Houses in Kensington cost about £1,425,000 at the median, and that figure is mostly flats. The houses sit in a different bracket altogether. Prices have dropped over the past year. Even so, for most people the realistic way into a Kensington terrace is to rent one.
In the year to May 2026, the Land Registry recorded 173 sales in Kensington at a median of about £1,425,000. Flats made up 139 of those sales, at a median of around £1,120,000. The 29 terraced houses went for a median of about £5,195,000. Only three detached houses sold, at a median of about £4,700,000, so most people only ever hear about a detached house in Kensington secondhand.
The official house price index puts the average down almost 11% in the twelve months to May 2026, and flats on their own down 11%. Those are big falls, and the houses and the flats fell together, so the drop isn't confined to one corner of the market. The people feeling it are the sellers who bought near the top. For buyers, the mountain is a little smaller but still a mountain.
Band H, the top council tax band, is also the most common one here. Bands A and B together cover about 2% of homes. A band D bill is about £1,667 a year and a band H bill about £3,333. The valuers kept band H for the very top of the market, and in Kensington it is where most homes ended up.
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea puts typical private rent at about £3,600 a month, a mean from the Office for National Statistics' rent index that came in 1.8% lower in the year to April 2026. Across the same borough, the average is about £2,570 for a one-bed, £3,340 for a two-bed, £3,965 for a three-bed and £5,510 for four bedrooms or more. No studio or room figure is published.
Gross household income in Kensington, before tax, averaged about £87,700 in the financial year to March 2023. That figure is modelled by the Office for National Statistics for neighbourhoods and then averaged across the area. It's a good income, and for buying here it is still a long way short, even at the flat median. Most local households rent.
Among the sales that could be matched to an energy certificate's floor area, about 32% of the total, the median was about £17,900 per square metre. The typical floor area behind those sales was about 139 square metres, so the homes that could be measured were mostly large ones. With flats making up most of the sales, the length of the lease affects what you are really buying as much as the price per metre does.
At the 2021 Census, about 25% of Kensington's households had one bedroom, 32% had two, 21% had three and 21% had four or more. That four-bedroom fifth is mostly the terraces, and it accounts for most of the seven-figure prices.
On price, Kensington does poorly for almost any buyer. Even after a year of falls it costs a fortune, and a flat is the only door most budgets will open.