A typical home in Harlow sells for about £337,500, and the price buys you a house. Terraces set the going rate. Flats go for a good deal less. A detached house costs over half a million. Harlow was built after the war to take Londoners who couldn't find a home in London, and in housing terms it still does that job.
In the Land Registry's twelve months to the end of May 2026, 785 homes sold in Harlow at a typical price of about £337,500. Terraced houses made up 405 of those sales at about £335,000, so the town average and the terrace price come out at almost the same figure. There were 116 semi-detached sales at about £425,000 and 168 flat sales at about £214,000. The 96 detached houses went for about £538,500. That's a long way above the terrace price, and the detached houses are mostly out where the new town gives way to Old Harlow and Church Langley.
The official house price index for Harlow rose 1.8% in the twelve months to May 2026, which is a small rise. Flats went the other way, falling 1.9% over the same year. For a first-time buyer that's useful. For whoever bought a flat near Harlow Town as an investment, it's less welcome.
Band C is the most common council-tax band in Harlow, and about a quarter of homes are in bands A or B. Harlow Council's band D bill is about £2,299 a year, the figure most people can check against what they pay now. The bands date from the 1991 valuation, but the price of the terraces has moved on since then.
Private rent across the Harlow council area averaged about £1,510 a month as of April 2026, up about 6% on a year earlier. This is the Office for National Statistics' index mean for the whole district, and no figure exists for any single estate. By size, a one-bed averaged about £1,020, a two-bed about £1,320, a three-bed about £1,560 and four bedrooms or more about £2,200. The index doesn't publish studio or room rents.
Modelled household income averaged about £58,000 a year across Harlow in the financial year to March 2023, and that's gross, before tax. Against a typical terrace at about £335,000, two earners on ordinary wages can reach the town's own housing. One earner will find it a stretch. The income figure is three years old and the prices are this year's, so the gap will have moved since.
Of the sales that could be matched to an energy certificate, about 94% of the year's total, the median price was about £4,190 per square metre. The typical home behind that figure has about 80 square metres of floor space. That's the post-war family house: a lot of rooms in not much floor space.
At the 2021 census, about 39% of Harlow's households had three bedrooms, about 32% had two, about 16% had one and about 14% had four or more. A three-bed in Harlow is the default, built for families when the town was planned, and the size the market keeps trading most.
For a town an hour or so up the line from Liverpool Street, Harlow prices are one of its real strengths. The terraces are within reach of two incomes, and flats are within reach of a single one.