Repossessions and category B transactions explained
General information, not legal or tax advice. The rates, bands and duties quoted here change and are only valid on the date shown: check every figure against the official source we link before you sign or pay.
Two houses on the same street sell in the same month, one at £340,000 and one at £272,000. Nothing about the buildings explains the difference. The explanation is in a field most people never look at: the second sale is a category B entry, and the seller was a lender exercising a power of sale rather than an owner choosing a moment to move.
What category B actually covers
HM Land Registry splits price paid records into two categories. Category A is the standard entry: a single residential property sold for value at full market value under an ordinary conveyance. Category B is the additional entry, and it is a mixed bag with one thing in common, namely that the transaction did not happen the way a normal open market sale happens.
- Transfers under a power of sale, which is the technical description of a repossession sold by the lender.
- Buy to let purchases, where a mortgage identifies the transaction as such.
- Transfers to buyers who are not private individuals, including companies and other corporate bodies.
- Sales that otherwise sit outside the standard full market value definition used for category A.
These entries have been published in the file since October 2013, when HM Land Registry widened the dataset to make it more complete. Before that date the published data was category A only, which is a detail that matters if you are comparing transaction counts across the 2013 boundary: some of the apparent increase is definitional rather than real.
Why they are in the data at all
Because they are real sales at real prices, and a register that omitted them would leave visible holes in the ownership history of individual properties. For anyone researching a specific address, a repossession in 2016 is exactly the sort of thing you want to know about. Completeness is a virtue for the register even where it is a nuisance for statistics.
The nuisance is real, though. A forced sale, a corporate portfolio transfer and a family home sold after six weeks of viewings are three different economic events. Averaging them together produces a number that describes none of them, which is why the category flag exists in the first place.
Why we exclude them from our statistics
Every median and average shown on our UK sold price pages is calculated from category A entries only. The reasoning is straightforward: those pages exist to answer the question of what a normal home on a normal street is worth, and a lender selling quickly to recover a debt is not answering that question.
Atención
If a service shows you a street median without telling you how it treats category B entries, you cannot know whether a low figure reflects the street or reflects two forced sales in a quiet road. On a street with six transactions a year, two category B entries can move the median by more than any plausible market movement.
The exclusion is a presentation choice rather than a claim that the sales did not happen. The underlying records remain in the source file, described field by field in Price Paid Data explained, and anyone downloading the data directly can include or exclude them as their own analysis requires.
How to spot a distressed sale in the record
| Signal | What it may indicate |
|---|---|
| Category B flag on the entry | The clearest signal, though it also covers buy to let and corporate purchases |
| Price well below the street pattern for the same type and size | A forced or hurried sale, or a property in poor condition |
| A quick resale at a much higher price soon after | A trade purchase, refurbishment and flip, common after repossessions |
| A corporate buyer followed by multiple onward sales | A portfolio transaction being broken up |
| Sale during a period of rising possession volumes locally | Context rather than proof, but worth checking against published statistics |
Be careful with the second row. A price below the street pattern is far more often explained by condition, a small floor area, a short lease or a poor position than by distress. Check the size before you check the drama, using the method in valuing a home from comparable sales.
What possession volumes tell you about an area
Court statistics on mortgage and landlord possession actions are published quarterly and broken down geographically, which makes them a useful backdrop for interpreting category B activity. Rising possession claims in a district give context for a cluster of forced sales; falling ones suggest a cluster is coincidence.
Read them as context and nothing more. Possession claims are not repossessions, since many are resolved before any sale, and the geography published is coarser than a street. The mortgage and landlord possession statistics set out the definitions and the caveats in detail.
If you are buying a repossessed property
- Expect the seller to know nothing. The lender never lived there, so the usual property information forms come back largely blank.
- Budget for the unknown. Services may have been disconnected, the property may have stood empty, and access for surveys can be awkward.
- Understand the duty on the lender. A lender exercising a power of sale must take reasonable care to obtain the best price reasonably obtainable, which is why an accepted offer is often still advertised for a period in case a higher one appears.
- Be ready to lose it late. Higher offers can displace yours after your survey has been paid for, and there is no compensation for that.
- Check the record afterwards. When the sale completes it will appear as a category B entry, which is worth remembering when you later come to sell and want comparables for your own street.
Sources: the category definitions are set out in the official Price Paid Data guidance, and the underlying files are available from the downloads page. Contains HM Land Registry data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. This article is general information and not legal advice on any particular transaction.
Frequently asked questions
What does category B mean in Land Registry price data?
It marks an additional price paid entry that is not a standard full market value sale of a single residential property. It covers transfers under a power of sale such as repossessions, buy to let purchases identifiable by a mortgage, and transfers to buyers who are not private individuals.
Are repossessions included in sold price data?
Yes, as category B entries, and they have been published in the file since October 2013. They are genuine sales at genuine prices, but they are excluded from the medians shown on our sold price pages because a forced sale answers a different question from a normal one.
Do repossessed homes sell for less?
Often, though not always, and the size of any discount varies with condition, location and how the sale was conducted. A lender must take reasonable care to obtain the best price reasonably obtainable, which limits how far below the market a sale can sensibly go.
How can I tell if a low sold price was a repossession?
Check the category flag first. Then look for corroborating signals such as a quick resale at a much higher price, a corporate buyer, or a price well below the pattern for the same property type and size on that street. Condition and floor area explain most low prices before distress does.
Related data
Related articles
HM Land Registry Price Paid Data explained
Thirty million transactions, sixteen fields, no floor area. A practical tour of the sold price dataset, its two categories and the sales it deliberately omits.
Valuing a home from comparable sales
The approach a surveyor uses, done by hand. Six comparables, a floor area for each, an index adjustment for time, and an honest range rather than a number.
How to check what a house sold for
Sold house prices are public, free and older than you think. The three ways to look one up, the six fields you get, and the gaps nobody warns you about.