Brentwood House Prices: £530,000 Average, May 2026

Asking prices in the windows along Brentwood High Street tell you what sellers hope for. The figure that counts is what homes actually change hands for, and that is recorded by HM Land Registry once a sale completes. This page is a plain read of those numbers for Brentwood borough: the average price, which way it is moving, what you pay by property type, what first-time buyers and movers pay, and how the borough sits against the East of England and England.

The headline figure

The provisional average house price in Brentwood in May 2026 was £530,000, according to the UK House Price Index, which is built from completed Land Registry sales rather than asking prices.

That is up 1.9% on the £520,000 average of May 2025. It is a rise, but a modest one, and it was slower than the East of England as a whole, which went up 2.3% over the same twelve months. Brentwood is not falling behind in cash terms; it is simply growing a little more slowly than the region around it, which is what tends to happen in an already expensive area when mortgage costs are doing the limiting.

The ONS puts Brentwood fifth highest of any local authority in the East of England for average house price.

What it means for you

If you are buying, the gap between property types matters more here than the headline average does. The average is dragged upward by Brentwood’s detached stock, and a terraced house costs less than half what a detached one does. Work from the type figures below, not from £530,000.

If you are selling, a 1.9% year is not a market that rewards optimistic pricing. Homes priced against a 2022 peak tend to sit.

If you are staying put, your home has gained a little in cash terms over the year. Whether that beats your council tax and running costs is a separate question, and worth checking against the band on the property.

Prices by property type

The headline average hides a very wide spread. These are the Brentwood borough averages for May 2026 from the UK House Price Index:

• Detached houses: about £1,010,000. Brentwood is one of the districts where the average detached home has crossed £1 million.
• Semi-detached houses: about £566,000, up 3.1% over the year.
• Terraced houses: about £443,000, also up 3.1% over the year.
• Flats and maisonettes: about £273,000. Flat prices stayed roughly flat over the twelve months.

The pattern is worth reading carefully. The two categories that rose fastest, semis and terraces, are the mid-market family stock. Flats did not move at all, and the detached top end is what pulls the borough average up to £530,000. Almost nobody actually pays the average.

First-time buyers and home movers

The same data splits buyers a second useful way. In May 2026 a first-time buyer in Brentwood paid an average of £382,000, up 1.8% from £375,000 a year earlier. A home mover, someone selling one property to buy another, paid an average of £700,000, up from £686,000 (UK House Price Index).

That £318,000 gap is, in practical terms, the size of the step in this borough from a first flat or terrace to a family house. It is why so much of Brentwood’s turnover happens in the semi-detached band.

There is one more split worth knowing. Buyers with a mortgage paid an average of £528,000 and cash buyers paid £538,000, so cash is not buying at a discount here. In a market this tight, cash buys speed and certainty rather than a lower price.

How Brentwood compares

Sources: UK House Price Index, Brentwood and the UK House Price Index for May 2026.

In plain terms, the average Brentwood home costs roughly £192,000 more than the typical home in the East of England and about £238,000 more than the England average. The reasons are not mysterious: green belt covers around 89% of the borough, which caps how much new housing can be built, and the Elizabeth line and Liverpool Street trains put central London inside forty minutes of Brentwood station. Constrained supply plus a fast commute is the whole story.

What actually sold, by postcode area

Averages smooth out the differences between Brentwood, Shenfield, Hutton and Ingatestone. To show those, we pulled every completed sale registered in the borough’s four postcode districts for the first quarter of 2026 straight from HM Land Registry’s open Price Paid data. That is 187 sales between 1 January and 31 March 2026, and these are the medians, the price of the middle sale rather than the average:

Two things jump out. Ingatestone’s CM4 is the most expensive postcode in the borough, with a median £268,500 above Brentwood town’s. And CM14, the town centre postcode, is the cheapest by a wide margin, not because Brentwood is cheap but because that is where the flats are: nearly half the CM14 sales in the quarter were flats or maisonettes.

The same 187 sales, split by property type, give a median of £811,250 for a detached house, £553,000 for a semi, £425,000 for a terrace and £270,000 for a flat. Compare the detached figure with the £1,010,000 average further up the page and you can see what a handful of very large sales does to a mean: one CM4 sale in the quarter went for £3,480,000.

Two health warnings on these numbers. They are medians of a single quarter, so a small sample in CM4 and CM13 moves easily. And every one of Brentwood’s four postcode districts is shared with a neighbouring council, so a minority of these sales sit in Basildon, Havering, Thurrock, Chelmsford or Epping Forest rather than in this borough. They describe the postcode area, not the local authority.

Checking a specific street or house

Every completed sale in England and Wales is public. To see what a particular address or road sold for, use the free HM Land Registry Price Paid search, which covers Brentwood’s CM13, CM14, CM15 and CM4 postcodes and lets you filter by street, date and property type. It is the same underlying data the averages on this page are built from, so it is the right place to settle an argument about a specific house rather than the borough as a whole.

Two things to watch when you compare. First, all four Brentwood postcode areas are shared with neighbouring districts, so a CM13 or CM4 result may sit in Basildon, Havering, Thurrock, Chelmsford or Epping Forest rather than in this borough. Second, portal averages for “Brentwood” are usually weighted toward the larger detached homes in Shenfield, Hutton and Ingatestone, which is why they often read well above the Land Registry figure. Both numbers can be right; they are measuring different things.

Frequently asked questions

What is the average house price in Brentwood?

The provisional average was £530,000 in May 2026, according to the UK House Price Index, built from completed HM Land Registry sales across Brentwood borough.

Are Brentwood house prices going up or down?

Up, but slowly. Prices rose 1.9% in the year to May 2026, which was less than the 2.3% rise across the East of England.

How much is a detached house in Brentwood?

About £1,010,000 in May 2026, roughly three and three quarter times the average flat and nearly double the average semi.

What does a first-time buyer pay in Brentwood?

An average of £382,000 in May 2026, up 1.8% on the year.

Is Brentwood expensive compared with the rest of Essex and the East?

Yes. The borough average is £192,000 above the East of England average of £338,000, and the ONS ranks Brentwood fifth highest of any local authority in the region.

Sources

• UK House Price Index, Brentwood (ONS / HM Land Registry) for the borough average, property-type figures, buyer-type figures and the regional comparison.
• UK House Price Index for May 2026 (GOV.UK / HM Land Registry) for the England and UK averages.
• HM Land Registry Price Paid open data for the 187 completed sales registered in CM4, CM13, CM14 and CM15 between 1 January and 31 March 2026, from which the medians in this page are calculated.
• HM Land Registry Price Paid search to check any individual address.

Figures are provisional and are revised as more sales complete. Confirm the latest numbers against the linked ONS and HM Land Registry sources before making a decision.