April saw drop in property transaction numbers

June 4, 2026 by Brendan O'Neill

Property Market

The latest housing market figures show that April brought a drop in the number of residential property transactions, compared with the month before.

These HMRC figures indicate the total number of residential transactions for the month was 101,030. By way of comparison, the total for the previous month was 103,910. This makes for a month-on-month drop of 3%, which is notable but not alarming for the housing market. Those figures are the seasonally adjusted ones. Without this, the drop is 16%.

When looked at year-on-year, April 2026 saw a rise of 53% in the residential transaction numbers. This is a startling rise, but housing market activity was atypically low during April 2025. This is because people were rushing to complete purchases in March of last year, which was the final month before the changes to the stamp duty thresholds.

The month-on-month picture for other types of transactions was fairly similar. The seasonally adjusted total fell by 6% in April, compared with March. In comparison with April last year, there was a small 1% rise.

Nathan Emerson is the chief executive at Propertymark. He spoke to Mortgage Introducer, saying that the overall health of the economy could be judged by the property market.

He then added:

“With global unease continuing to add potential unforeseen pressures for many people, it is important to apply a sense of caution regarding affordability over the coming weeks and months.”

Those with the CeMAP mortgage advisor qualification will be hoping that the geopolitical situation calms down in the second half of the year.