The typical UK property cost £299,330 in June 2026, according to the Lloyds house price index, as prices rose 0.2% month-on-month following a 0.2% decline in May The Guardian. It was the first monthly increase since February 2026, when prices rose 0.3% to £301,051. Annual growth edged higher too, to 0.6% in June from 0.5% the previous month.

The index — long published under the Halifax House Price Index name and now increasingly presented under the Lloyds Banking Group banner, its parent company — remains the most closely watched gauge of UK residential valuations alongside Nationwide's rival series. The May edition was still branded as the Halifax House Price Index when it appeared on halifax.co.uk on June 5 Halifax, and Lloyds Banking Group's own "Supporting the UK housing market" page, last updated in June, continues to house historical data under the Halifax name even as reporting increasingly attributes the series to Lloyds Lloyds Banking Group.

Amanda Bryden, head of mortgages at Lloyds, was quoted in the release accompanying the data The Guardian. Reuters separately reported the same headline finding — that UK house prices inched higher in June — based on the Lloyds data set Reuters.

The trajectory since January has been essentially flat. The average property price stood at £300,283 in January, dipped through the spring, fell again in May, and has now recovered only part of that ground. Six months of data show a market oscillating within a narrow band just above and below £300,000, rather than trending decisively in either direction.

First-time buyers saw a sharper pickup than the market overall. Annual price growth for this segment rose to 0.8% in June from 0.3% in May, with the average first-time buyer property costing £240,433. That the entry-level segment is accelerating faster than the market as a whole is consistent with the regional pattern in the data: growth is concentrated where affordability is least stretched, not where average prices are highest.

Regional divergence remains the defining feature of this cycle. Northern Ireland posted the strongest annual growth in the UK, at 7.4%, with an average price of £229,000. Scotland followed at 3.9% annual growth, averaging £223,277, while Wales grew a more modest 0.9% to a typical value of £231,142. Within England, the north-east recorded 2.8% annual growth to £181,133 and the north-west grew 2.4% to £248,218.

The picture inverts in the south. The south-east of England saw prices fall 2% year-on-year to £381,654, and London recorded a 1.1% annual decline to £534,831. Even with that fall, London's average price remains more than double the north-east's and over £150,000 above the national average — a gap that has persisted through the north-south divergence visible across the entire data set.

This divergence tracks closely with Lloyds Banking Group's own forecast, published on its insights hub in January, which projected national house price growth of 2%–2.5% for 2026 with stronger gains concentrated in northern regions Lloyds Banking Group. Six months into the year, national annual growth of 0.6% sits well below that projected range, even as the regional skew toward the north and Northern Ireland has materialized broadly as anticipated.

The gap between forecast and outturn matters for how mortgage lenders and housing economists read the rest of 2026. A 2%–2.5% full-year projection made in January implied meaningfully more momentum than the market has shown through the first half. Whether June's uptick represents the start of a catch-up toward that range, or simply another data point in a flat trend that has bounced between small monthly gains and losses since February, is not yet resolvable from a single month's figures.

The London and south-east declines deserve separate scrutiny from anyone tracking affordability and lending exposure. Annual price falls in the country's two highest-value regions, occurring alongside growth everywhere else, point to a compression of the historic north-south price gap rather than a uniform slowdown. That compression, if it persists, has implications for loan-to-value ratios, stamp duty receipts concentrated in high-value transactions, and the geographic distribution of housing equity — all areas where lenders and policymakers will be watching subsequent months of data closely before drawing firmer conclusions.