A typical home in Poplar sells for about £475,000, and it is almost certainly a flat. Flats go for a little under that. Terraced houses are rare and cost about three-quarters of a million. Prices are well down on a year ago. This year it is the sellers who are having the bad time.
The Land Registry recorded 614 sales in Poplar in the year to May 2026, at a median of £475,000. Flats made up 561 of them and sold for a median of £455,000. The 49 terraced houses sold for a median of about £750,000, and just four semis changed hands at around £734,000, too few to count as a market. A house here is something you hear about, though you rarely see one for sale.
The official house price index for the area shows prices down about 15% in the twelve months to May 2026, with flats down by about the same. Over five years, the same index is down 18%. Anyone who bought at the last peak has had a rough few years. A buyer arriving now is the one most likely to get a seller to answer the phone.
Council tax is mostly Band D, and only 11% of homes are in Bands A or B. In Tower Hamlets, a Band D bill comes to about £1,838 a year. Band A, at about £1,225, is mostly theory here, since so few homes are in it.
Tower Hamlets puts the typical private rent across the borough at about £2,410 a month as of April 2026, up 2.2% on a year earlier. That is an average from the Office for National Statistics rent index, across the whole borough, not a reading of Poplar's own listings. By size, the borough averages about £1,960 for one bedroom, £2,380 for two, £2,700 for three and £3,330 for four or more. With rents rising and sale prices falling over the same year, a few renters may be doing the sums on buying for the first time.
The Office for National Statistics modelled gross household income across Poplar, before tax, at about £74,000 for the financial year to March 2023. That figure is a few years old and describes households, not individuals. It is a decent income, and it still has to stretch to cover a £455,000 flat. Most homes here are bought by two earners pooling everything, or by investors with no plans to live in them.
Across the sales that could be matched to an energy certificate, the median price was about £7,070 a square metre. Only 17% of sales had a matched certificate, so the figure describes a minority of the market. The typical home behind it measured about 81 square metres. With this many flats, the service charge is part of the price whether or not anyone mentions it, so ask for the service charge history alongside the asking price.
At the 2021 census, Poplar's homes were 41% two-bedroom, 33% one-bedroom, 19% three-bedroom and 8% with four or more. Families needing a fourth bedroom are choosing from that 8%, and most of those homes are flats too.
Poplar is middling on price: inner-east-London money for a modern flat, a little cheaper this year, with very few houses on offer at any price.