The average BCP home fell £5,116 in a year to £312,162 in June, while Dorset, the New Forest and the UK all rose. Flats fell hardest, down 3.1%.

The average home in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole sold for £312,162 in June, according to the latest HM Land Registry UK House Price Index. That is £5,116 less than a year earlier, a fall of 1.6%.

What makes the number sting is what happened everywhere around us over the same twelve months:

  • BCP: down 1.6% to £312,162
  • New Forest: up 1.2% to £380,310
  • Dorset (the council area to our west): up 1.6% to £325,410
  • South West: up 1.9% to £304,562
  • UK: up 2.0% to £272,188

Diverging bar chart of the annual change in average house prices to June 2026: Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole down 1.6%, the New Forest up 1.2%, Dorset up 1.6%, the South West up 1.9% and the UK up 2.0%

Every neighbour rose. The national average rose. BCP fell, and it has now given up £32,972, or 9.6%, since its December 2022 peak of £345,134. There was a brief recovery in late 2024, when the average touched £324,413, but prices have slipped back since.

Flats are doing the falling

The index splits the average by property type, and the fall is not evenly shared:

  • Flats and maisonettes: £198,529, down 3.1% over the year
  • Detached: £553,916, down 1.2%
  • Terraced: £293,515, down 0.1%
  • Semi-detached: £358,691, up 0.1%, the only type to rise

That matters more here than in most places, because Bournemouth sells more flats than anything else. Our area by area breakdown found flats were 42% of everything sold in the town over the last year, so a flat slump drags the headline average down harder than it would in Dorset’s villages.

For anyone trying to buy their first home, the average first-time buyer in BCP paid £250,355, down 1.5% on a year earlier. That is within £5,000 of the South West first-time buyer average of £251,476, despite BCP’s overall average sitting £7,600 above the region’s.

Two health warnings on these numbers

First, the UK House Price Index is a mean average, not a median. A handful of Sandbanks and Canford Cliffs sales can move it in a way that says nothing about what a semi in Winton is worth. The middle sale price is lower: our read of the raw Land Registry records puts the town of Bournemouth’s median at around £301,000.

Second, “Bournemouth” here is really the whole council area. The index measures Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole together, one council since 2019. For what homes actually sold for in Southbourne, Winton, Boscombe, Charminster, Kinson and the town centre, see our postcode by postcode medians.

What it means for you

If you are selling, especially a flat, the market is telling you to price against this year’s sales, not 2022’s. If you are buying, BCP is one of the few places in the south where the average is lower than it was a year ago, and lower still than three and a half years ago. Monthly moves are small, June was down 0.5% on May, but the direction over the year is clear.

The index is published monthly, about six weeks in arrears, so July’s figures are due in mid September. We will update our house prices page as each month lands.