Chelmsford CM1 Market Report, Summer 2026

The market today

What is on the market

CM1

Homes on the portals632 Rightmove 317, Zoopla 284, OnTheMarket 31. A home listed on two portals is counted once.

Still available460

Flagged sold subject to contract172 27% As at 3 September 2026. A count of what the portals were showing on one day, not a tally of what went under offer over the summer.

First listed 1 June to 31 August416 66% This measures homes coming to market, not homes going under offer. 121 of them are now flagged sold subject to contract, at a median asking price of £400,000.

New listings in June104

New listings in July165 July was the busiest month for new instructions in CM1.

New listings in August147

Listed before 1 June205 The overhang. A median 150 days on the market between them, and 51 now flagged sold subject to contract.

What this count cannot see. It counts listings still visible on 3 September 2026. Anything that came to market in June and sold before September has left the dataset, so every figure here leans towards the homes that are still standing.

Asking prices

The middle home asks £385,000

The average asks £83,000 more than the middle, because CM1 holds city-centre flats and Roxwell country houses inside one postcode.

£385,000

Middle asking priceacross 628 listings on 3 September 2026

£468,308

Average asking pricepulled up by a long tail at the top

CM1

Where 70% of listings sit£230k – £700k

Where 80% of listings sit£200k – £825k

Full range£110k – £3.25m Four records are left out as not whole-home prices: two typed as detached houses with no bedrooms at £6,000 and £8,500, and two one-bedroom flats at £23,500 and £66,000 priced like a shared-ownership share. Leaving them out does not move the middle.

By postcode sector

SectorListingsMiddle askSold STC

CM1 1 City centre102£280,00023 82% flats: 84 of its 102 listings. That £280,000 is a city-centre apartment price, not a Chelmsford house price. Three detached and five semi-detached listings is not a house market.

CM1 2 Rainsford, west city113£400,00033

CM1 3 Writtle, Highwood71£435,00020

CM1 4 Melbourne, Newlands Spring114£475,00028 The highest sector middle in CM1, and the district's dearest listing at £3,250,000 on The Street in Roxwell. Lifted by the rural tail at Roxwell and High Easter.

CM1 6 Springfield, Beaulieu165£415,00049 Two markets in one sector. 50 of the 165 are Beaulieu Park and Chelmsford Garden Village at a middle of £640,000; the other 115 sit at £370,000. The £415,000 describes neither half.

CM1 7 Broomfield63£430,00019

Sold STC counts are as at 3 September 2026. The sector names describe the settlements each one mostly covers, read from the addresses themselves. They are postal sectors, not wards or parishes, and there is no CM1 5.

What a pound buys

Chelmsford prices a square foot the same whatever shape it comes in

The middle listing in CM1 asks £399 a square foot across 981 square feet. A flat asks £384 and a detached house £412, which is a spread of 7% between the cheapest and dearest type of home in the district.

TypeListings£/sq ftSize, sq ftMiddle ask

Detached137£4121,743£675k

Semi-detached116£3991,089£450k

Terraced47£406842£350k

Flat146£384634£240k

Price per square foot is the asking price divided by the floor area. It compares two homes of different sizes without the bigger one always looking dearer. 446 of the 632 listings publish a floor area, which is 71% coverage. The middle listing sits at £399, the average at £409, and 80% of them fall between £310 and £506.

Beaulieu Park buys more house, not a dearer foot

The 29 Beaulieu Park listings that publish a floor area ask a middle £399 a square foot, which is the district rate to the pound, across a middle home of 1,744 square feet against Chelmsford's 981. The £270,000 gap inside CM1 6 is 78% more house, not a premium rate for it.

Four years

£416 a square foot in 2022. £425 now.

That is 2.2% across four years, before inflation, and the line has held a £9 band the whole time. All the growth in this series landed between 2020 and 2022, in two moves of 5.1% and 6.7%.

£3712020

£3902021

£4162022

£4242023

£4162024

£4242025

£4252026

2022 to 2026: +2.2%, before inflation.

PropertyData's £/sq ft series for CM1, each point dated September. Year on year: +5.1% in 2021, +6.7% in 2022, +1.9% in 2023, −1.9% in 2024, +1.9% in 2025, +0.2% in 2026. The 2026 point is the newest reading and may fill in further, which is why this shows four years rather than the last figure.

Two different measures, never merged. This series sits above the £399 asking rate above it, which says it is built on a different population of homes, most likely completed sales rather than live listings. Both are reported here. Neither is converted into the other and they are never drawn as one line.

What it says to a seller. The market is holding a plateau rather than falling. Anyone waiting for a rebound before they move has been waiting since 2022.

Days on the market

How long homes are sitting

CM1

Middle, all listings showing63 days

Average, all listings showing92 days

Middle, still available59 days

Middle, now sold subject to contract65 days

Listed 90 days or less414 66%

Listed over a year15

By type of home

TypeMiddle daysSold STC

Terraced5739%

Detached5923%

Semi-detached6239%

Flat7218% Flats are the slowest to move and the least likely to be under offer, in the type of home that makes up a third of everything for sale.

Counted for each listing on its own, from the day it was advertised. It measures time since listing for homes still showing on 3 September 2026, so quick sales have already left the figures and every number here leans towards slow movers. It is a picture of what is standing, not an answer to how long a sale takes.

The listing mix

What is for sale, against what exists

TypeOf the stockOf listingsRatio

Flat6.2%33.4%5.4x

Terraced10.5%11.1%1.1x

Semi-detached30.8%25.9%0.8x

Detached51.5%29.6%0.6x

Listings: 211 flats, 187 detached, 164 semi-detached and 70 terraced, from all 632. Housing stock from census output-area counts across the 271 output areas in CM1. The two are different populations, so read this as a signal about turnover rather than a like-for-like comparison.

What it means for someone selling a house

Chelmsford's apartment stock is turning over hard and clearing slowly at the same time. For a vendor with a house, most of the visible competition is not competing with them.

Market depth by sector

SectorFor saleSales a monthMonths of stock

CM1 1 City centre101714.3 The only sector rated a buyer's market, with twice the standing stock of CM1 4. That fits its 90-day middle and its 82% flat make-up.

CM1 2 Rainsford, west city88117.7

CM1 3 Writtle, Highwood52510.0

CM1 4 Melbourne, Newlands Spring91137.1

CM1 6 Springfield, Beaulieu116129.1

CM1 7 Broomfield4867.7

Months of stock is how long the homes for sale would take to clear at the current rate of sale. Every sector except CM1 1 is rated balanced.

Sold prices

What actually sold

84 sales in CM1 carry a registration date inside the summer window, at a middle of £387,500. The current middle asking price is £385,000, so the two sit within £2,500 of each other.

1 June to 24 July 2026CM1

Registered sales84

Middle sale price£387,500

Range£96k – £1.34m

Freehold and leasehold63 / 21 By type: 26 semi-detached, 20 flats, 20 terraced, 15 detached, 3 untyped.

Why there is no August, and why July is short. Land Registry data for CM1 runs 5 March to 24 July 2026, because registration lags about ten weeks. It covers June in full, July only to the 24th, and none of August.

Registered counts run 59 in March, 57 in April, 48 in May, 57 in June, then 27 in July cut off on the 24th. That last figure is a part-month of paperwork rather than a drop in sales, which is why it is not drawn as a line anywhere on this page.

The largest registered sales inside the window: 31 Frances Green, Chelmsford Garden CM1 6EG at £1,340,000 on 3 June; 2 Shardelow Avenue, Chelmsford Garden CM1 6BG at £1,165,000 on 3 July; Wood End, Cock Lane, Highwood CM1 3RB at £1,050,000 on 12 June. Three of the five biggest are Chelmsford Garden Village.

How to read this

Six things that decide what these numbers mean

Middle means the midpoint: half the homes sit above it and half below. It describes a market better than an average, which one very large house can pull about.

The window for anything dated here runs 1 June to 31 August 2026, and it is closed. Sold price records only reach 24 July.

Under offer is a live count on 3 September 2026 of homes showing as sold subject to contract. No portal records the date the flag went on, so nobody can turn it into a tally of the summer.

Days on the market here is counted for each listing on its own. The figure some tools publish for this is months of inventory multiplied out into days, which measures stock against sales rate rather than how long a sale takes. It is not used on this page.

Sectors, not neighbourhoods. CM1 has six live sectors and no CM1 5. The names describe the settlements each one mostly covers, taken from the addresses. They are not wards or parishes.

No track record here. Muvin sells in Hertfordshire and west Essex, and holds nothing in CM1. This is commentary on a market we read, not a record of homes we have sold in it.

Download the full report

PDF, ten pages. The district picture, every sector, price per square foot with the type splits, the four-year trend, time on the market, the listing mix and the registered sales, laid out to print.

Your own home

None of this is a figure for your house.

These numbers describe 632 other homes. Yours has its own size, its own condition and its own street, and in a district where the rate per square foot runs from £337 to £477 depending on where you stand in it, those things decide the price. If you are weighing up a move in Chelmsford, ask and we will come and give you a figure for your own address, with the homes it is built on set out beside it.

Your valuation goes to

Courtney Heelis

[email protected] · 01279 600567