No, the UK property market isn’t booming … the return on investment is … The new map paints a startling picture with asking prices spiking across nearly the entire country for January 2026. Today Rightmove reported a headline grabbing leap in the average new seller’s asking price. It did this by increasing by 2.8%, or £9,893 per month. The average asking price has now hit £368,031 – an all-time high. This increase is the biggest for January in 25 years and the largest month-to-month increase since June of 2015.
Colleen Babcock, an property specialist at Rightmove, explained that puffing was “simply the re-emergence of levels seen before the speculation on the budget.” Asking prices are only back to where they were in the summer of 2025, before the budget rumours began surfacing,” she stated. And looking at Rightmove’s data, there were tens of thousands of properties listed for sale every year between December 7 and January 10. That’s a positive sign of an unusually robust beginning to the year for the real estate sector.
We see mixed signals in areas across the country. The East of England saw the largest increase in asking prices in the UK, with a 3% month on month increase taking it to £418,030. In contrast, the East Midlands and Scotland both experienced minor decreases, with asking prices decreasing by 0.6% and 0.4% accordingly.
Against this turbulent sales climate Kirstie Allsopp took to social media to critique the attitude of buyers. She added that most people are not selling their homes but “in an uproar, hunkering down,” which could affect the market’s long-term equilibrium. This prevailing belief underscores the hesitation that still hangs like a cloud over the real estate environment.
Longitudinal data from Hamptons provides an interesting picture around rental trends across Great Britain. By 2025, average rents for new lets had decreased by 0.7%. By the close of the year, average private rents had dropped below their levels at the beginning of the century. This drop could be indicative of overall economic unease and changes in the competitive landscape of the rental market.
Jeremy Leaf, a north London estate agent and former chair of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics), emphasized the importance of consumer sentiment in driving market trends. For that reason, Vargas said the recent return of raising asking prices is promising. Nonetheless, buyers and sellers alike need to remain attuned to the underlying economic realities.