Chelmsford CM1 Market Report, Autumn 2026

The market today

What is on the market

CM1

Homes on the portals685 Rightmove 462, Zoopla 174, OnTheMarket 49. A home listed on two portals is counted once. 632 six weeks earlier, so the standing stock is up 8.4%.

Still available498

Flagged sold subject to contract187 27% As at 13 October 2026. A count of what the portals were showing on one day, not a tally of what went under offer in August or September. The share was also 27% on 3 September: more sellers arrived and the clearing rate did not move.

First listed 1 August to 30 September303 44% This measures homes coming to market, not homes going under offer. 77 of them are now flagged sold subject to contract, at a median asking price of £400,000.

New listings in August117

New listings in September186 The largest month in this pull by a wide margin, and the most recent full month, so it has lost the least stock to attrition.

Listed before 1 August329 The overhang. A median 128 days on the market between them, and 103 now flagged sold subject to contract.

Listed 1 to 13 October53 After the window closed, and a part-month. Shown as context only; nothing in this report is computed from it.

What this count cannot see. It counts listings still visible on 13 October 2026. Anything that came to market in August and sold and came off before October has left the dataset, so every figure here leans towards the homes that are still standing.

Why these months cannot be set against the summer edition. Each pull only sees stock still visible on its own read date, so the further back a month sits the more of it has already gone. The September edition put July at 165 listings; this one puts the same July at 110. That is six more weeks of attrition, not a revision.

Asking prices

The middle home asks £400,000

The average asks £73,000 more than the middle, because CM1 holds city-centre flats and Roxwell country houses inside one postcode.

£400,000

Middle asking priceacross 681 listings on 13 October 2026

£473,261

Average asking pricepulled up by a long tail at the top

CM1

Where 70% of listings sit£220k – £700k

Where 80% of listings sit£200k – £850k

Where 90% of listings sit£180k – £995k

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.

Asking £750,000 or more95 34 of them are asking £1m or more.

The £15,000 is mix, not value. The middle ask rose 3.9% in six weeks while the middle asking rate per square foot rose from £399 to £399.50. Flats fell from 33.4% to 31.4% of the listing book over the same six weeks, and the middle listing is sensitive to that. It is not evidence that homes repriced upward.

By postcode sector

SectorListingsMiddle askSold STC

CM1 1 City centre96£280,00017 84% flats: 81 of its 96 listings. That £280,000 is a city-centre apartment price, not a Chelmsford house price. Two detached and five semi-detached listings is not a house market.

CM1 2 Rainsford, west city119£375,00030

CM1 3 Writtle, Highwood76£480,00023 The highest sector middle in CM1, taking the position CM1 4 held in September.

CM1 4 Melbourne, Newlands Spring133£460,00039 Holds 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, Beaulieu187£425,00050 Two markets in one sector. 63 of the 187 are Beaulieu Park and Chelmsford Garden Village at a middle of £630,000; the other 124 sit at £375,000. The £425,000 describes neither half.

CM1 7 Broomfield74£450,00028 38% of its listings are under offer, the highest share in the district.

Sold STC counts are as at 13 October 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.

The top of the market is all rural

The six dearest listings in CM1: The Street, Roxwell CM1 4LB at £3,250,000; Lodge Road, Writtle CM1 3HY at £2,650,000; Chelmsford Road, High Easter CM1 4PY at £1,975,000; Skreens Park Road, Roxwell CM1 4NL at £1,750,000; and two on Woodland Way, Edney Common CM1 3FF at £1,750,000 and £1,650,000. Every one is a detached house in CM1 3 or CM1 4. The city itself has nothing on the market above £1.5m.

What a pound buys

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

The middle listing in CM1 asks £399.50 a square foot across 973 square feet. A flat asks £381 and a semi-detached house £415, which is a spread of 9% between the cheapest and dearest type of home in the district.

TypeListings£/sq ftSize, sq ftMiddle ask

Semi-detached126£4151,078£450k

Detached158£4131,705£700k

Terraced52£398865£350k

Flat152£381643£235k Semi-detached sits £2 a foot above detached. On a 126-listing middle that is inside the noise and is not read here as a crossover.

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. 488 of the 685 listings publish a floor area, which is 71% coverage, the same as the summer edition. The middle listing sits at £399.50, the average at £414, and 80% of them fall between £314 and £515.

Beaulieu Park buys more house, not a dearer foot

The 42 Beaulieu Park listings that publish a floor area ask a middle £392 a square foot, which is 2% below the district rate, across a middle home of 1,574 square feet against Chelmsford's 973. The gap inside CM1 6 is 62% more house, not a premium rate for it.

Four years

£423 a square foot in 2022. £432 now.

That is 2.1% across four years, before inflation, and the line has held a £12 band the whole time. All the growth in this series landed between 2020 and 2022, in two moves of 6.2% and 6.8%.

£3732020

£3962021

£4232022

£4282023

£4202024

£4282025

£4322026

2022 to 2026: +2.1%, before inflation.

PropertyData's £/sq ft series for CM1, each point dated October. Year on year: +6.2% in 2021, +6.8% in 2022, +1.2% in 2023, −1.9% in 2024, +1.9% in 2025, +0.9% 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. This series re-dates to the month it is read in, so these points are October where the September edition's were September. It is the same annual series read six weeks later, not a continuous monthly line.

Two different measures, never merged. This series sits above the £399.50 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 or on one chart.

What it says to a seller. The market is holding a plateau rather than falling, and that plateau has now held across two editions read six weeks apart. Anyone waiting for a rebound before they move has been waiting since 2022.

What homes actually fetch

£428 a square foot, every month for a year

746 registered sales in CM1 carry a floor area matched from their energy certificate. Across the twelve months to July 2026 the middle month never left a £412 to £452 band, and 2026 so far reads £428 a square foot across 385 sales.

August 2025July 2026

Middle achieved rate by month of registration: £426, £429, £437, £452, £413, £412, £429, £428, £428, £421, £429, £428. Bars are drawn from a £400 baseline so the month-to-month movement is visible; the whole range of the chart is £40 a foot.

Achieved £/sq ft, CM1Middle

Twelve months to 21 August 2026, 746 sales£429

2026 so far, 385 sales£428 Middle size 926 sq ft. This is the figure to use for an achieved rate in CM1.

Middle asking rate for comparison£399.50 Achieved sits above asking here because the two are built on different populations of homes: one is what completed and registered over a year, the other is what is standing on the portals today. They are reported side by side and never merged.

August 2026 is left out of this chart on purpose. Land Registry data for CM1 stops on 21 August, so August is 27 sales across 21 days and seventeen of them are semi-detached houses, a type that is running far above the district rate in that small sample. A part-month of one house type is a composition effect, not a price move, so it is not drawn and its rate is not quoted. September does not exist in the data at all.

Days on the market

How long homes are sitting

CM1

Middle, all listings showing69 days 63 days on 3 September. Part of the lengthening is real and part of it is the read date: the same stock measured six weeks later is six weeks older.

Average, all listings showing97 days

Middle, still available64 days

Middle, now sold subject to contract78 days

Listed 90 days or less426 62% 66% in September. This is the one measure here that is free of the read-date drift, and it fell.

Listed over a year20

By type of home

TypeMiddle daysSold STC

Terraced6339%

Semi-detached6739%

Detached6923%

Flat7717% 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 13 October 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 quickest live listings already flagged sold subject to contract went in single figures: Cramphorn Walk CM1 2RE at £325,000 in 5 days, Weymouth Road CM1 6LP at £525,000 in 6 days and Coombe Rise, Broomfield CM1 7DG at £375,000 in 7 days.

The listing mix

What is for sale, against what exists

TypeOf the stockOf listingsRatio

Flat6.2%31.4%5.1x

Terraced10.5%10.4%1.0x

Semi-detached30.8%27.9%0.9x

Detached51.5%30.4%0.6x

Listings: 215 flats, 208 detached, 191 semi-detached and 71 terraced, from all 685. 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. The flat over-representation has eased from 5.4x in September to 5.1x, but the shape is unchanged.

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 centre104616.7 Rated a buyer's market, and it has worsened from 14.3 months in September. That fits its 83-day middle for available stock and its 84% flat make-up.

CM1 2 Rainsford, west city94910.0

CM1 3 Writtle, Highwood53412.5 Crossed into buyer's-market territory since September, when it stood at 10.0 months.

CM1 4 Melbourne, Newlands Spring97910.0

CM1 6 Springfield, Beaulieu1341310.0

CM1 7 Broomfield5177.1 The tightest sector in the district, and the one with the highest share of listings under offer at 38%.

Months of stock is how long the homes for sale would take to clear at the current rate of sale. Two of the six sectors are now rated buyer's markets, where in September only CM1 1 was. The other four are rated balanced.

Sold prices

What has registered so far

27 sales in CM1 carry a registration date inside the autumn window, at a middle of £430,000. Read the box below before you quote that: it is 1 to 21 August and nothing else.

1 to 21 August 2026CM1

Registered sales27

Middle sale price£430,000

Range£110k – £1.05m

Freehold and leasehold23 / 4 By type: 17 semi-detached, 5 detached, 4 flats, 1 terraced.

There is no September, and August stops on the 21st. Land Registry data for CM1 runs 16 February to 21 August 2026, because registration lags roughly seven to eight weeks. The window's registered sales therefore cover 1 to 21 August and none of September at all. Nobody can quote a registered September sale in Chelmsford yet, and this page does not estimate one.

Twenty-seven sales across twenty-one days, seventeen of them semi-detached, is a 21-day sample and not the window's outcome. The month counts are a measure of paperwork, not of selling, which is why August is not drawn as a line or a bar anywhere on this page.

Across the whole six-month pull there are 327 registered sales at a middle of £400,000, ranging from £81,250 to £1,800,000, all classed old stock.

The ten largest, named

7 Westfield Avenue, CM1 1SF£1,050,000 4 August 2026 · detached · 2,228 sq ft · £471/sq ft

5 Church Green, Roxwell, CM1 4NZ£950,000 10 August 2026 · detached · 2,379 sq ft · £399/sq ft

5 Nancy Edwards Place, CM1 2WU£781,000 5 August 2026 · detached · 1,550 sq ft · £504/sq ft

30 Anvil Way, Springfield, CM1 6SZ£675,000 12 August 2026 · detached · 1,690 sq ft · £399/sq ft

31 Ernest Webb Drive, Chelmsford Garden, CM1 6HF£567,000 21 August 2026 · semi-detached · 1,335 sq ft · £425/sq ft

11 Roxwell Road, CM1 2LY£500,000 7 August 2026 · semi-detached · 990 sq ft · £505/sq ft

49 Ravensbourne Drive, CM1 2SJ£500,000 3 August 2026 · semi-detached · 904 sq ft · £553/sq ft

7 Charles Jeffreys Place, Chelmsford Garden, CM1 6HW£500,000 7 August 2026 · semi-detached · 1,023 sq ft · £489/sq ft

85 Coval Lane, CM1 1TG£490,000 14 August 2026 · semi-detached · 1,087 sq ft · £451/sq ft

28 Canuden Road, CM1 2SU£490,000 20 August 2026 · semi-detached · 926 sq ft · £529/sq ft

HM Land Registry price paid data. Floor areas are matched from the energy certificate rather than measured, so a rate per foot is only shown where a certificate matched the address. All 27 registered sales inside the window are set out in the PDF.

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 August to 30 September 2026, and it is closed. Registered sale records only reach 21 August.

Under offer is a live count on 13 October 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 August and September.

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 — three CM1 sectors return the identical 304 on that measure — which is 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.

Two editions, one method. Where a September figure is quoted for comparison it is the summer edition's own published value, read on 3 September 2026. Nothing from that edition has been recomputed.

What this report could not establish

Nothing in this list has been filled in with an estimate.

Registered sales for September 2026, and for 22 to 31 August. They do not exist in the data yet. Registration lags roughly seven to eight weeks and the CM1 record ends on 21 August.

When anything went under offer. No tool returns dated under-offer transitions for the whole market. What exists is a one-day snapshot.

Which agent holds any listing. The listing records carry no agent name, so no home on this page is attributed to an agent from that source.

What homes achieved against what they asked. The sold and listing datasets cannot be joined address to address, so no ratio of the two is published here.

Floor area for 197 of the 685 listings, 29% of them. It is not published on the portal record, so every rate per square foot on this page is computed from the 488 that do publish one.

Whether October is a full month. The read date is 13 October, so the 53 listings dated to October are a part-month. They are excluded from the window and shown only as context.

Download the full report

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

Our own listing

Muvin in CM1

The figures above cover every agent's stock in the district, not ours. For the avoidance of doubt: Muvin has no completed sale on its books in CM1. The nearest records are in CM2 and CM3. What we have in the district is the home below, in Roxwell.

The Street, Roxwell, Chelmsford, CM1 4PA

Offers over £325,000

2 bedroom semi-detached house · 1 bathroom · 1 reception room · under offer

Built in 1796 and partially Grade II listed, with an inglenook fireplace, exposed beams and a walled courtyard garden. Chelmsford is a short drive from the village. Shown as under offer on muvin.co.uk and flagged sold subject to contract on the portals, both checked on 13 October 2026.

See the full listing on muvin.co.uk

Price and status as shown on muvin.co.uk on 13 October 2026. The summer edition of this report also carried a second Roxwell home at CM1 4PD; its page on muvin.co.uk no longer resolves as of 13 October 2026, so it is not shown here. A two-bedroom terraced home at CM1 4PD is on the portals at £350,000, but the portal record carries no agent name, so this page does not claim it.

Your own home

None of this is a figure for your house.

These numbers describe 685 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 £345 to £454 depending on the sector and the kind of home you are standing in, 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

courtney@muvin.co.uk · 01279 600567