A fall in property transactions in July has highlighted the housing market’s continued vulnerability to economic uncertainty and renewed calls for action to tackle the structural problems making it harder for people to move home.
UK residential property transactions dipped in July, although activity remained significantly ahead of last year on a year-to-date basis, according to the latest provisional HMRC figures.
An estimated 96,710 residential property transactions completed during the month on a seasonally adjusted basis, down 2% from 98,390 in June and 1% below July 2025.
However, non-seasonally adjusted property transactions rose 3% month-on-month to 106,620, some 5% higher than July last year.
Between April and July, 389,490 non-seasonally adjusted residential transactions were recorded, compared with 337,530 a year earlier. On a seasonally adjusted basis, the total reached 393,800, up from 342,900.
HMRC cautioned that the figures are provisional and subject to revision.
The data reflects completed transactions, typically two to four months after an offer is accepted, making it a lagging indicator of current housing market conditions.
Maria Harris, chair of the Open Property Data Association, commented: “A fall in July’s property transactions is another reminder the housing market remains vulnerable to uncertainty, but it should also reinforce the need to address the structural problems that make moving home unnecessarily difficult.
“People are still navigating a homebuying process that is too slow, too fragmented and too uncertain.
“The focus needs to move beyond simply increasing transaction volumes and towards making every transaction more reliable and less prone to delay and failure.
“The government’s commitment to modernise homebuying creates a real opportunity to do this. But turning ambition into reality will require trusted property data, common standards and systems that can share information securely and consistently.
“If we get those fundamentals right, higher transaction volumes can be matched by a homebuying experience that works better for everyone.”
According to Paul Adams, sales director at Pepper Money, the fall in July’s transaction numbers against last year tells us June’s brief improvement hasn’t turned into anything more lasting, and that is consistent with the caution his firm is hearing from brokers on the ground.
Adams said: “Lower mortgage rates locked in a couple of years ago are still keeping a lot of would-be movers in place, because trading up to a significantly more expensive rate simply doesn’t add up for many households right now.
“That caution tends to fall hardest on self-employed and specialist borrowers, whose income doesn’t always fit neatly into standard lending criteria. Our research found 76% believe their employment status makes securing a mortgage harder.
“Speculation around the Autumn Budget, and specifically what might happen to stamp duty, is giving buyers another reason to sit tight. Until there’s more clarity from government, some of that pent-up demand is likely to stay on the sidelines rather than show up in the transaction figures.”
July’s small decrease does little to alter the wider picture of a market maintaining its footing through the summer, according to Nick Leeming, chairman of Jackson-Stops.
He commented: “July’s small decrease does little to alter the wider picture of a market maintaining its footing through the summer. Following June’s marginal increase, broadly stable transaction levels are characteristic of a period when holidays naturally interrupt activity, and some households defer decisions until the autumn.
“In these conditions, local expertise matters more than ever. A quality agent can help sellers distinguish between short-term seasonal noise and the underlying evidence in their area, while bringing the judgement needed to set a credible strategy, handle negotiations constructively and keep a transaction moving when chains become more complex.
“HMRC’s completion figures are inherently backward-looking, with many relating to sales agreed several months ago. Tuesday’s Bank of England Money and Credit report will provide a more current indication of momentum through July’s mortgage approvals and lending, particularly as some mortgage rates begin to ease from recent peaks. As attention turns to autumn, all eyes will also be on the Budget, with greater clarity around taxation important in giving buyers and sellers the confidence to progress their plans.
“The appetite to move is certainly there, with our data showing that 8% of owner-occupiers in England are planning to move or already doing so. Sellers can best capitalise on that demand by pricing against current market evidence, not to leave value on the table, but to attract serious buyers, generate competition and achieve the strongest possible result.”
Comments (1)
Please can someone clarify what is being reported here. Is this completions, or SDLT, LBTT and LTT notification events.
The two are not the same thing. A notification event includes lease grants, transfers between connected parties, and linked transactions that split one sale into two filings. It excludes sales under £40,000 and transfers with no money changing hands. None of that is the same as “homes sold” or “transactions agents got paid on.”
Many readers see the headline figure and multiply by twelve for an annual estimate. That does not work. Some of what’s counted is not a sale at all: a lease grant, a connected-party transfer, an exercised option. Some sales generate two entries instead of one, where the purchase is structured as linked transactions. Some of what’s counted never involved an agent at all: private sales, auction purchases, new-build sold direct by the developer. And anything under £40,000, or any transfer with no consideration, is excluded entirely.
This creates a real problem at board level. SDLT filings stay resilient because they include private sales, new-build and split transactions that have nothing to do with any one agency. Completions, the ones an agency actually gets paid on, can be on the floor at the same time. The board reads the headline number, sees it holding up, and cannot work out why their own agency is performing so badly.
It doesn’t stop at board level. LinkedIn and Facebook have no shortage of gurus and experts confidently waving this same number around every month, and agents on the ground naturally measure their own performance against it. If the guru’s number is holding steady and your completions are on the floor, the obvious conclusion is that something is wrong with you or your agency. That conclusion is built on a number that was never measuring your agency in the first place.
It gets worse from there. Someone multiplies 96,710 by an average house price of around £300,000, to get a market-value figure, then tries to reconcile that against their own revenue. It doesn’t work, because the two numbers were never measuring the same thing. One is a national tax-filing count. The other is one firm’s fee-paid completions. Put them together and you get a minestrone of numbers that don’t fit, and no answer to the question anyone actually asked.
Until it’s clear whether this is completions or notification events, anyone multiplying 96,710 by twelve, treating it as agency business, or benchmarking their own performance against it, is working from an assumption the data does not support.