Hampstead has 954 listed buildings within its bounds, and every home near one of them comes with a silent partner in the council's planning office. For most buyers the partnership is worth putting up with. The Heath is a few minutes from almost every front door. Crime runs well below the rest of the borough. The extension is the part that needs a committee.
Of those 954 listed buildings, 12 are Grade I, 76 are Grade II* and 866 are Grade II. Twenty-three conservation areas fall within the area's bounds, among them Hampstead itself, Belsize Park, Fitzjohns Netherhall and Elsworthy. For a buyer, a new window, a dormer, a front wall or a basement stops being a decision and becomes an application to Camden Council, with an answer that can take months and may well be no. Historic England's Heritage at Risk register still holds 20 of the area's listed buildings. The rules come down harder on the owner who wants a skylight than on the building that wants a roof.
Safety is where the borough comparison helps. The Metropolitan Police recorded about 133 crimes per 1,000 residents in the year to May 2026, roughly 41% below the Camden average of about 226. The mix leans towards what people carry and what they park. Theft from the person makes up about 8% of recorded crime here against 2% across England and Wales, and vehicle crime about 10% against 5%, while violence and sexual offences are about 18% against 35% nationally. Hampstead's thieves want the phone and the car, and mostly leave the owner alone.
The Land Registry recorded 367 sales in the twelve months to mid-May 2026, at a median of about £995,000. That figure is mostly flats, which made up 297 of the sales at a median of about £875,000. Terraced houses went for a median of £2,167,500 across 38 sales, semi-detached houses for £3,650,025 across 20, and detached houses for £6,700,000. Only 12 detached houses changed hands, a market small enough to seat round one dining table. The Office for National Statistics' house price index puts the area's average down about 6% in the year to May 2026. Band G is the most common council tax band, and bands A and B together cover about 10% of homes.
Close to six in ten households rent (58%), about 40% from private landlords and 19% from social ones. Camden as a whole puts its typical private rent at about £2,720 a month as of April 2026, down about 4% on a year earlier, and the figure covers the whole borough, so expect Hampstead's own rents to vary from it. So a fair share of the people enjoying the Heath have left the planning paperwork to their landlord.
The housing is old and mostly divided. The council-tax valuation list, which covers every home, counts about 80% as flats, 10% as terraced houses, and about 4% each as detached and semi-detached, with 57% built before 1930. Luxurious houses went up across what is now Frognal and Fitzjohns in the 1870s and 1880s, and plenty survive, most with more doorbells than they started with. About half of certificated homes rate A to C for energy efficiency, 37% are band D and 11% are E or worse. About 69% of homes heat with mains gas and 11% on electricity alone, a running cost worth knowing in a tall Victorian conversion.
Getting about is easy without a car, and about half of households manage without one. The area has 242 bus stops, averaging 384 departures each on a weekday, and nearly all of them run at weekends. Hampstead Heath, Finchley Road & Frognal, West Hampstead and South Hampstead stations all serve the area. Gigabit broadband reaches about 93% of premises, and the 2021 Census found 64% of working residents at home on census day. The transport plans have had a rough time. A branch line to Flask Walk was abandoned for lack of money in 1870, and a cycle superhighway from Swiss Cottage was killed by Westminster's court action in 2018, so cyclists share the bus lanes on Finchley Road.
None of Hampstead falls in the Environment Agency's river-and-sea flood zones. On the wider postcode measure, which includes surface water, about 19% of postcodes carry a high reading on at least one flood indicator. Hampstead still holds the UK record for the heaviest rainfall in 155 minutes, set on 14 August 1975. Being on a hill protects against the river. It does nothing against a drain that cannot keep up with the rain.
Schools are strong at primary level. All 25 graded schools in the Camden count for this area are good or outstanding, 13 of them outstanding. The ten primaries in the district average about 109 in Key Stage 2 maths, and the area has state primaries such as New End and Fitzjohn's. The two state secondaries in the district, which include Haverstock School, average an Attainment 8 score of about 44. The list of independent schools nearby is long enough that plenty of parents never look up the secondary figure.
About 41% of households own their home, the typical resident is 38, and modelled gross household income averages about £84,000 a year in the financial year to March 2023. Hampstead was home to writers, composers, ballerinas and Sigmund Freud, and took in exiles from the Russian Revolution and Nazi Europe. Keats House, Burgh House and the Isokon building are still here. The entry requirement these days is a deposit.
The green space is where Hampstead is hardest to beat. The nearest green space is about 150 metres from a typical home, with around 31 sites within a kilometre, and water is roughly 790 metres away. That covers Hampstead Heath, Kenwood House and Primrose Hill at the southern edge. The same goes for South Hampstead, Swiss Cottage and West Hampstead, which this page also covers, though the Heath gets further away the further south you go.
Hampstead is right for people who want the Heath on the doorstep, a quiet borough's crime figures and a flat with history, and who are happy to live in a home roughly as they found it. Anyone planning to knock through, dig down or build out should look elsewhere, or budget for patience along with the architect. Buying here means accepting that the planning office has a say in the house before you've even moved in. In return you get some of the best open space in London a short walk away and a borough's worth of crime left mostly somewhere else, so on balance Hampstead is a better-than-average place to live.