Harlow is a decent, middling town that hands about half of its postcodes a high flood risk on at least one measure. Very little of that comes from the river. Most of it is rain with nowhere to go, in a town laid out in concrete and paving after the war. So the first question about any house here is what happens at the end of its road in a downpour, and everything else comes second.
The two flood measures tell different stories, and they need keeping apart. On the postcode indicators, which count surface water alongside rivers and the sea, about 49% of Harlow's postcodes carry a high risk on at least one measure, about 21% a medium one and about 64% at least a low one. In the Environment Agency's river-and-sea flood zones the risk shrinks sharply, with 2% in flood zone 2 and under 1% in flood zone 3. The agency has 60 recorded flood events on its books. The most recent, in January 2021, came from a main river that ran out of channel where there were no raised defences, so the rare river flood here is the old-fashioned kind.
The Land Registry's twelve months to the end of May 2026 put the typical Harlow sale at about £337,500, across 785 sales. Terraced houses made up 405 of those and went for about £335,000. Semis fetched about £425,000, detached houses about £538,500 and flats about £214,000. Band C is the most common council-tax band, with about a quarter of homes in bands A or B. The terrace price is effectively the town price, because the terrace is the town.
Across the Harlow council area, private rent averaged about £1,510 a month as of April 2026, according to the Office for National Statistics' index for the whole district. By size, that district figure runs from about £1,020 for a one-bed to about £1,560 for a three-bed and about £2,200 for four bedrooms or more.
The valuation list, which covers every dwelling, puts terraces at about 47% of Harlow's homes. Flats make up 27%, semis 12%, detached houses 11% and bungalows 4%. Only 4% were built before 1930. On the energy certificates, about 63% of certificated homes rate A to C, about 32% rate D and only 5% rate E or worse. Mains gas heats about 79% of homes and about 8% rely on electric-only heating. A town built to be modern is still, on the energy certificate at least, fairly modern.
A new town turns out to have 266 listed buildings. Seven are Grade I, 15 are Grade II* and 244 are Grade II, with ten conservation areas in and around it. Some are what anyone would expect, such as the old streets of Old Harlow and Churchgate Street. Others are the new town itself. Mark Hall North was the first neighbourhood and is now a conservation area. The Lawn, the country's first modern-style residential tower block, is Grade II listed. In a conservation area, changes to the outside of a house need the council's consent. In Harlow, the thing the conservation officer is protecting might be the 1950s flat you were hoping to re-clad.
The national police crime records for the year to May 2026 put Harlow's crime rate at about 106 per 1,000 residents, roughly 4% below the average for the Harlow council area. Violence and sexual offences, a broad legal grouping that includes common assault without injury, make up 39% of recorded crime against 35% nationally. Anti-social behaviour is 10% here against 16% nationally. The town and its district are close to the same thing, so beating the district average is a narrow win, though still a win.
Harlow Town and Harlow Mill both have trains to London Liverpool Street and Cambridge, and Harlow Town is also a stop on the Stansted Express. Even so, at the 2021 census only about 2% of working residents took the train to work. About 2% took the bus, about 53% drove and about 22% worked from home. The town has 329 bus stops, averaging 39 weekday departures each and a little over two an hour at peak, and about 90% of stops have a weekend service. Gigabit broadband reaches about 79% of premises and superfast about 95%, and every postcode gets 4G or 5G from all operators. Harlow has one of the most extensive cycle networks in the country, and about 2% of its workers cycle to work. That's the planners' dream losing to the car keys.
About 55% of households own their home. The typical resident is 37. The Office for National Statistics' modelled gross household income, averaged across the town for the financial year to March 2023, comes to about £58,000. The first new-town families arrived young, and the place has stayed young.
The green wedges that Sylvia Crowe worked on between 1948 and 1958 are still doing their job. The average front door is roughly 125 metres from green space, with about 29 green spaces within a kilometre, and the nearest water is about 350 metres away. Harlow Town Park anchors the middle of it all. The town was planned so nobody would live far from a field, and on that point the plan has aged better than Gibberd's town hall, which was knocked down.
This page also covers Old Harlow, the market town the new one was built beside. It covers Church Langley, the estate completed in 2005, and Gilston, across the river in Hertfordshire, where a large expansion got planning permission in 2025. Matching, Matching Green and Matching Tye, out to the east, are covered too.
Harlow is right for a family that wants a park at the end of the road, a terrace at around £335,000 and direct trains to Liverpool Street. Buyers who want a period house, or a garden that never pools after a storm, should look elsewhere.
Most of the flood risk here comes from surface water and plays out street by street, so two houses a few roads apart can get very different answers, and the town-wide share describes neither of them. Taken as a whole, Harlow is an average place to live, with better parks than its reputation and wetter streets than the River Stort would lead anyone to expect.