What do you get when you mix removal firms, storage operators and a whole bunch of suppliers? The Movers and Storers Show, of course!
On 18th and 19th November, the MoverAlerts team packed their bags and headed off to NAEC Stoneleigh for two days of story-swapping, insight-sharing and truck-loads of coffee.
On day one, our Head of SME Data Sales, Matt Hawkins, led a seminar on “Beyond the Headlines: The Truth About the Housing Market in 2025.”
If you caught his talk, thank you for joining. We hope you left with insights to improve your 2026 strategy. If you didn’t make it, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. In this blog, we’re breaking down the key points from his session, so you won’t miss a thing.
Despite the typical alarmist headlines and a burdensome cost-of-living crisis, the property market is holding its own! (And for those who monitor the cost of living based on the price of a chocolate Freddo, they’re currently 35p in Tesco, FYI! …that’s 25p too much if you ask us...)
In figures, how does that look? Well, transactions year-to-date in 2025 are 12% higher than in 2024. HMRC has observed 884,000 transactions so far this year. Whilst we saw a drop in April and May thanks to the stamp duty hangover, June, July and September all observed gains on 2024, helping to push overall transactions for the year so far above the same period in 2024.
The bottom line is that people want to move! Supply of New Instructions is the highest it’s been in 10 years, with a 3.3% increase year-on-year. We have observed 1.53 million properties coming on the market for sale. That’s the highest we’ve ever seen and it’s across all price bands, showing a real eagerness from the UK public to relocate. The strongest growth was 4.1% in £200k-£350k properties, closely followed by 4.0% growth in £350k to £1m properties. Outer London saw a big jump of 6.7% year-on-year growth. The only region not to see growth was Northern Ireland.
Meanwhile, those offers are coming in thick and fast as demand was up 4.1% year-on-year, with over 1.1 million properties agreeing a sale. This is higher than both 2023 and 2024. The only regions not seeing an increase in Sales Agreed were again Northern Ireland (down 3.4%) and Inner London (down 3.2% year-on-year). Demand growth was strongest in Wales, up 7.7% and East Midlands, up 7%. We saw increased Sales Agreed for properties priced £200k-£350k, up 6%, followed by a 5.7% increase for the price band £350k-£1m. This is fantastic news for removal and storage firms, as you should see a healthy pipeline of homemovers coming your way for the remainder of 2025 and the start of the new year.
Follow that green line on the graph below to track Sales Agreed volumes for the year so far. Note how it’s above every other year for each month bar October, where 2024 spiked higher. Why? Well, that B word on 30th October 2024 caused a surge in Sales Agreed in October 2024 due to buyers rushing to complete ahead of the Budget, fearing potential tax changes from April 2025. Every year trails off in December as people concentrate on Christmas and pause their home moving aspirations until the new year and we see the property market effectively go to sleep.
Demand and supply have risen for all property types, but it’s detached and semi-detached houses that are most in demand. The demand to supply ratio for the detached house has risen by 4.6% versus the prior year. This signals further happy news for movers and storers as the larger property types are on the move, meaning ample opportunity to snag homemovers with stacks of belongings (think filled up lofts and overflowing garages) needing either relocating or storing!
Targeting the homemover is all about timing. So, it’s important to understand the timescales for Time to Sell (the time it takes for a property to go from New Instruction to SSTC) and Time to Exchange (the time it takes for a property to go from SSTC to Exchanged).
Matt revealed that The Time to Sell is 77 days, up 7.4% or 5 days higher than 2024. This is the highest Time to Sell in the last nine years, so agents are having a harder time shifting stock. Regionally, Time to Sell has increased across the board aside from Northern Ireland, where it fell 8.1%. This is happening across all price bands, but in particular properties over £1 million stand out with a 17% increase in Time to Sell year-on-year. It will take a seller 113 days to sell their £1m+ property on average – that’s nearly a third of a year! And that doesn’t even take into account how long it will take to go through conveyancing! Speaking of which, let’s look at those Time to Exchange figures.
It currently takes on average 4.0 months or 123 days to get a property through to exchange. It’s no wonder there’s a drive to shorten timescales and we fully support the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government on this. (Check out Project 28 here for more.) You’ve got a Time to Exchange of 4.6 months in Outer London and the East of England compared to just 2.9 months in Scotland. This is a huge difference and shows the different legal system enjoyed by the Scots gets them relocating much faster than in the rest of the UK.
What’s taking so long to sell? It seems to be in part due to price. In the year-to-date, we’ve seen over 1 million price reduction events – the largest we’ve ever seen. It’s interesting to note that of all concluded listings, 38.7% of them have had at least one price reduction. Agents and sellers are overinflating those prices and then having to bring them down to secure a buyer.
The lettings market, meanwhile, has seen the supply of properties rising to 92,600 (8.7% higher than 2024) in the last year but this remains 153,000 lower than 2019. In total, 1.15million properties have come onto to the market to let year-to-date in 2025. With more supply comes more opportunities to snag customers. Though supply has reduced at lower prices, with the £0-£800pcm properties 0.8% down year-on-year, there’s been strong growth the supply of £800-£1,500pcm price range (up 13.5%).
This growth in supply is outstripping demand (Lets Agreed). Year to date in 2025, Lets Agreed volumes are 5.7% higher than 2024 and at their highest level in six years. Available stock for renters in September 2025 has reduced by 7% in the last year and this is most acutely felt in the lower price bands. Tenants looking for rentals of below £800pcm now have 7,900 (12%) less properties to choose from than they did at this time in 2024. Let Agreed prices have fallen by 1% year-on-year in 2025 to £1,480pcm. The key issue in the lettings market remains affordability of rental stock.