Under £300,000 buys a house here. A flat costs a bit more than half that. Detached houses go for about £440,000. Nearly half of all homes sit in the two cheapest council-tax bands. Estate agents call Chatham good value, and on price, for once, they're telling the truth.
In the year to May 2026, the Land Registry recorded 719 sales in Chatham at a typical price of about £290,000. Terraces made up the biggest group: 325 sold, at around £270,000. Semis followed, 227 sales at about £320,000, then 102 detached houses at about £440,000. Flats barely showed up, with 65 sales at around £160,000. In most commuter towns the flat is the entry ticket. Here, the terrace is.
Prices have held still. The official house price index for the area puts the average at about £293,000 as of May 2026, down 0.4% on a year earlier, which is small enough to call flat. Over five years the same index is up about 14%. Flats are the exception, down about 4% over the twelve months. Anyone sold a flat as a sure-fire investment has found out what the phrase is worth.
Band B is the most common council-tax band, and about 46% of homes sit in bands A or B. Band D, the one most people use to compare, costs about £2,330 a year, and band A about £1,550. Buy a modest terrace and most of your council-tax bill goes on bins and roads, not on the privilege of the postcode.
The Office for National Statistics puts the typical private rent across the Medway area at about £1,240 a month as of April 2026. That's an average for all of Medway, not a Chatham-only figure. By bedroom, it's about £900 for a one-bed, £1,140 for a two-bed, £1,340 for a three-bed and £1,830 for four or more. Studio and room rents aren't published. Renters here pay a three-bed's rent to live in someone else's terrace, which is how a lot of them end up buying one.
The Office for National Statistics models the area's median household income at about £57,000 a year before tax, for the financial year to March 2023. That figure is a few years old, but against a typical price of £290,000 it puts a house within reach of a household with two ordinary jobs. It isn't a lottery-win purchase. A single buyer on a modest salary will feel the stretch, mostly at the deposit stage.
The typical sale works out at about £3,840 per square metre, for a home of around 77 square metres. That covers the sales that could be matched to an energy certificate's floor area, about 93% of them, so it's a strong sample but not every sale. What it buys is a normal house of normal size: enough room for a family, too small to lose a teenager in.
At the 2021 census, about 45% of Chatham's homes had three bedrooms, 26% had two, 16% had four or more and 12% had one. If you're searching for a three-bed you're shopping in the middle of the market, and there's plenty of choice. Anyone after a one-bed will find fewer options than they'd expect in a town with a big railway station.
On price, Chatham is one of the more buyer-friendly towns in this part of Kent. What costs you money here comes after you've bought.