Market insight
What the market is doing, and what it means legally.
Prices are only half the picture. The other half is the paperwork underneath them: unregistered titles, leasehold terms, searches and flood risk.
Average UK house price
£292,000
+1.8% year on year
Average time to complete
14 weeks
Offer accepted to completion
Transactions per month
≈ 92,000
Residential, UK
Sales falling through
Until exchange
Either side can withdraw before contracts are exchanged
Average UK price, last twelve months
Modest growth after a flat winter, with the average sitting a little under £292,000.
Average price by region
The gap between London and the North East remains more than threefold, though growth is running fastest where prices are lowest.
What is actually being bought
Roughly three in ten transactions are leasehold, which is where lease length, ground rent and service charge become the deciding legal issues.
- Freehold houses62%
- Leasehold flats21%
- Leasehold houses9%
- New build8%
The legal picture behind the numbers
Prices move slowly. What actually delays or derails a transaction is usually one of these.
Over 90%
Land area registered
More than 90% of the land area of England and Wales is on the register (HM Land Registry Annual Report and Accounts 2025 to 2026). The rest has never been registered, typically long-held family property.
First registrationRequisitions
Applications paused by a query
Land Registry queries that pause an application, many of them avoidable at the drafting stage.
Lodging an AP14.9m
Leasehold dwellings
Leasehold homes in England, where lease length and ground rent drive both value and mortgageability.
Lease copies1 in 6
Properties at flood risk
Homes in England exposed to river, coastal or surface water flooding, increasingly a valuation issue.
Flood risk searches8 to 16 weeks
Typical grant of probate
From submission to the Probate Registry, before any estate administration or property sale completes.
How to get a grant2 days to 6 weeks
Local authority search turnaround
The single widest variable in a purchase timeline, set entirely by the council in question.
Local authority searchesThinking of moving on these numbers?
Read what happens between offer and completion before you offer, or tell us what you need and we will reply by email.
Indicative figures rounded from published HM Land Registry and industry data. Last reviewed August 2026. Not a valuation.