How many houses are sold in the UK each month? 95,220 in August, offered on months earlier

open for offer lets you test the market before you list. HMRC counted 95,220 UK residential sales in August 2026, seasonally adjusted, and 1,144,570 in the year to March 2026. Completion takes two to four months from offer, on average.

How many houses are sold in the UK each month?

Roughly 95,000 to just over 103,000 in an ordinary month. On HMRC’s seasonally adjusted series, every month from June 2025 to August 2026 sat between 95,220 and 103,340.

The count comes from stamp duty returns in England and Northern Ireland and their equivalents in Scotland and Wales. It covers completed residential sales above £40,000.

Against a decade of Augusts, 95,220 is unremarkable. The adjusted figure has run from 82,060 in 2020, the pandemic year, to 103,150 in 2022.

On the adjusted line, August 2026 sits between August 2024 and August 2025. It is also provisional, and HMRC expects to revise it as late returns arrive.

How many houses were sold in the UK last year?

In the financial year to March 2026, HMRC counted 1,144,570 residential sales across the UK. England accounted for 959,900 of them. That averages about 22,000 a week across the UK.

The year before, the total was 1,214,710. March 2025 alone recorded 165,690 completed sales, unadjusted, then April fell to 56,970.

HMRC gives the reason: transactions were brought forward ahead of the stamp duty threshold reductions from 1 April 2025. The count moved because a tax deadline moved.

Did house sales fall 9% or 2%?

Both, depending on which line of the same release you read. Each compares August 2026 with August 2025.

The 9% is the raw count: 96,250 completed sales against 105,240. The 2% is seasonally adjusted: 95,220 against 97,040.

HMRC publishes the two side by side for a stated reason. In its words: “To demonstrate any underlying trends within the data, seasonally adjusted transactions estimates are provided alongside non-seasonally adjusted estimates.”

So a month-on-month or year-on-year story should use the adjusted line. A headline built on the raw count can make an ordinary August look like a slump.

Both lines are provisional. HMRC expects late returns to change them, and says “transactions figures generally settle after approximately 3 months”.

What does August’s figure tell you about today?

Less than it appears to. The release says so in plain terms. These figures “represent completions which are on average two to four months after an initial offer is made on a property.”

The very next sentence: “They do not necessarily represent the current strength of the property market.”

The lag is built into how a sale works in England. Offer, survey, mortgage, searches, exchange, then completion. HMRC counts only the last step.

Count back two to four months from August and you are in April, May or June. That is when, on average, the offers behind August’s 95,220 completed sales were being made.

So August’s figure is a photograph of April to June, published at the end of September. Every sale in it has already completed.

If you are deciding whether to sell, the national count is the wrong instrument. It is accurate. It is just pointed at the past, and at the whole country rather than your street.

What should a homeowner read instead?

Two things that describe your own home now: what it is likely to be worth, and whether anyone wants it.

open for offer is the pre-market, the market that exists before a property is ever advertised.

Buyers can register interest in your home on its page. The queue on your home’s page shows how much interest there is.

Neither depends on a national release, a seasonal adjustment or a tax deadline. Start with the figure for your own address: get your market estimate.

When is the next UK sales figure due?

HMRC publishes September’s count at 9.30am on 30 October 2026. Read it the same way as August’s.

It will be provisional. It will describe offers made, on average, between May and July. And the raw and adjusted lines may point in different directions.

If the adjusted line holds near 95,000, that says the early summer was steady. It still says nothing about a buyer for your home this week.

All figures here are from HMRC’s Monthly property transactions completed in the UK with value of £40,000 or above, published 30 September 2026 and read on 7 October 2026. Crown copyright, Open Government Licence v3.0.