2026 has been a year of genuine internal contradiction in UK housing: falling demand alongside rising completions, a London recovery built on falling prices, and a rental market cooling nationally while landlords exit in genuinely structural numbers. This report synthesises the current state of the market across the major indices, explains the North-South divergence properly, and compares how the UK's leading forecasters actually differ on where prices go from here.
Figures below reference the ONS/HM Land Registry, Nationwide, Halifax, Zoopla and Rightmove house price indices, RSM UK's housing tracker, and published 2026 forecasts from Savills, Knight Frank, Pantheon Macroeconomics and the OBR, current to June 2026. This page is updated as new quarterly and annual data is released.
1. The headline numbers, and why they differ
As of mid-2026, the main UK house price indices put the average price somewhere between roughly £270,000 and £299,000, a genuinely wide range that reflects methodology rather than disagreement about the market itself. HM Land Registry, generally regarded as the most authoritative since it captures actual completed sales including cash purchases, recorded £270,080 as of April 2026. Nationwide, based on its own mortgage approval valuations, recorded £277,484 in June. Halifax recorded £298,806 in May, while Zoopla's index, blending sold prices, valuations and agreed sales data, put the figure at £272,300 in May. Rightmove's asking-price index, a genuinely different measure since it tracks what sellers ask rather than what buyers actually pay, sat considerably higher at £376,191.
Land Registry data lags by roughly six weeks since it only captures completed transactions, making it the most accurate but least current measure. Nationwide and Halifax reflect mortgage valuations at approval stage, more current but excluding cash buyers. Zoopla blends several data types. Rightmove measures asking prices, not sold prices, and will always run higher. None of these is "wrong"; they're measuring genuinely different things.
2. The demand-supply paradox
The defining feature of the 2026 market so far is a genuine divergence between demand and completions. Buyer demand has been running around 10% to 15% below the equivalent period in 2025, yet sales agreed have actually tracked around 1% ahead, the first annual increase in around eight months. The explanation is a shift in the composition of the buyer pool: committed movers, people who need to move for genuine life reasons, are proceeding, while discretionary buyers, those who could move but don't strictly need to, are stepping back and waiting for clearer signals on mortgage rates and the wider economic and political outlook, including uncertainty ahead of the Autumn Budget.
Property type is a further dividing line within this picture. Two and three-bedroom houses have continued selling at close to the prior year's pace in many areas, while flats remain the clearly weakest segment, with over two-thirds of one and two-bedroom flats listed so far this year still unsold, a pattern that predates 2026 but has become more pronounced.
3. The North-South divergence
Regional performance in 2026 has been genuinely stark rather than a modest variation around a national average. The North East and North West have recorded price growth in the region of 3.5%, and Scotland around 3.0%, both regions where supply remains comparatively tight relative to demand. London, by contrast, recorded negative annual price growth for nine consecutive months before showing signs of stabilising more recently, and the South East has also recorded modest annual declines.
This divergence connects directly to the affordability gap covered in our Affordability Index: regions with lower price-to-earnings ratios simply have more headroom for price growth before hitting a ceiling, which is precisely what's playing out across the North-South split in 2026.
4. The new build shortfall
UK housing construction continues to fall well short of government targets. Net additional dwellings in England reached around 209,000 in 2024-25, against a stated government target of 300,000 homes per year, and completions have shown a flat to slightly declining trend into 2026, with Q1 2026 completions reaching around 269,000 nationally, roughly 30,000 below the five-year quarterly average. Planning system complexity remains the most commonly cited bottleneck, followed by labour shortages and rising material costs.
Government planning reforms introduced in late 2025 are intended to boost supply over the medium term, but even where new permissions are granted more readily through 2026, the lag between approval and actual completion means most newly-approved homes won't reach the market until 2027 or later. Treat any near-term claim that these reforms are "already working" with appropriate scepticism; the earliest genuine test of their effectiveness is completions data from 2027 onward, not 2026.
5. The rental market's structural shift
Annual rental growth has cooled to around 3.3% to 3.4% nationally as of mid-2026, a marked slowdown from the double-digit increases seen through 2023, consistent with the detail in our Rental Growth Dashboard. But the headline cooling masks a genuinely structural shift underneath: mounting regulatory, tax and compliance pressure, covered across our Property Tax Timeline and Landlord Regulation Timeline, is accelerating private landlord exits, with an estimated 220,000 fewer rental homes expected by the end of 2026 compared with the recent peak.
Institutional capital is stepping into part of this gap. Build-to-Rent investment continues expanding, with single-family Build-to-Rent in particular reported up more than 50% year-on-year, though the development pipeline itself is tightening, with completions outpacing new starts for nine consecutive quarters, meaning today's expansion may not be sustained at the same pace without a corresponding pickup in new schemes breaking ground.
6. How the major forecasters compare
| Forecaster | 2026 UK house price forecast |
|---|---|
| Zoopla | +1.5% |
| Halifax | +1% to +3% |
| Nationwide | +2% to +4% |
| Savills | +2% (revised down from an earlier +4% forecast) |
| Pantheon Macroeconomics | +1% (revised down from an earlier +3% forecast) |
| Office for Budget Responsibility | Around +2.5%, broadly in line with average earnings growth |
The clear pattern across nearly every forecaster is a downward revision through the year, several institutions cut their 2026 forecasts as the year progressed, generally citing a slower pace of base rate cuts than initially expected, alongside softer labour market conditions. Longer-term forecasts remain more optimistic: Savills, for instance, has projected cumulative growth approaching 25% by 2030 despite its more modest near-term 2026 figure, illustrating that near-term caution and longer-run confidence aren't necessarily in tension.
Rightmove's 2025 forecast predicted 4% asking price growth for that year; actual outcomes from Nationwide and Halifax showed growth closer to 0.3% to 0.6%. Treat every figure in the table above as a snapshot of current institutional thinking, not a reliable prediction, and expect further revisions as the year progresses, particularly around fiscal events like the Autumn Budget.
7. What this actually means for buyers, sellers and landlords
- For buyers, the demand-supply paradox means genuine opportunities exist in southern markets with rising stock levels, but pricing discipline from sellers varies significantly, so comparing achieved rather than asking prices for genuinely comparable local sales remains essential.
- For sellers, particularly in London and the South East, realistic pricing at initial listing matters more than in a rising market: an overpriced listing that needs a later reduction performs worse than one priced accurately from the start, given the wider buyer choice currently available in these regions.
- For landlords, the combination of cooling headline rental growth and accelerating landlord exits suggests the sector is bifurcating between well-capitalised, professionally-managed portfolios (including institutional Build-to-Rent) and increasingly squeezed smaller individual landlords facing the combined weight of Section 24, the Renters' Rights Act, and rising compliance costs.
8. Frequently asked questions
Why do different house price indices show different average prices?
Each index uses a different methodology: Land Registry captures completed sales including cash purchases but lags by weeks; Nationwide and Halifax use mortgage approval valuations; Zoopla blends several data types; Rightmove tracks asking prices rather than sold prices. None is wrong, they're measuring genuinely different things.
Why are sales holding up if buyer demand is falling?
The buyer pool composition has shifted toward committed movers who need to move for genuine reasons, while discretionary buyers who could move but don't strictly need to are stepping back and waiting for clearer signals on rates and the wider economic outlook.
Is the UK building enough new homes in 2026?
No. Net additional dwellings in England reached around 209,000 in 2024-25, against a government target of 300,000 a year, and completions have continued to run below the five-year average into 2026. Recent planning reforms are unlikely to meaningfully affect completion numbers before 2027 at the earliest.
How reliable are UK house price forecasts?
Directionally useful but frequently revised and sometimes materially wrong. Rightmove's 2025 forecast of 4% growth compared with an actual outcome closer to 0.3% to 0.6% from other indices. Treat forecasts as a snapshot of current institutional thinking rather than a reliable prediction.
Continue your research
About the author
✓ Editorially reviewed — all Poqet guides are checked for factual accuracy before publication and updated when UK rates or legislation change. Editorial Policy