Detached home sellers making £122,500 gross profit on average, analysis finds

Homeowners selling up in Britain in the past 18 months made an average gain of £72,000 compared with what they paid for the property, according to analysis by Zoopla.

Overall, sellers made a 38% gross profit on average compared with what they had paid, the property website said.

The analysis found the average time homeowners had spent between buying and selling was nine years, for homes sold in the past 18 months.

Sellers in Scotland made £37,200 gross profit, equating to a 24% increase, Zoopla found. On average, they spent six years in their home before selling up.

The analysis involved looking at Land Registry data covering England and Wales and Registers of Scotland figures, covering homes sold between March 2024 and September 2025. The analysis only included homeowners who had sold within 25 years of purchasing.

The average seller of a detached house made an average gross profit of £122,500 or 45% on what they paid.

Flat sellers made gross gains of £27,000 or 15% on average, while those selling semi-detached homes made gains of £80,000 or 44% typically. Terraced home sellers made a typical gross profit of £64,250 or 40%.

Richard Donnell, executive director at Zoopla, said: “British homeowners are sitting on sizeable capital gains from years of historic house price inflation which varies widely by geography and property type.

“The scale of gains from historic price inflation is unlikely to be repeated in future with lower levels of annual price inflation in more recent years than in the past.

“Estate agents currently have the highest stock of homes for sale in over seven years. This is boosting choice for buyers, meaning it is very important that sellers are realistic over how they set their asking price.

“Homes that attract limited interest and require a price reduction can take twice as long to sell.”

Here are the average gross gains made by sellers in the past 18 months in cash and percentage terms and the average number of years spent in a property before selling up, according to Zoopla:

London, £130,000, 35%, 10

South East, £94,000, 35%, nine

East of England, £84,000, 36%, nine

South West, £80,005, 37%, eight

West Midlands, £70,000, 41%, nine

East Midlands, £68,000, 41%, eight

Wales, £65,000, 45%, nine

North West, £62,000, 42%, nine

Yorkshire and the Humber, £55,000, 38%, nine

Scotland, £37,200, 24%, six

North East, £35,000, 26%, nine