Steph Vass, founder and leader in estate agency known for sharp takes on agent strategy and self-employed models. They dissect rising new listings, the widening gap between asking and agreed prices, and climbing price reductions. Short, punchy market stats and practical calls to price keenly, protect listings and use local data to win market share.
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question_answer ANECDOTE
Host Records Despite Illness
Christopher opens the show noting he has a chest infection and is on penicillin, but continues the recording.
Steph joins as guest and they plan to cover national stats and a town focus (Worthing).
insights INSIGHT
Self‑Employed Agents Taking Market Share
Market share is fragmenting: smaller/self-employed agents are capturing slices previously held by bigger firms.
Nimble agents with focused service are taking market share from incumbents.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Personal Win With Self‑Employed Model
Steph recounts selling 12 homes last year while enjoying flexible life benefits like more dog walks and pub time.
She highlights the advantages of self‑employed models for work–life balance and earnings.
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UK Property Market Weekly Update - Week 3 of 2026
I look at the UK property market in the ‘UK Property Market Stats Show“ for the week ending Sunday 25th January 2026 (week 3) with the brilliant Steph Vass.
YouTube
https://youtu.be/496XoAgOVIU
✅ New Listings
* 35.2k new properties came to market this week in week 3, up as expected from 32.8k last week.
* 2025 weekly average: 30.6k.
* 10-year week 3 average : 31.8k
* Year-to-date (YTD): 96.5k new listings, 0.5% above than 2025 YTD (96.1k), 17.5% above 2024 YTD (82.1k) and 34% above the 2017–19 average (72k)
✅ Price Reductions
* 20k reductions this week
* 7.6% of resi homes for sale were reduced in December. Compared to Oct 12.8%, Sept 14.1%, August 11.1%, July 14.1% in July and 14% in June.
* 2025 average was 12.8%, versus the five-year long-term average of 10.74%.
✅ Sales Agreed
* 24.6k homes sold stc this week 3, up expectedly from 21.2k last week.
* Week 3 average (for last 10 years) : 23.4k
* 2026 weekly average : 19.1k.
* YTD: 62.7k gross sales, which is 8.7% behind Week 2
* 3 YTD of 2025 (68.7k), yet 23.5% ahead of wk.3 2024 (50.8k) and 30.6% above the 2017–19 average (48k).
* Thoughts - January 2025 was an exceptional month as we had the stamp duty deadline for April 2025 - here it was a good sales month. To be ahead of 2024 and pre Covid years by such a amount is good to see.
✅ Price Diff between Listings & Sales
* Average Asking Price of listings last week £413k
* Average asking price of Sales Agreed (SSTC) last week was £348k
* A 18.8% difference (long term 9 year average is 16% to 17%).
✅ Sell-Through Rate
* 9.9% of homes on agents’ books went SSTC in December ’25. Down as expected from 13.5% in November, 15% in October, 14.1% in Sept, 14.5% in Aug, 15.4% in July, 15.3% in June, and 16.1% in May.
* Pre-Covid average: 15.5%.
✅ Fall-Throughs
* 4,783 fall-throughs last week (pipeline of 482k home Sold STC).
* Weekly average for 2025: 6,100.
* Fall-through rate: 25.8%, slightly up from 24.9% last week.
* Long-term average: 24.2% (post-Truss chaos saw levels exceed 40%).
✅ Net Sales
* Huge jump in net sales from last week. 19.3k, up from 15.8k last week.
* Ten-year Week 3 average: 18.2k.
* Weekly average for 2026: 15.4k.
* Weekly average for the whole of 2025: 19.2k.
* YTD: 46.1k, which is 8.3% behind Wk.3 of 2025 (30.6k), 35% ahead of wk2 2024 (19.9k) and 40% ahead of wk2 2017–19 (19.1k).
✅ Probability of Selling (% that Exchange vs withdrawal)
* December Stats : 60.2% of homes that left agents’ books exchanged & completed in December. (Note this figure will change throughout the month as more December stats come in).
* November 55.2% / October 53.3% / September: 53.1% / August :55.8% / July: 50.9% / June: 51.3% / May: 51.7% / April: 53.2%.
* Dec 24: 60.3% / Dec 23: 57.7% / Dec 22: 64.4% / Dec 21: 73.7%
✅ Stock Levels
* 613k homes on the market on the 1st of January ’26 , down from 678k on 1st of December ’25 . (605k on the market on 1st Jan ’25 for comparison)
* 434k homes in agent’s sales pipeline on the 1st Jan 2026, almost identical than 12 months ago on 1st Jan ’25 (439k).
✅ House Prices (£/sq.ft)
* December 2025 agreed sales averaged £337.09 per sq.ft. 0.6% higher than 12 months ago (£335.04) and 12.6% than 5 years ago (£299.30). The £/sqft at sale agreed matches the HM Land Registry Index with a 98% accuracy, 5 months in advance. That is why it is so important.
✅ UK Rental Market Overview
* Average Rent in December 2025 - £1,702 pcm - compared to £1,719 pcm in Dec 2024 and £1,301 pcm in Dec 2017.
* Available Rental Properties in December ’25 - 285k compared to 321k in November ’25. (Dec ’24 - 258k and Dec ’23 - 235k)
✅ Graphs
https://youtu.be/496XoAgOVIU
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