In early April 2025, UK asking prices rose by 1.3% year-on-year, reaching a record average of £377,182. This represents a 1.4% increase from the previous month, surpassing typical seasonal trends.
Buyer and seller activity improved, evidenced by an increase in listings and potential buyers in the market. Rightmove attributes this market resilience to heightened choice and ongoing demand.
Market Resilience
Contrasting data from Halifax indicates a 0.5% drop in prices, while Bank of England records show a decline in mortgage approvals. Despite slowing sales after the tax break deadline in March, new buyer enquiries rose by 5% year-on-year, with homes for sale increasing by 4%.
That prices touched £377,182 in April, up 1.3% on the year and 1.4% on the month, tells us something simple but important: the market still has legs. This isn’t just seasonal noise either—usually we’d expect a modest bump in spring, but this movement goes one step further. While we sometimes see a flutter of optimism ahead of Easter, this uptick looks more grounded in stronger participation from both sides of the transaction.
We’ve seen a broader range of properties coming onto the market at the same time as more buyers are stepping back in, and that’s part of what’s holding these values firm even when some of the wider indicators are moving at odds. Rightmove’s pointing to choice, and that makes sense. When buyers aren’t boxed in by too little stock, we tend to get a tighter spread between asking and achieved prices.
Meanwhile, Halifax shows a 0.5% fall. That’s not inconsistency so much as nuance. Asking prices often run ahead of achieved figures, especially when sellers feel confident. Nothing unusual there—it’s part of the process working itself out. We’d weigh that drop against the rise in initial buyer interest and the brighter tone visible in early spring viewings. It’s not the first time headline numbers have diverged, particularly across different datasets.
Market Dynamics
Then there’s the Bank of England’s view—a decline in mortgage approvals. That reads less like a market pullback and more like a cooling-off from the March spike fuelled by the tax incentive deadline. When incentives expire, the usual pattern is a short-term fall in completions and loan approvals. It’s mechanical, and baked into the monthly rhythm. Yet, what stands out more is that new buyer enquiries are still climbing, up 5% over the same period last year. That’s the sort of figure we watch closely.
Stock levels rising by 4% should support that trend for a while. So, even if actual mortgage completion stats took a step back last month, activity levels suggest momentum hasn’t drained. What follows tends to be a readjustment—listings meet demand, prices settle naturally, and the extras like incentives fade into the background.
For those of us monitoring short-dated positioning and rate sensitive contracts, this friction between demand and financing availability isn’t just noise—it defines our near-term strategy. It’s less about whether approvals fell in March and more about what current interest shows us about the next two months. As average selling periods stabilise and listings gain breadth, we’re inclined to lean into models weighted heavier on turnover volume than headline price change.
We track longer tails in interest from certain segments. That often gives the earliest signal. When more people are still making first contact, even after stimulus has washed through, volumes follow. Forward curves tethered to housing or construction input costs may begin adjusting for this subtle shift before it hits the broader data.
Any mismatch between seller expectations and actual affordability—especially now that the tax window has closed—can offer tight windows for execution. Where properties linger, spreads may widen slightly, particularly outside of the southeast. Coordinating with this trend, we’re watching regional divergence particularly closely on the margin, since it’s been reappearing more vividly in seller pricing behaviour.
This isn’t about dramatic moves. But it’s in the friction—between volume upticks and approval slowdowns—that opportunity emerges, if you know where to look.
