Land by postcode · SM area · SM3
What the open records say about the SM3 postcode district in Greater London: recent sales, planning designations and controls, and the council that decides applications. District-level facts to read before you sell or develop a plot in Sutton.
Residential sales recorded by HM Land Registry between 2024-08 and 2026-07. This is market context for the district, not a land valuation: what a plot is worth depends on what can be built on it, which these figures do not show.
Sales in 24 months
470
Median sale price
£550,000
Median £ per m² of floor area
£6,917
Median, last 12m vs prior 12m
+0.5%
£549,500 → £552,500
Mix of sales: 3% detached, 35% semi-detached, 40% terraced, 22% flats.
New-build sales 2023–2024: 0 of 460 (0%). A rough proxy for recent building activity: these are homes sold by builders, not development sites.
For each designation on the planning.data.gov.uk register, the share of the 379 live postcodes in SM3 whose centroid falls inside it. This measures postcodes, not land area, and says nothing about any individual plot.
45 of 379 postcodes
COA00000309
No postcodes in SM3 fall inside: Green Belt, National Landscape (AONB), National Park, Article 4 Direction area.
Flood zones, tree preservation orders, local plan allocations, settlement boundaries and non-designated heritage are not included here and are checked in a full assessment.
None of these designations covers more than a small share of postcodes in SM3. What can be built on a given plot is decided by the local plan, settlement boundaries and site-specific matters such as access, flood risk and neighbours, none of which this page measures.
These are district-level facts. The free assessment checks your actual boundary against the same registers and the local plan and tells you plainly what they mean for your plot.
Decided planning applications in SM3 since 2021, from the council registers, grouped by the kind of scheme a landowner might be weighing up. Extensions, conditions and tree works are left out. Counts, not estimates.
Taken from the units table on the planning form itself, so this is homes actually created, not a reading of the description. 45 decided since 2021, 26 refused, typically 136 days to a decision.
14 of 45
approved, 31%
47% across London
24 homes approved of 78 applied for
Approved examples
23 Brocks Drive North Cheam SM3 9UJ (1 new home)
Demolition of existing outbuildings at rear and erection of a detached two storey dwelling with refuse and cycle stores and parking to the f...
Approved 2021-06-28, Sutton ref DM2021/00413
Land Between 53 And 61 Malden Road Cheam SM3 8QW (8 new homes)
Outline application to determine access, appearance, layout and scale for the erection of two detached two storey buildings with accommodati...
Approved 2024-12-17, Sutton ref DM2022/00580
22 - 34 High Street Cheam Sutton SM3 8RL (2 new homes)
Erection of 2 two storey semi-detached dwellings with accommodation in roofspace, refuse and cycle storage and parking.
Approved 2023-09-08, Sutton ref DM2022/02223
By the kind of plot, from the wording of each proposal:
20 decided since 2021, 15 refused, typically 144 days to a decision
3 of 20
approved, 15%
43% across London
Approved examples
23 Brocks Drive North Cheam SM3 9UJ
Demolition of existing outbuildings at rear and erection of a detached two storey dwelling with refuse and cycle stores and parking to the f...
Approved 2021-06-28, Sutton ref DM2021/00413
11 & 11A Abbotts Road Cheam SM3 9SJ
Demolition of existing dwellings and erection of two single storey dwellings with roof accommodation with refuse and cycle stores and vehicu...
Approved 2023-08-16, Sutton ref DM2021/02427
22 - 34 High Street Cheam Sutton SM3 8RL
Erection of 2 two storey semi-detached dwellings with accommodation in roofspace, refuse and cycle storage and parking.
Approved 2023-09-08, Sutton ref DM2022/02223
6 decided since 2021, 4 refused, typically 102 days to a decision
1 of 6
approved, 17%
45% across London
Approved examples
65 Stonecot Hill Sutton SM3 9HJ
Change of use of part of the ground floor unit from Class E (retail storage) to C3 (residential) to provide 1 self contained residential uni...
Approved 2023-03-30, Sutton ref DM2023/00135
Also decided here: 21 applications for outbuildings, annexes or garden buildings, 17 approved, typically 68 days.
Decided planning applications (not extensions, conditions or tree works) in this postcode district from the councils' own registers, classified by the wording of each proposal. Counts, not estimates; where a class has fewer than three applications it is not shown.
Sutton covers 98% of the sampled postcodes in SM3.
Draw your boundary, tell us what you own, and an architect checks it against these registers and the local plan. Free, no obligation, and you get a straight written answer.
It depends on where the plot sits, not on the district average. In SM3, 0% of postcodes are in the Green Belt, 12% in a conservation area. Outside those designations the questions that decide it are whether the plot is inside or adjoining the settlement boundary in the local plan, whether it has its own road access, and what is next to it. A plot on the edge of a village or town with access has the best chance; an open field outside the settlement boundary rarely gets consent for housing whatever the market is doing.
No Article 4 direction is recorded for SM3, so houses keep their normal permitted development rights for outbuildings and extensions within the size limits. Those rights do not extend to agricultural land, paddocks or a change of use to residential, which normally need permission or prior approval.
Developers look at three things before they talk about price: whether the plot is outside the Green Belt and any National Landscape, whether it sits inside or beside the settlement boundary, and what finished homes sell for. In SM3 the median sale is £550,000, and only 0% of 2023–2024 sales were new-build homes, so builders have been quiet here. A single plot usually goes to a local builder or a self-builder; a site for five or more homes attracts regional housebuilders, normally through an option or a conditional contract rather than an outright purchase, so the price you see quoted is not the price you receive.
There is no district figure for land, because a plot's value comes from what can be built on it, not from where it is. As a guide, a serviced plot with consent for one house commonly sells for around a third of the finished house value, which in SM3 would be measured against a £550,000 median sale. The same plot without consent, or inside the Green Belt, is worth a small fraction of that, and a paddock with no realistic route to consent is worth agricultural or amenity value only. The free check tells you which of those your plot is before you talk to anyone about a price.
Three places: Sutton's local plan and its policies map for the settlement boundary and allocations, the council's planning register for what has been approved or refused on neighbouring land, and planning.data.gov.uk for the national designations. That is an evening's work if you know what you are looking for. The alternative is to draw your boundary on this site: an architect checks it against the same records and writes back within 48 hours with a plain answer, free and without obligation.
Computed from open-data records; district-level, not plot-level measurements. Sales: HM Land Registry Price Paid Data (2024-08-01 to 2026-07-31), © Crown copyright, Open Government Licence. Designations: planning.data.gov.uk (OGL), retrieved 2026-09-05; conservation areas and Article 4 directions are made locally and published on that national register. Postcode centroids: OS Code-Point Open 2026.3.0, contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Place name is the most common post town in the sales records. Figures computed 2026-09-06.