Losing HS2 didn't hurt Crewe's house prices. Getting it hurt West London's.
Homes near cancelled HS2 stations have outperformed England's average by up to 9 percentage points since the northern leg was cancelled, while prices near London's active super-hub fell sharply.
Andy Burnham said in June 2026 he would reinstate HS2's northern leg between Birmingham and Manchester if he became Prime Minister. His pitch to Northern homeowners: cancellation has cost them money, and reinstatement would give it back.
The property data tells a more complicated story.
Ranking Atlas analysed approximately 360,000 residential property transactions recorded by HM Land Registry across two comparison quarters: Q3 2023, the last full quarter before Rishi Sunak cancelled the northern leg on 4 October 2023, and Q1 2026. We filtered the data by postcode district for every major planned or active station on the route, then compared performance against the England-wide median.
The finding is counterintuitive: every cancelled HS2 area has outperformed the England average, while prices near London's active super-hub fell sharply.
Cancelled HS22 areas outperformed england
England's median property price fell 3.5% over the period, from £285,000 in Q3 2023 to £275,000 in Q1 2026. High interest rates and subdued buyer demand set the backdrop.
Against that national decline, homes near cancelled HS2 stations held firm or rose.
| Area | Q3 2023 median | Q1 2026 median | Change | vs England |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crewe (CW1, CW2) | £180,000 | £190,000 | +5.6% | +9.1pp |
| Manchester Piccadilly (M1, M11, M12) | £210,000 | £214,500 | +2.1% | +5.7pp |
| Staffordshire corridor (ST15, ST16, WS13) | £249,076 | £250,000 | +0.4% | +3.9pp |
| Manchester Airport (M22, SK9) | £315,000 | £310,000 | -1.6% | +1.9pp |
| England (national baseline) | £285,000 | £275,000 | -3.5% | baseline |
Source: HM Land Registry Price Paid Data. "vs England" is the area's percentage change minus England's.
Crewe was slated to become the northern HS2 hub, the junction where trains would split for Manchester and Leeds. It has been one of the stronger property markets in England over the past two and a half years, rising 5.6% while the national median was falling.
Manchester Piccadilly-adjacent properties rose 2.1% against a 3.5% national decline. The Staffordshire corridor, which sits along the cancelled route between Birmingham and Crewe, held almost flat. Manchester Airport districts slipped slightly in absolute terms but still beat England by 1.9 percentage points.
In every case, the cancellation of HS2 did not produce the property market shock that commentators predicted in October 2023.
Active construction sites tell a different story
We ran the same analysis on postcode districts near HS2 Phase 1 stations still under active construction, sites where building work continues today.
| Area | Q3 2023 median | Q1 2026 median | Change | vs England |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Old Oak Common, London (NW10, W3) | £517,500 | £418,000 | -19.2% | -15.7pp |
| England (national baseline) | £285,000 | £275,000 | -3.5% | baseline |
Source: HM Land Registry Price Paid Data.
Old Oak Common, the London super-hub where HS2 and Elizabeth line trains will interchange, has seen median prices fall nearly a fifth since Q3 2023. It underperforms the England average by 15.7 percentage points.
Construction blight is a well-documented phenomenon in property research. Noise, dust, restricted access, and years-long uncertainty consistently suppress values near major infrastructure sites during the build phase. The data here is consistent with that pattern.
The Old Oak Common result reflects both HS2 construction disruption and the broader softening of London prices over the same period. Both factors are likely in play. The scale of the underperformance, nearly 16 percentage points below the national median, suggests construction blight is a significant contributor.
This finding matters for Burnham's pitch. If reinstatement proceeds, the areas near new construction would experience the same disruption that Old Oak Common is experiencing now. The "HS2 cancelled, prices fell" narrative is not what Land Registry shows. The more accurate pattern is: London's active super-hub fell; cancelled areas did not.
What this means for burnham's pitch
Burnham's argument rests on the assumption that cancellation has depressed Northern property values and that reinstatement would reverse the damage. The transaction data does not support the first part of that claim.
Crewe homeowners have not been punished by the markets for losing their HS2 hub. Manchester Piccadilly-adjacent properties are ahead of the national average. The feared reverse-announcement effect, where HS2 cancellation would strip value from Northern towns the way HS2 announcements had once boosted them, has not materialised in the Land Registry data.
That does not mean cancellation was costless. Local authorities lost planned regeneration investment. Businesses relocated from affected zones were not fully compensated. Transport connectivity improvements were real and were lost. But the residential property market has absorbed the cancellation without the collapse that many predicted.
The same pattern of counterintuitive findings from open government datasets appears in other areas of public policy: what the data shows often diverges sharply from political framing on both sides. The HS2 property story is another example.
“The data here is drawn directly from Land Registry, the most authoritative source available for residential property prices. The counterintuitive finding is that the Northern markets most people assumed were hurt by cancellation have actually outperformed England. Whether that is Northern market momentum, a recognition that HS2 construction comes with its own disruption costs, or simply that the cancellation was partially priced in early, the numbers are clear.”
Daniel Grainger, Ranking Atlas
Download the data
The underlying price data by postcode district and quarter, including transaction counts and median prices for every area in the analysis.
hs2-property-prices.csv
Postcode district, Q3 2023 median, Q1 2026 median, % change, pp vs England, transaction counts.
Citation: Ranking Atlas, "Losing HS2 Didn't Hurt Crewe's House Prices. Getting It Hurt West London's," June 2026. Source data: HM Land Registry Price Paid Data (open government licence).