Land Registry price paid data, explained

Last updated 27 July 2026·Applies to England & Wales

Every sold-price tool in the UK — Address Lens included — is built on the same public dataset: HM Land Registry Price Paid Data, the record of residential sales in England and Wales going back to 1995. Knowing what's in it, when it updates, and what it legitimately leaves out is the difference between reading the history well and drawing the wrong conclusion from a gap.

What each record contains

Price paid — the actual sum recorded at registration, not an estimate.
Date of transfer — when the sale completed.
Address and postcode of the property.
Property type — detached, semi-detached, terraced, flat/maisonette, or other.
Tenure — freehold or leasehold.
New build flag — whether it was the first sale of a newly built home.

Category A and category B sales

Since October 2013 the dataset has two categories. Category A is the standard price paid entry: a single residential property sold for full market value to a private individual. Category B covers "additional" transactions — repossessions, buy-to-lets where the buyer is a company, and transfers to non-private individuals. Category B prices can sit well away from open-market value, so a serious comparison treats them differently — which is why a raw average of every row can mislead.

When the data updates

HM Land Registry publishes updates monthly, typically towards the end of the calendar month. There's also a lag before a completed sale appears at all: the buyer's solicitor registers the transfer after completion, so a recent sale commonly takes several weeks — sometimes longer — to show up. "Sold subject to contract" and exchange never appear; only completed, registered transfers do.

Why a sale can be missing

It was never a full-market-value sale — gifts, inheritance transfers, divorce settlements and transfers between family members aren't included.
Right-to-buy discounts — discounted council-house sales are excluded.
Short leases — leases originally granted for under seven years aren't registered, so they never reach the dataset.
It's simply too recent — registration lag, as above.
It's outside England & Wales — Scotland (Registers of Scotland) and Northern Ireland publish separately.

Reading gaps correctly: a property with no recorded sale since 1995 usually means long ownership, an excluded transfer type, or a pre-1995 purchase — not that something is wrong with the property. Treat an unexpected gap as a question for the seller or conveyancer, not a red flag by itself.