Bordon is a decent place to live if you own a car and like trees. Six in ten drive to work. The station is in Liphook. Green space is a short walk from nearly every front door. The crime figures are the part worth reading twice.
Terraces make up the biggest share of Bordon's homes, about 34% of every dwelling on the council-tax list, followed by semis at 25%, flats at 19%, detached houses at 13% and bungalows at 7%. Only about 2% of the stock was built before 1930. Anyone hunting for sash windows and original cornicing can stop here, because this is a town the army laid out from 1899 onwards and the rest came after the war. The upside of all that newness shows on the energy certificates: 78% of certificated homes rate A to C, which is the kind of number owners of drafty Victorian houses in other towns don't like hearing. About 80% of homes run on mains gas. Around 6% rely on electric-only heating, and that is worth asking about before the viewing rather than after the first winter bill.
The Land Registry recorded 113 sales in the year to May 2026, at a median of £317,000. Terraces went for a median of £310,000, semis £370,000 and detached houses £415,000. Flats are the outlier at about £173,000, though that comes from only 19 sales, so treat it as a rough guide rather than a price list. Council tax band C is the most common, and about 28% of homes sit in bands A or B. None of this is cheap in absolute terms. It is what a post-war semi costs in this part of Hampshire, and nobody is pretending otherwise except the listings that call a semi "deceptively spacious".
Renting is harder to pin down locally. The typical private rent across the East Hampshire area was about £1,260 a month as of April 2026, according to the Office for National Statistics' price index. That is a district-wide mean, not Bordon's own figure, and the district includes places that price very differently. Get local quotes before assuming the average applies to your street.
Safety is where Bordon comes off worst. Police records for June 2025 to May 2026 put the crime rate at about 85 per 1,000 residents, roughly 76% above the East Hampshire average. Violence and sexual offences make up 40% of recorded crime here, compared with 35% nationally. That category is a broad legal grouping that includes common assault without injury, so it covers more than it sounds like. Hampshire Constabulary charged about 9% of cases over the same period, against a national rate of about 12%. The honest reading is that Bordon is a busier policing area than the quiet district around it. The buyers who get caught out are the ones who read "forest town" on the listing and never check the crime map.
Getting around depends on a car. About 61% of working residents drive to work and about 24% work from home, which makes the stairs the second most popular commute in Bordon. Train commuting is close to zero at half of one percent, which fits a town whose nearest station is in Liphook. Buses are better than the reputation suggests: 39 stops, each averaging about 110 departures on a weekday, and every stop with timetable data also has a weekend service. The Department for Transport's 2019 modelling puts the nearest town centre about 22 minutes away by car and 32 by public transport. A hospital is about 38 minutes by car and roughly an hour and a half by public transport, which is a long time to spend on a bus when something hurts. On broadband, superfast is available at 99% of premises and gigabit at 78%, so home workers are well served.
Flood risk here is mainly about surface water, not rivers. Of Bordon's postcodes, about 9% carry a high rating on at least one flood indicator, including surface water, and another 12% carry a medium one. In the Environment Agency's river-and-sea flood zones, no postcodes fall in Zone 3 and under 1% fall in Zone 2. The one recorded flood event on file dates from 1968, when a main river overflowed. Separately, about 31% of postcodes fall in the higher radon bands, so a radon test belongs on the survey list. Green space is excellent. The average home is about 140 metres from green space, with around 25 green spaces within a kilometre and water about 275 metres away on average. This is a town sitting inside Woolmer Forest, and it shows.
Heritage rules will rarely get in your way. Bordon has two listed buildings, both Grade II, and one conservation area, Headley Mill. Among the protected monuments is the Bofors Gun Emplacement at the former Bordon Camp, which says plenty about what the town considers its heritage. For most owners, an extension comes down to ordinary planning permission rather than an argument with a conservation officer about the shade of a window frame.
About 63% of households own their home and about 20% rent from social landlords. The median age is 36, young for rural Hampshire, and Office for National Statistics modelling puts gross household income at about £60,800 in the financial year to March 2023. Put together, that describes working families on commuter wages, with a strong enough rental sector that the place never feels like a retirement village. This page also covers the surrounding villages of Headley, Headley Down, Kingsley and Oakhanger. They sit in the same forest and heathland, with a quieter feel than the town itself.
Bordon suits families who want a modern three-bed, a garden, and trees within a short walk, and who have already accepted the car as a member of the household. It also suits home workers who need fast broadband more than a station, and buyers who would take a warm, efficient house over a pretty, freezing one.
It will frustrate anyone who wants to commute by train, anyone who needs a hospital close by without driving, and anyone who judges a place by its high street or its period architecture. Buyers who put personal safety at the top of the list should compare streets against the crime figures before they fall for a garden.
Bordon is an average place to live, and the average hides a clear split. Its real strength is the setting: forest, heath and water on every side, and homes that are cheaper to heat than most. The weak spot is safety, with a crime rate that stands out in a district otherwise known for keeping quiet. Buy the green space and check the street.