In this edition

The month in six lines

Asking prices rose in October, but the market behind them is slowing: cheaper homes are finding buyers while dearer ones sit, stock is building, and the typical home now spends 57 days on the market against 29 a year ago.

Figures are mix-adjusted across region and property type. Typical time on market covers Great Britain. Data to the 15 October 2026 cut-off. Source: home.co.uk asking price and listings data.

Cash prices up, real prices down

The average asking price across England and Wales is £398,910, +1.03% over the month and +1.63% 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 -1.8% on the year, and have not been positive for 17 months.

Price levels are observed averages. Changes are like-for-like, with a data source that ended in October 2025 removed from every period. Earlier figures therefore differ from previous editions. 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 against the record

Every figure here is set against the same month in each earlier year the series covers, so the usual seasonal swings cancel out. Read the price line with the time on market line: asking prices are the highest for an October on record, but homes are spending almost twice as long on the market.

Price and stock series run from 2006, real change from 2007 and typical days from 2014. Earlier average is the mean of the same month across the earlier years. Source: home.co.uk data; RPI from ONS.

The north and Scotland carry the market

All eleven regions posted a monthly gain, but the twelve-month picture splits the country in two. Scotland leads at +10.95%, with the northern English regions and Wales all ahead of the national figure. Greater London is the only region lower than a year ago, at -1.25%, and the southern regions sit close to 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 12.2 percentage points, and it broadly follows 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	£685,452	-1.2%
South East	£500,329	+2.0%
East of England	£423,388	+1.4%
South West	£391,902	+0.5%
West Midlands	£316,268	+3.1%
North West	£293,756	+5.2%
East Midlands	£291,667	+1.0%
Wales	£288,336	+4.6%
Yorkshire & The Humber	£274,142	+4.1%
Scotland	£240,712	+11.0%
North East	£209,603	+5.9%

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 559,948, +5.2% on the year and above the long-run average of 452,474. New instructions are -1.8% 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 14 October 2026, 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 home now spends 57 days on the market

The typical time on market across Great Britain is 57 days against 29 a year ago, almost double. Scotland is the quickest market at 25 days, Greater London the slowest at 74. The average sits far above the typical figure in every region: the signature of a tail of over-ambitiously priced stock sitting unsold.

Typical: median days from listing to sale agreed, for sales agreed 1 to 15 October; a relisted home starts again. Average: the mean. *National typical days cover Great Britain; the rest of that row is England and Wales. Source: home.co.uk listings data.

Why the average is rising

Asking prices rose 1.03% on the month, but no seller had to raise a price for that to happen. The index averages every home on the market. In a slow market the cheaper homes find buyers first and leave, and the dearer ones stay, so the average of what is left goes up. In London, homes that sold and left the market had averaged about £625,000, while new instructions came on at about £769,000.

HAPI uses each home’s current asking price, so a cut on a home that stays on the market does not show as a monthly fall. Price levels are observed averages. Changes are like-for-like, with a data source that ended in October 2025 removed from every period. Earlier figures therefore differ from previous editions. Source: home.co.uk listings data.

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 October 2026. RPI from ONS. Gold from World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet); the latest gold month is the previous full month.

Every October since 2007

The average asking price has gone from £221,838 in October 2007 to £398,910 now, up 80% in cash. The strongest October was 2016, at +11.6% on the year; the weakest was 2009, at -4.5%. After inflation, asking prices were lower than a year earlier in 12 of these 20 Octobers.

Mix-adjusted average asking price and index (January 2006 = 100) for the October of each year, on the version 2 series. Real change is the annual change less RPI. Source: home.co.uk asking price data; RPI from ONS.

Rents: Scotland rises fastest

Across every region listed, the mean advertised rent is £1,780 per calendar month. Scotland posts the strongest annual move at +9.6%. Greater London stands at £2,857, up 4.9% over the year, against sale prices there down 1.25%: 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. So the all-regions total carries no annual change: with the number of advertised lettings in the sample falling sharply since the summer, the total moves with the sample as much as with rents. The regional changes are the ones to read. 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.

Measured coverage, region by region

Share of each region's completed open-market sales the index captures, measured against HM Land Registry Price Paid Data for January 2025, the latest fully registered reference month. Land Registry covers England and Wales, so Scotland is not measured. The full technical account is in the companion paper, HAPI version 2, from home.co.uk.

How version 2 of the index works

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 index at a glance

Reading the figures

Time on market is a median, so a tail of stale stock cannot inflate it. Typical time on market is the median number of days from listing to sale agreed, for homes that agreed a sale in the month. 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. Media enquiries: [email protected]. To cite: Home Asking Price Index, home.co.uk, October 2026.