350,000 across 118. That is an unusually even spread of transactions across the four types, which means whatever you are looking for, somebody sold one recently and the price is not a guess.
Direction of travel is close to flat. The house price index for the area put the average property at about £277,900 as of May 2026, up 0.6% over the twelve months and down 1.2% in the final month. Over five years the index is up about 9%. Flats have gone the other way, down about 3% over the year. None of these are dramatic movements and it would be dishonest to dress them up as one: this is a market sitting still and thinking about it.
Council tax is where the value case sharpens. Band B is the most common band in Barnstaple and about 53% of dwellings sit in band A or band B combined. The band D annual bill runs at roughly £2,640, and band A at about £1,760, which is what most of the town is actually paying rather than the headline everyone quotes.
Renting across the North Devon area averages about £850 a month, which is a mean from the national rent index covering the whole local authority rather than a Barnstaple-only figure, and it moved up 2.8% over the year to April 2026. By size, a one-bedroom averages around £590 a month, a two-bedroom around £780, a three-bedroom around £970, and four or more around £1,340. By type, flats average roughly £670 and detached houses roughly £1,130.
Against local earnings, the numbers work. Modelled household income for the area in the financial year to March 2023 came out at about £46,700 gross before tax, with net household income around £36,000. A £260,000 median against that gross figure is a stretch of the ordinary kind rather than the fantasy multiples that coastal Devon usually demands. This is one of the few places in the county where a normal salary and a normal deposit still produce a normal house.
By floor area, the median works out at about £3,165 per square metre across the sales that could be matched to an energy certificate, which is roughly 80% of them. The typical matched property had about 85 square metres of floor space. That is a small three-bedroom or a generous two, and it is the honest shape of what the median actually buys.
On bedrooms, the Census 2021 count puts about 41% of Barnstaple households in three-bedroom homes, roughly 28% in two-bedroom, around 19% with four or more, and about 12% in one-bedroom. The town is built around the three-bed, which is why they sell steadily and why the median sits where it does.
Cost is where Barnstaple is at its strongest. A market with genuine depth, a full range of house types, cheap council tax bands and prices that a local wage can still reach is a combination that has quietly stopped existing in most of the South West.