UK Residential Property Transactions Slipped to 95,220 in August, 2% Below Last Year

UK residential property transactions reached 95,220 in August on a seasonally adjusted basis, 2% below August 2025 and 1% below July, HM Revenue and Customs said.

The United Kingdom recorded 95,220 residential property transactions in August 2026 on a seasonally adjusted basis, 2 percent fewer than in August 2025 and 1 percent fewer than in July 2026. HM Revenue and Customs published the provisional estimate at 09:30 on 30 September 2026.

The adjusted figure is the one that compares cleanly across months, and on that basis August was a mild step down rather than a break. The unadjusted count tells a harsher story: 96,250 transactions, 9 percent below August 2025 and 11 percent below July.

The gap between the two counts is the whole story

Seasonal adjustment exists because August behaves differently from July in the British market every year. Strip that pattern out and the market fell 1 percent month on month; leave it in and it fell 11 percent. Both numbers are correct, and they answer different questions: whether underlying demand is weakening, and how many deeds actually completed.

The annual comparison splits the same way. Adjusted, transactions were 2 percent below a year earlier; unadjusted, 9 percent below. The tax authority cautions that the latest month is provisional and that transaction figures generally settle after approximately three months, and it notes that stamp duty threshold changes from April 2025 affected the timing of transactions.

Commercial deals held up better than homes

Non-residential transactions came in at 10,220 on a seasonally adjusted basis, which HM Revenue and Customs describes as marginally lower, by less than 1 percent, than August 2025, and 1 percent lower than July 2026. The unadjusted non-residential count was 9,080, down 5 percent on the year and 17 percent on the month.

So on the adjusted measure the commercial side was close to flat while housing fell 2 percent over the year. On the unadjusted measure the ranking reverses, with non-residential down 5 percent against residential down 9 percent. Neither series is large enough for one month to settle which reading matters more.

Ten Augusts in a row

The release sets August 2026 against every August back to 2017, and the decade puts the current level in context. The seasonally adjusted count was 102,310 in 2017, 100,520 in 2018 and 97,690 in 2019, before collapsing to 82,060 in the pandemic August of 2020. It recovered to 97,370 in 2021 and peaked at 103,150 in 2022, then fell to 87,450 in 2023. It has climbed back since, to 93,680 in 2024 and 97,040 in 2025, and now stands at 95,220.

Read that way, August 2026 sits in the middle of the decade: above 2023 and 2024, below 2017, 2018, 2021, 2022 and 2025. The market is neither in the 2022 boom nor in the 2023 freeze.

Volumes and prices answer different questions

Glopra's United Kingdom row, captured on 28 September 2026, records an average dwelling price of 367,751 US dollars and an average monthly private rent of 1,883 US dollars, which gives a gross yield of 6.15 percent. The annual change in that price series is 2 percent in local-currency terms. Britain publishes no price per square metre, so the per-square-metre figures of 3,831 US dollars and 19.61 US dollars are those same per-dwelling numbers divided by the same average floor area of 96 square metres, which leaves the yield unchanged.

That series and the transaction counts measure different things and should not be read against each other. The tax authority counts completed deeds with a value of 40,000 pounds or above; the Glopra price is an average across all housing transactions in the whole United Kingdom, while the rent covers the private rented sector, a flat-heavy stock. Transaction costs in Britain run to about 9.8 percent of the purchase price, and the bubble-risk score of 41 sits in the moderate band. A month of slightly weaker volumes changes none of those levels on its own.

Sources: HM Revenue and Customs https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/monthly-property-transactions-completed-in-the-uk-with-value-40000-or-above/uk-monthly-property-transactions-commentary--2; HM Revenue and Customs https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/monthly-property-transactions-completed-in-the-uk-with-value-40000-or-above

Market data: United Kingdom