The big housing market trends over 2025 have been supportive of agents’ growing their revenues. Rents are still rising and this is flowing into management revenues while the desire to move home remains strong despite the decidedly soggy end to the year on the back of Budget speculation. Competition in the mortgage market remains fierce, supported by this month’s cut to the base rate. We consider what agents should expect in 2026?
Desire to move home remains strong
When we survey consumers we find that twice as many homeowners say they want to move as will actually manage to do so within the next two years. This highlights how the appetite to move remains strong continuing the trend over 2025 where the housing market will register the most sales completions for 3 years and 10% higher than last year.
These sellers need to keep their feet on the ground on what buyers will pay, especially in southern England where there remains a lot of choice of homes for sale for buyers which is keeping price increases in check. The scope for prices to increase is greater away from southern England where affordability is less of a constraint on home moves. Overall we expect house prices to be 1.5% higher in 2026 with prices increasing at a faster rate in northern England and Scotland and slower across the south of England.
Better search to drive more home moves
The opportunity to get more people making their moving ambitions a reality is also about helping them look beyond where they live today. The old adage that 80% of people move within 5 miles of where they live is being challenged by growing affordability pressures and rising buying costs.
Property search needs to become more powerful and intuitive and give people more scope to look further afield to make their home moves a reality. Our own data shows more than 40% of people living in the south of England looking more than 10 miles for their next home – this is something agents need to factor in as they plan their marketing strategies.
While prices are rising slowly we expect another strong year for sales at close to 1.2m in line with the 10 year average.
Strongest year for landlords buying property since 2022
It’s not just homeowners who are more active in the sales market. The number of new buy to let mortgages for purchases of property is the highest for 3 years in 2025. Strong rental inflation, up 35% in 5 years, and fierce competition in the mortgage market is encouraging cashflow focused landlords back into the market.
This new investment is not uniform and tends to be focused where rental yields are highest, which is in northern England and Scotland for typical rented homes with some looking at HMOs and other forms of investing where yields are higher.
There remain hurdles for landlords but after 10 years of consolidation the landlords left in the market clearly like the cashflow from investing. The opportunity remains for agents to target the 50% of self-managing landlords who may not be prepared for the extra complexity and fines/rent repayment orders bought by the new Renters Rights Act.
Mortgage rates stable but strong competition
The cut to the base rate was welcome ahead of Christmas and sends a message that borrowing costs are coming down. The best mortgage rates for homebuyers with large deposits are already very competitive, sub 4%, and this is likely to remain the case over 2026.
Home buyers should assume mortgage rates will remain at or around current levels over 2026. The housing market has now adjusted to these higher rates and this means scope for modest house price inflation and growth in rents which, along with decent levels of housing sales, will support continued growth in estate agency revenues over 2026.
Richard Donnell, executive director, Zoopla.
