Heralded as news which is ‘injecting a renewed confidence into both buyers and sellers’, TwentyEA has forecast 2025 as the best year since 2022 in terms of the overall volume of property exchanges. In particular, TwentyEA has put this figure at approximately 1.18m exchanges in 2025. Such a forecast is underpinned by the first half of the year witnessing high property exchange activity. This was particularly pronounced between January and April, when there was a sprint to finalise property acquisitions before lowered stamp duty thresholds were introduced.
As Colby Short, co-founder and CEO of GetAgent, remarked: ‘The market is on course to post its strongest performance in a number of years, with a heightened level of transactions driven by consistently strong buyer appetites.’
Property Exchanges
The HMRC recorded the volume of property transactions between January and June at 573,000. Not only is this a 17.1% increase over the same period in 2024, but it is also 5.8% higher than the pre-pandemic levels in 2019. Even though April and May 2025 saw a noticeable dip in property exchanges – two months which felt the brunt of the lowered stamp duty thresholds – the market rebounded in June with a 4.6% increase compared to the previous year.
Viewed from a broader perspective, TwentyEA documented that the volume of sales between January and July 2025 stood at 791,000, up 6.8% compared to the same period last year. ‘When compared to 2024, 2023, and pre-pandemic 2019,’ Katy Billany, executive director of TwentyEA, said, ‘demand volumes have been consistently higher in every single month of 2025 so far.’
This demand has been supported by a higher volume of property listings, with TwentyEA showing that week 30 of 2025 had a total volume of 1,104,498 compared to 955,785 in 2022. Crucially, the 2025 figure is 12.6% higher than the nine-year average, an impressive feat indicating the confidence and stability of the UK property market.
All price ranges have seen an upward trend in market activity. In 2025, property exchanges in the £350k-1m and £200k-£350k bands have increased by 9.5% and 8.8% respectively. A regional look also yields positive results: property exchange activity increased by 10.9% in the North West and 9.9% in Wales.
Close behind is Outer London with an 8.0% increase in property exchange activity, though buyer demand in prime areas slightly contracted compared to the previous year. Yet there was an improvement in buyers vying for prime London properties between April and July, with Frank Knight noting that the average volume of buyers for every new sales instruction increased from 5.1 in April to 6.7 in July.
Billany noted that these metrics are a cause for optimism, stating: ‘Given this sustained growth, we’re confident 2025 will remain buoyant, with a healthy pipeline of deals for estate agents. We forecast transactions will be in-line with the pre-pandemic year of 2019 to reach 1.18m by the end of 2025 – seven percent higher than in 2024, which is exceptional news for estate agents.’
Mortgage Confidence
Such a forecast is predicated on how the market will perform over the remainder of the year. One key point is the expectation that mortgage rates, which had previously inhibited property exchange activity in 2023 and 2024 due to the implacably high bank rate of 5.25%, will continue to fall in accordance with easing inflationary rates. Earlier in the month, on 7 August, the Bank of England once again slashed interest rates by 0.25 percentage points to 4.0%, taking the overall reduction of interest rates since August 2024 to 1.25 percentage points.
Kevin Shaw, national sales managing director of Leaders Romans Group, observed: ‘With the rate now back to where it was in March 2023 and a further cut likely before the end of the year (probably in November), this provides renewed momentum for buyers, sellers and developers alike.’
This lowered bank rate has encouraged mortgage lenders to lower mortgage rates, thus offering favourable schemes to incentivise property exchange activity. Described by Moneyfacts as a ‘symbolic turning point’, the average two-year mortgage rate has dipped below 5% for the first time since September 2022, which demonstrates that mortgage lenders are competing more assertively in order to entice customers.
Because of these mortgage rate conditions, Hina Bhudia, a partner at Knight Frank, commented that the UK mortgage industry is ‘ultra-competitive’ at this time, adding: ‘Combined with the more flexible affordability assessments now in place, the result is a housing market that continues to show resilience, with activity levels holding up well.’
Future Performance
Momentum is building. As the latest data reveals, market conditions – especially mortgage rates – are accommodating the increasing demand of the UK property market. This is encouraging more customers to acquire property, and hence the forecast TwentyEA supplied in predicting that the number of property exchanges will surpass 2022.
Given this trajectory and the already impressive exchange figures from the first half of the year, 2025 is expected to see a noticeable rise in property exchange volume compared to the previous three years.
