In this edition

Welcome to the new and improved HAPI report

Three fixed stand-ins have been retired. Each was a shortcut the original design itself named as a shortcut, and each is now a rule that keeps itself current.

What the coverage figure unlocks

Measuring our share of the market against the completed-sales record means stock can be counted on a consistent basis rather than tallied raw. The long drift as more of the market moved online stops reading as rising supply, and the part that never appears online, auction lots and private-treaty sales among them, is carried in the model instead of missing from it.

Also new: a 95% confidence band, a moving-average series, a time-on-market sample window, and one record per property across every portal and agent feed. Nine elements change in total. The full technical account is in the companion paper, HAPI version 2, from home.co.uk.

The month in six lines

Asking prices are holding flat in cash terms, and the machinery behind them keeps slowing: fewer homes coming to market, far fewer leaving it, and a typical sale taking 22 days longer than it did a year ago.

Figures are mix-adjusted across region and property type. Data to the mid-July cut-off. Source: home.co.uk asking price and listings data.

Cash prices flat, real prices down

The average asking price across England and Wales is £395,845, -0.30% over the month and -0.05% over the year. In cash terms the market has gone sideways for a year, close to its all-time high. Against inflation it has been losing ground steadily: real asking prices are -3.2% on the year, and have not been positive for 15 months.

The index is mix-adjusted across region and property type and rebased to 100 in January 2006. Real growth uses the current RPI estimate. Source: home.co.uk asking price data.

The month in numbers

Seven measures, each with its comparison. Read the price line with the turnover line: they are the two halves of the same story, and this month they point in opposite directions.

Stock is a mid-month snapshot; the instructions window is the 28 days to the data cut-off. Turnover compares complete months only. Source: home.co.uk data.

The north and Scotland carry the market

Six of the eleven regions posted a monthly gain, but the twelve-month picture splits the country in two. Scotland leads at +9.6%, with the northern English regions and Wales all ahead of the national figure. Greater London is weakest at -3.0%, and the southern regions sit at or below flat.

Regional figures cover the ten England and Wales Government Office Regions plus Scotland, mix-adjusted by region and property type. Source: home.co.uk asking price data.

Eleven markets, one average

The national figure is an average of eleven markets moving at different speeds. The spread between the fastest and the slowest is almost twelve percentage points, and it runs cleanly along the price gradient: the cheaper the region, the faster it is still rising.

Bars are drawn around a zero line and ordered fastest to slowest. Source: home.co.uk asking price data.

The same house, three times the price

Region	Average asking price	12 months
Greater London	£679,545	-3.0%
South East	£497,544	+0.1%
East of England	£420,291	-0.2%
South West	£389,743	-1.8%
West Midlands	£315,512	+2.3%
East Midlands	£290,577	-0.2%
North West	£289,103	+3.7%
Wales	£285,814	+2.6%
Yorkshire & The Humber	£271,403	+2.6%
Scotland	£236,666	+9.6%
North East	£206,877	+3.7%

Regions are shaded by mix-adjusted average asking price in five bands. Source: home.co.uk asking price data.

Stock is high, and it is not the sellers

Unsold stock stands at 561,547, +2.8% on the year and above the long-run average of 450,767. New instructions are -3.8% against the same 28 days last year. Supply is not the story; absorption is.

Stock is a mid-month snapshot; the instructions window is the 28 days to the cut-off, against the identical dates a year earlier. Recent months are restated as late listings are matched in, so read the series within one edition. Source: home.co.uk listings data.

A typical sale now takes 61 days

The typical time on market for England and Wales is 61 days against 39 a year ago, a rise of +59%. Scotland is the quickest market at 28 days, Greater London the slowest at 77. The average sits far above the typical figure in every region: the signature of a tail of over-ambitiously priced stock sitting unsold.

Typical is the median days from first listing; average is the arithmetic mean, which the long tail of unsold stock pulls upward. The time-to-sell change series covers the England and Wales regions only. Source: home.co.uk listings data.

Turnover is down 26%

Turnover averaged 2,222 properties a day across January to June, against 2,992 a day in the same months last year. This is the sharpest movement in the dataset, and it is what lengthens the time to sell.

Against inflation, almost nowhere wins

Cash growth flatters housing, because the yardstick moves too. The last column is the one that counts: growth less RPI, in percentage points.

Growth measured on the mix-adjusted regional series to August 2026. RPI from ONS.

Rents: London pulls away again

Across every region listed, the mean advertised rent is £1,647 per calendar month. South East posts the strongest annual move at +7.3%. Greater London stands at £2,941, up 5.9% over the year, against sale prices there down 3.0%: the two markets are pointing in opposite directions.

Mean and median are of advertised asking rents, not achieved rents, and unlike the sale-price index on the earlier pages these are not mix-adjusted. That is why almost every region can rise over the year while the total falls: the total moves with the mix of what happens to be advertised as well as with price, and a shift toward cheaper regions pulls it down on its own. The total row covers every region listed, Scotland included. Source: home.co.uk rental listings for the month.

Where London rents highest

Ten districts, ranked by mean advertised rent. The mean sits well above the median in every one of them, which is what a thin, top-heavy prime market looks like in the data: a handful of very large lettings pulling the average up past the typical one.

Districts are shown where listing volumes support them. Source: home.co.uk rental listings for the month.

How this index is built

The Home Asking Price Index measures the change in prices sellers ask for UK residential property. It leads completed-sale prices by roughly five months and is computed every month from over 500,000 advertised properties, reported by ONS Government Office Region.

The index at a glance

Reading the figures

Time on market is a median, so a tail of stale stock cannot inflate it. Turnover counts properties leaving the market per day, and partial months are excluded from year-on-year comparisons. Regional figures are mix-adjusted within region, so a change in the mix of what is advertised does not move them. Rents are advertised asking rents rather than achieved rents.

Every figure in this report is drawn from the home.co.uk dataset unless another source is named. home.co.uk has provided independent property market intelligence since 1995 and carries 2.4 million visitors a month. For data enquiries, contact the home.co.uk data team.