Canary Wharf & Isle of Dogs vs Surrey Quays, Canada Water & Rotherhithe: 15 years of price per square foot

Canary Wharf and Canada Water face each other across a bend in the Thames, a few minutes apart on the Jubilee line. Ask people which costs more and most will say Canary Wharf, without hesitating. The real answer is more interesting, and it matters if you are buying or selling a flat on either side of the river.

To find out, we matched more than 17,000 flat sales since 2010 to the floor areas on their energy certificates, and worked out the price per square foot for every one. This piece compares two neighbourhoods:

• Canary Wharf and the Isle of Dogs: the E14 3, 4, 5 and 9 postcode sectors, from the Canary Wharf estate south through Marsh Wall to Millwall and Cubitt Town
• Surrey Quays, Canada Water and Rotherhithe: the SE16 5, 6 and 7 sectors, broadly the peninsula traced by Salter Road

Every figure below is a median: the middle value, with half of the flats selling for more per square foot and half for less.

Fifteen years in one table

Median price per square foot, resale flats:

Each year draws on between about 130 and 870 resales per neighbourhood.

Surrey Quays caught up by growing faster

In 2010 the median resale flat in Canary Wharf and the Isle of Dogs sold for 14% more per square foot than one in Surrey Quays, Canada Water and Rotherhithe. By 2016 the gap had gone.

That was not because E14 fell. Between 2010 and 2016 the median price per square foot rose by about 49% in Canary Wharf and the Isle of Dogs, and by about 75% in Surrey Quays, Canada Water and Rotherhithe. The SE16 peninsula simply grew faster, over the years when Canada Water’s transport links and regeneration were drawing new attention to it.

Then a decade of moving together

From 2016 to 2024 the two neighbourhoods moved almost in step. Canary Wharf and the Isle of Dogs stayed slightly ahead in most years, by between 0% and 5% on the median, but the difference was small next to the swings in either market.

In 2025, for the first time, Surrey Quays, Canada Water and Rotherhithe came out clearly ahead, as the median in Canary Wharf and the Isle of Dogs dipped. One year is a signal, not a trend, and part of 2026 points the same way on fewer sales. It is worth watching rather than concluding from.

The median hides a wide spread

The two resale markets have almost the same middle, but they do not have the same shape. Since 2020:

The bottom halves are almost identical. The difference is at the top, where Canary Wharf’s towers reach well beyond anything on the SE16 peninsula. Within E14 the variation is wide too: the towers around Marsh Wall and South Quay (E14 9) have the highest median of any sector in either neighbourhood, while Millwall and Cubitt Town (E14 3) have the lowest.

The new-build premium

The biggest number in this research is not a comparison between the two neighbourhoods at all. It is the gap between new and second-hand flats in Canary Wharf and the Isle of Dogs.

Since 2020, the median new-build flat there has sold for about £1,100 per square foot. The median resale flat has sold for about £700. The flats are almost exactly the same size: the median new-build was 63 square metres, about 680 square feet, and the median resale 64.

Put in money, a 700 square foot flat bought new at the median would cost about £770,000. A resale flat of the same size at the median would cost about £490,000. Even the cheapest 10% of new-build sales, from about £886 per square foot, sold for more per square foot than three-quarters of all resales in either neighbourhood.

Some of that gap is genuine: new specification, amenities and a fresh lease. But a buyer paying about £1,100 per square foot is buying at a level that the resale market in E14 has not reached in fifteen years of sales. How much of the premium survives the first resale varies a great deal from one building to the next, which is why the building matters as much as the postcode. Our guide to mortgage rates at 6% explains why that gap matters even more when borrowing is expensive.

What it means if you are buying

• Compare per square foot, not per flat. Two flats at the same price can differ by a hundred square feet or more. Price per square foot, measured against genuinely comparable flats, tells you far more.
• Know which market you are in. A new-build flat is priced against other new builds. When you come to sell, you will be priced against resales.
• The building matters. Within the same postcode, some developments hold their value far better than others.

What it means if you are selling

• Your buyers will compare you with resales, not launch prices. What a flat in your building cost new is rarely a guide to what it will fetch second time around.
• Know your size. Agents and buyers will work out your price per square foot whether you do or not. Knowing it first, against real resale evidence, makes it far easier to judge the valuations you are given, as we explain in choosing an estate agent.

How we calculated this

Each flat sale recorded by HM Land Registry since 2010, in standard open-market sales, was matched to the floor area on its Energy Performance Certificate. We matched about 90% of sales. Each sale’s price was divided by its own floor area, and the figures above are medians of those results. New builds are shown separately throughout, and a small number of very low new-build prices, which are almost certainly shared-ownership share purchases recording only the share price, are excluded. EPC floor areas usually include internal walls, so they can be slightly larger than a developer’s quoted saleable area, which makes these figures a little conservative. One square metre is 10.76 square feet.

Where an independent view helps

Medians describe a market; they do not price a particular flat. A consultation is a chance to look at the flat you are buying or selling against the right comparables, new or resale, in the right building, with someone who knows these streets and has no stake in the sale.