A typical Swanley house costs about £410,000. Semis do most of the trading. Flats come in at about half the headline. Three bedrooms is the default size. Detached houses turn up so rarely they barely count. It is middling money, and the semi does nearly all the talking.
The Land Registry recorded 159 sales in the year to the end of May 2026, at a median of £410,000. Semis made up 82 of them, at a median of about £442,500, and terraces followed with 46 sales at about £365,000. There were 23 flat sales at about £220,000. Only eight detached houses sold, at a median of about £513,000, and with numbers that small one big sale more or less can move that figure on its own. Before the railway arrived Swanley was a crossroads with a few houses. It now trades semis faster than every other type of home put together.
The published house-price index for the area rose 3.9% in the twelve months to May 2026, with an average price of about £554,000, and it is up about 20% over five years. Flats in the same index rose just 0.9%, which is close to flat. That index average covers a wider area than Swanley, and Swanley's own median comes in well below it, so the town is the cheaper end of its own index.
Band C is the most common council-tax band, and bands A and B together cover about 15% of homes. A band D home pays about £2,522 a year and a band A home about £1,682. Most of the town's money is in its semis, and so is most of the council tax.
Private rent across the Sevenoaks district averages about £1,780 a month as of April 2026, up 3.6% on a year earlier. That is a mean from the Office for National Statistics index and covers the whole district, so a flat in Swanley's town centre is being priced against the district's villages too. By bedroom, the district averages are about £1,250 a month for a one-bed, £1,560 for a two-bed, £1,900 for a three-bed and £2,920 for four or more. No studio or room figures are published.
The Office for National Statistics models gross household income here, before tax, at about £60,000 for the financial year to March 2023. Set against a typical semi at about £442,500, that puts a family house within reach for two earners and a stretch for one. A flat at about £220,000 is the realistic way in for a single buyer, and flat prices across the index have barely moved in a year, so the first rung is not running away from anyone.
The median sale works out at about £4,800 per square metre, across the 82% of sales that could be matched to an energy certificate's floor area, and the typical home behind that figure has about 85 square metres. That is family-house space at a price per metre shaped by the M25 next door. If a home you are looking at has no energy certificate on the public register, its size claim deserves a tape measure.
At the 2021 Census about 50% of homes had three bedrooms, 23% had two, 15% had four or more and 13% had one. Half the town is the same three-bedroom house, which is either a reassuring choice or no choice at all, depending on how many children you have.
Swanley is middling value for money: cheaper than the wider area around it, but expensive against what local households earn, with a market that sells semis and very little else.