West Ealing will take something close to £800,000 off you for a typical home, and that one number is the hardest thing about living here. For that money most buyers get a flat or an old terrace. A park is a two-minute walk from nearly every front door. Schools come out well, and crime runs a little under the rest of the borough. So the place is good, and the bill is what keeps it from being better.
The Land Registry recorded 268 sales in West Ealing in the twelve months to May 2026, at a median of about £801,000. That median is two markets stirred together. Flats went for about £453,000, terraced houses for about £870,000 and semis for about £1,100,000, and the eight detached houses that changed hands averaged about £1,811,000. Council tax keeps up with the purchase price. Band E is the most common band, and only about 9% of homes are in bands A or B. Somewhere around the £1,100,000 semi, the idea of West Ealing as the cheaper end of anything stops holding up.
About 48% of households rent, 34% from private landlords and 14% from social ones. For Ealing as a whole, the Office for National Statistics puts typical private rent at about £2,060 a month. That's a borough-wide average, so no single street here has to match it. Half of West Ealing is paying around £2,060 a month for the privilege of not finding £800,000.
Flats make up about 56% of every home on the council-tax valuation list. Terraces account for about 26%, semis 14% and detached houses about 3%. About 56% of all homes were built before 1930, because Edwardian and interwar builders put this place up over what had been market gardens and orchards. Steel's Fruit Packing Warehouse, at the corner of Northfield and Northcroft Roads, has barely changed, and a few streets still carry the names of apple varieties. Of the homes with an energy certificate, about 51% are rated A to C, 38% are D and 11% are E or worse. Three-quarters heat with mains gas. About 12% rely on electric-only heating, and in a flat carved out of an Edwardian house that means a winter you pay for in advance.
There are 26 listed buildings in and around the district, three of them Grade II*. Ten conservation areas fall within the wider area mapped around it, including Cuckoo Estate and Montpelier Park. Inside one of those, a new front window or a loft dormer is a matter for Ealing Council's planners. That conversation can take longer than the building work.
West Ealing Rail Station is on the Elizabeth line. Drayton Green and Castle Bar Park are on the branch that runs north towards Greenford. At the 2021 census only about 3% of working residents went to work by train, though half were working from home when it was taken, so that figure undersells the line. Buses are frequent. Across 95 stops the average is about 400 weekday departures per stop and about 20 buses an hour at peak, and every stop has a weekend service. About 37% of households have no car, and with buses that frequent nobody here is being brave about it. Gigabit broadband reaches about 88% of premises, and superfast reaches all of them.
Flooding in West Ealing comes from rain more than rivers. On indicators that include surface water, about 15% of postcodes carry a high flag and about 17% a medium one. In the Environment Agency's river-and-sea flood zones the share drops sharply, with about 2% of postcodes in Zone 2 and fewer than 1% in Zone 3. The risk here is water off roads and drains with nowhere to go, and a map of rivers won't show it.
Ofsted has graded 39 schools in its Ealing count. Fourteen are outstanding, 22 good and three require improvement, and none is inadequate. The four primaries in the district with Key Stage 2 results average a maths score of about 106. Drayton Green Primary, Fielding Primary, St John's Primary and Woodlands Academy are all local. The Department for Transport's 2019 model puts the walk to a primary at about seven minutes and to a secondary at about 17. On grades like these, parents end up arguing about which good school, which is a nicer fight to have.
The Metropolitan Police recorded about 110 crimes per 1,000 residents in West Ealing in the year to May 2026, about 8% below the Ealing borough average. The mix leans towards the irritating. Anti-social behaviour is about 33% of the total, against 16% nationally, and vehicle crime is about 11% against 5%. Violence and sexual offences, a broad legal category that is the largest almost everywhere, make up about 22% here against 35% nationally. The typical West Ealing crime is a noisy night or a broken car window, which is annoying but rarely frightening.
Home ownership is about 51%. The median resident is 39, and about 58% of adults hold a degree. In the financial year to March 2023, the Office for National Statistics' model put average gross household income across the area at about £85,700. That's a comfortable salary almost anywhere, and a deposit problem here.
The nearest green space is about 145 metres from the average home, with about 32 within a kilometre. Water is about 600 metres away. In 1832 the Bishop of London gave the allotments either side of Northfield Avenue to West Ealing's poor, and the plots on the east side are still the originals. That was the last time land here went for nothing.
West Ealing is right for a couple who want the Elizabeth line, a park at the end of the road and a flat they can afford now, with a house as a later problem. A family set on a semi with a garden is looking at a £1,100,000 wish, and Hanwell and Perivale are next door if the budget says so.
The parks and the green space are what West Ealing gives you every day for free. The price is what it charges for everything else, and for a buyer that means about £453,000 for a flat or about £870,000 for a terrace in a place mostly built before 1930. Pay that, and West Ealing is a good place to live, with frequent buses, solid schools, a crime rate a little below the borough's and grass within a short walk. The mortgage is the only part that feels like hard work.