April Property Market Analysis

A merry month or a mayday distress signal? With a flurry of reports landing on our desks, we look back at what happened in the last four weeks. Here’s our snapshot of the current property market.

Rightmove used May to steal many of the headlines. First came its latest House Price Index. It revealed sellers were asking +1.2% more for their homes in May when compared to April. As a result, the UK’s average asking price is £378,304.

Asking price soar in the North

Regional differences were recorded. Asking prices soared in the North East (+2.7%) and the North West (+2.6%). Head south and it’s a different story. Asking prices trended downwards in London (-2.4%) and the South East (-1.6%).

Price to sell, not stall 

Asking prices remained a theme in May. Rightmove’s complimentary research showed a third of homes for sale have had their asking price reduced. Additionally, homes that were reduced took longer to sell: taking 127 days where there was a price reduction, compared to 36 days where the price had remained constant.

Zoopla agreed that ‘over optimistic’ pricing is an issue for some sellers. Its most recent analysis questioned more than 2,000 UK adults who had tried to sell a property over the last three years. The results showed 44% of homes that were listed failed to find a buyer. 

Sellers themselves admitted to ambitious pricing behaviour. Of those questioned, 16.2% knew their home was overpriced from the outset, while 34% realised, with hindsight, they’d set an unrealistically high figure. Interestingly, 21% said their inflated asking price was based on the amount needed to buy an onward home they’d already found. 

It was no surprise that 53% of sellers said reducing the asking price was the only way to attract a buyer. Those trimming their asking price did so by an average of 7%. More recent data from Zoopla found the average UK home sold for 3.5% below the asking price during the first 3 months of 2026, illustrating over-optimistic pricing remains a problem.

May also showed us how the property market can fluctuate in the space of a month. In April, one report claimed it was cheaper to buy than rent. In mid May, Rightmove announced the opposite – it was now cheaper to rent than buy. The portal said rising mortgage rates and cooling rents meant tenants were paying £123 less per month, on average, than new homeowners with a mortgage.

Up and downs revealed

By the end of the month, however, there was an about turn that could change the narrative by the time we report back in June. Several lenders reduced rates attached to their two- and five-year fixed mortgages at the end of May, making borrowing slightly cheaper again. As for UK rents, they increased.

This was a trend noted in HomeLet’s latest rental index. The price of newly-let tenancies jumped between its last two monitoring periods. New renters are now paying a UK average of £1,340 per month. That’s a +1.1% monthly increase.

Confidence levels improve

Some UK regions saw rents rise more than others. Scotland (+1.9%), the East of England (+1.6%), London (+1.5%) and the South West (+1.2%) all posted above-average rent increases. Yorkshire & the Humberside recorded the smallest increase, at +0.5%.

Finally, rising rents are partly why landlord yields have improved. The latest Landlord Trends report, published by Foundation and Pegasus Insight, found yields had increased to 6.5%. The same report noted that 61% of landlords expect to raise rents over the next year, while 63% plan to stay in the private rental market – up from 58%.

If you would like to know more about your local property market, please get in touch.