Transaction volumes in freefall. Real-terms prices declining across most of England.

All primary figures below derive directly from Land Registry registered transactions. Labelled OBSERVED where directly measured; DERIVED where computed from those observations; ESTIMATED where assumptions are required (e.g. CPI proxy, HP filter).

Completed transaction volumes are the most reliable leading indicator of housing market health. Unlike prices — which are sticky due to seller anchoring and mortgage lock-in — volumes respond immediately to conditions. The current collapse is not seasonal and is not isolated to one region.

Nominal prices have effectively stalled at +0.0%. Against a 3% CPI proxy, every region posting below 3% is delivering a real-terms loss. The HP filter decomposition shows the structural trend component of prices — and how far current nominal prices remain above it despite the volume collapse. This premium represents the structural overhang.

Region	Nominal 12m	Real (–3% est.)
London	-2.1%	-5.1%
North East	-1.2%	-4.2%
North West	-0.8%	-3.8%
South East	-0.8%	-3.8%
South West	-0.8%	-3.8%
West Midlands	-0.3%	-3.3%
Yorkshire & Humber	-0.2%	-3.2%
East of England	0.1%	-2.9%
East Midlands	0.7%	-2.3%
Wales	2.9%	-0.1%

OBSERVED93% of tracked regions (13/14) are below the inflation proxy as of Mar 2026. London posted -2.1% — the most expensive region in real-terms decline.

ESTIMATEDInflation proxy of 3% is a flat annual CPI approximation. Real-term figures are indicative. Actual real return depends on buyer entry date, holding period, and transaction costs.

The UK housing market is not one market. The London–South East premium has widened progressively since the mid-1990s. Today London leads the nominal price decline; the North is absorbing the sharpest volume collapse. The drawdown analysis shows how far each region sits from its recent peak on both price and volume axes.

The FTB price ratio measures how close entry-level prices are to the overall average. A ratio near 100% means the first rung of the ladder is priced at or near the median, leaving no meaningful entry discount for lower-income buyers. Combined with the mortgage rate normalisation of 2022–23, affordability for new entrants is near its worst in modern records.

When mortgage buyers withdraw, cash buyers partially fill the gap — but at lower total volumes. Rising cash share is a structural signal of financed-buyer exclusion. Separately, the rolling price-volume correlation quantifies the degree to which prices and volumes are now moving in opposite directions — the defining signal of a frozen market.

OBSERVEDEngland cash purchase share: ~26% as of Jan 2026. Mortgage volumes are falling faster than the headline figure. The market is structurally shifting toward cash-funded ownership — access is narrowing to those with existing equity.

KEY FINDINGPrice-volume 24m rolling correlation: 0.41. A negative correlation — prices stable or rising while volumes collapse — is the defining signal of a frozen market. Prices are not clearing; they are held by inertia.

The table below contextualises current readings against their long-run distributions. Z-scores measure standard deviation distance from the historical mean; percentile ranks show where the current reading sits in the empirical distribution. All metrics labelled by basis type (OBSERVED / DERIVED / ESTIMATED / MODELLED).

Composite stress score — component breakdown

Each component maps an observable condition to a 0–100 scale, then the weighted sum produces the headline score. No black-box model is used; every point is traceable to a data series.