Why Fewer Homes Are Winning Offers: Summer 2026 Reality

By Lisa Hayes · 8 July 2026

Here's the number that matters this week. Just 52% of homes put up for sale in January won an offer within six months, down from 58% a year earlier, according to fresh analysis from the estate agency group Connells. In plain terms: nearly half of everything listed this year is still sitting there. The market hasn't crashed, but buyers have become fussy, and where your home sits on the ladder now decides how quickly it moves.

So if your house has been on the market for weeks with barely a viewing, you're not imagining it and you're not alone. The good news is that the reasons are knowable, and most of them are fixable. Let's dig into what's actually selling in the summer of 2026, what isn't, and what to do about it if you're the one with the "For Sale" board outside.

What the new figures actually show

The headline from Connells, reported this week by industry title The Negotiator, is a 6 percentage point drop in the proportion of listed homes that go on to receive an offer. Just over half of the properties that came to market in January had an offer within six months. A year earlier, closer to six in ten did. The slowdown shows up even faster at the front end: the share of homes winning an offer within the first month fell from 42% to 38%.

That first-month figure is the one I'd pay attention to as a seller. The opening fortnight of a listing is when interest peaks. A fresh property gets the email alerts, the portal bumps, the "new to market" flurry. If close to two-thirds of homes now go through that window without a single offer, it tells you buyers are browsing hard and committing slowly. They can afford to. There's a lot of choice out there.

But the national average hides the real story, which is that the market has split by property type. Here's how the offer rates break down.

Property type	Offer rate 2026	A year earlier
Two-bedroom homes	55%	—
Three-bedroom homes	53%	—
Five-bedroom homes	41%	59%
Leasehold homes	48%	57%
All homes (within 6 months)	52%	58%

Read that table and the pattern jumps out. The middle of the market is holding up. The top end has fallen off a cliff. And leasehold, wherever it sits, is dragging.

• 52%of Jan-listed homes got an offer within 6 months (was 58%)
• 38%won an offer in the first month (was 42%)
• 41%offer rate for 5-bed homes, down from 59%
• 68%offer rate in Scotland, the UK's quickest market

Why are buyers holding back?

Part of it is the calendar, and part of it is the mood. Michael Bruce, the chief executive of Purplebricks, went on Radio 4's Today programme this week and put the recent lull down to two very British culprits: the World Cup and a good spell of weather. When there's football on and the sun's out, people are in the garden, not booking second viewings.

"Naturally, where you have events such as the World Cup, coupled with the great weather that we are getting currently, it does have a short-term impact. I expect that in the second half of this year that will come back, but in the last month or so, that has had an impact." — Michael Bruce, Purplebricks

Bruce's bigger point is one I'd agree with. He argues that confidence, not house prices or interest rates, is the real engine of the housing market. "When people feel confident about their finances, and the future, they move," he said. And he reckons sentiment has actually improved a little in recent weeks, as the run of bad headlines on wars, an oil crisis and rising interest rates has started to ease off.

That's the tension in this market. The mood music is slowly getting better, yet the hard activity data is still soft. Confidence is a slow-burn thing. It takes more than a few calmer weeks to turn a nation of hesitant browsers into committed buyers, especially when they know there's no shortage of homes to pick from.

The sweet spot: what's still selling

If you own a two or three-bedroom home, take heart. This is the part of the market doing the heavy lifting. Connells found 55% of two-bed homes and 53% of three-beds are securing offers, comfortably above the national average. These are the homes that suit the widest pool of buyers: first-timers stretching to get on the ladder, growing families needing an extra room, and people whose moves are driven by life changes rather than pure choice.

Aneisha Beveridge, Research Director at Connells, summed it up neatly:

"The housing market is still moving, but buyers have become more selective about where they spend their money. The strongest demand continues to be concentrated in the middle market, particularly among two and three-bedroom homes which appeal to first-time buyers, growing families and households whose moves are often driven by changing circumstances rather than choice alone." — Aneisha Beveridge, Connells

The lesson for sellers of these homes isn't to get complacent, though. A 53% offer rate still means nearly half of three-bed listings aren't getting offers within six months. Being in the popular category gets you into the game. Pricing and presentation still decide whether you win it. If you want a realistic starting figure, our guide on how much your house is really worth is a sensible place to begin before you let an agent talk you into a hopeful number.

What's struggling: big homes and leasehold

Now the harder news. If you're trying to sell a large or higher-value home, the ground has shifted under you. The share of five-bedroom homes winning an offer has collapsed from 59% a year ago to just 41% now. That's a brutal drop in twelve months, and it's not hard to see why.

Beveridge points straight at borrowing costs. "Higher-value homes face a tougher environment," she said. "Mortgage costs remain significantly higher than they were a few years ago, and that impact is felt most in more expensive parts of the country where buyers typically need to borrow more." When you're borrowing £600,000 rather than £200,000, every fraction of a percent on the mortgage rate bites, and the pool of buyers who can absorb that shrinks fast.

Leasehold is the other soft spot. The offer rate on leasehold homes has fallen from 57% to 48%, a nine-point drop. Buyers have grown wary of short leases, rising ground rents and service charges, and the whole slow saga of leasehold reform. If you're selling a leasehold flat, the admin matters more than ever: get your lease length, service charge accounts and management pack ready before you list, because a buyer who hits a wall of missing paperwork will simply move on to the next property. Our explainer on freehold versus leasehold and what it means for a quick sale walks through what buyers and their solicitors will want to see.

The regional divide

Where you're selling matters as much as what you're selling. The Connells data confirms what every index has been showing for months: this is a two-speed country. Scotland is Britain's quickest market, with 68% of homes launched in January securing an offer within six months. And of the ten fastest-moving local markets in Britain, eight are in the Midlands and the North, with Bury topping the table.

• Scotland (offer within 6 months) 68%
• Two-bed homes, UK average 55%
• All homes, UK average 52%
• Leasehold homes 48%
• Five-bed homes 41%

The affordable, middle-market heartlands of the North and Midlands are where buyer demand is deepest right now, because that's where the maths still works for ordinary movers. The pricier South, and London in particular, is where high borrowing costs do the most damage. If you're selling a modest home in Greater Manchester or central Scotland, the odds are genuinely in your favour. If you're selling a large detached house in the commuter belt, you're fishing in a much smaller pond and you'll need to price accordingly.

Hang on, aren't house prices still rising?

This is where people get confused, so let's clear it up. Yes, prices edged up in June. The Lloyds House Price Index (the rebranded Halifax figures) showed the average property nudging up to £299,330 from £298,812 in May, a 0.2% monthly gain that ended four straight months of no growth. Annual growth ticked up to a modest 0.6%.

So how can prices be rising while offers are falling? Because the two measure different things. Price indices track what actually sells, and the homes that do sell tend to be the sensibly priced ones. Sellers, meanwhile, have been reluctant to drop their asking prices, so headline values stay sticky even as the number of deals thins out. You end up with a market that looks stable on the price charts but feels sluggish on the ground. Fewer transactions, longer waits, more homes quietly withdrawn. A flat price with half your street unsold is not the seller's market it might appear to be.

Zoopla made a similar point at the end of June, reporting that three in five homes currently on the market aren't selling at all. Put that next to the Connells offer data and the picture is consistent: plenty of stock, cautious buyers, and a widening gap between what sellers hope for and what buyers will commit to.

For a seller, that gap is the thing to watch, because it's where sales go to die. If your asking price is anchored to what your neighbour got in 2022, or to the punchiest online estimate you can find, you're pricing into the hope side of the gap, not the reality side. The homes changing hands right now are the ones whose owners have accepted where the market actually is. That's not defeatism, it's just arithmetic. A home priced 5% above the evidence in a market this selective doesn't sell 5% higher, it usually doesn't sell at all until the price comes down, by which point it's carrying the stigma of a long listing. Meeting the market early is almost always cheaper than fighting it late.

Is this just a summer blip?

Partly, yes. Bruce is right that summer distractions dent activity every year, and a World Cup on top of a heatwave is a fair excuse for a quiet few weeks. He expects the market to bounce back in the second half of the year, and a seasonal autumn pick-up is a reasonable bet. Buyers who downed tools for the football tend to come back in September with fresh urgency.

But I'd be careful about pinning all your hopes on an autumn rescue. The softness in this market isn't only seasonal. There's a structural glut of unsold homes, borrowing costs that remain far above where they were a few years ago, and a caution among buyers that a change in the weather won't fix on its own. The seasonal tailwind is real. So is the structural headwind. Don't assume the first will simply cancel out the second.

The practical takeaway: if autumn does bring more buyers, it will also bring more sellers, all the people who held off over summer. A busier market is not automatically an easier one to sell into. It can just mean more competition for the same cautious pool of buyers.

What buyers want in a picky market

When buyers have the upper hand, they stop overlooking flaws and start using them to negotiate, or to walk away entirely. In a market where nearly half of listings get no offer, presentation stops being a nicety and becomes the difference between a sale and a stalemate. That doesn't mean a five-figure renovation. It means the cheap, unglamorous things: declutter, deep clean, fix the dripping tap and the sticking door, sort the tired paintwork, and get professional photographs. Buyers scroll past dozens of listings in seconds. Yours has to stop the thumb.

Position matters too. A buyer choosing between two similar homes will lean towards the one with the fewer complications. If you're chain-free, or already have an onward purchase lined up and can move quickly, say so loudly, because certainty is genuinely attractive when the wider market feels slow. Energy efficiency has crept up the priority list as well. With running costs still high, a decent EPC rating and a warm, well-insulated home are quietly persuasive, particularly for the first-time buyers and families driving demand in that all-important middle market.

The other thing buyers want is a seller who is realistic. Nothing kills momentum like a price that the comparable evidence won't support. In a selective market, an ambitious asking price doesn't get you a higher sale, it gets you no viewings and a slow drift down through reduction after reduction. Buyers can smell an overpriced home, and they simply wait for you to cut.

Should you sell now or hold on for autumn?

It's the question on every seller's mind, and the honest answer is: it depends on why you're selling. If your move is discretionary and you can comfortably wait, there's a reasonable case for holding until September, when the post-summer, post-World Cup crowd returns and viewing activity typically climbs. You might catch a livelier market.

But "wait for autumn" comes with two caveats. First, everyone else is thinking the same thing, so autumn will bring a wave of new listings competing for those returning buyers. More choice for them is more competition for you. Second, if your move is driven by need rather than preference, a job relocation, a divorce, an inherited property you're paying to run empty, or a chain you're desperate to hold together, waiting can cost you more in stress and carrying costs than you'd ever recoup on price. In those cases, pricing sharply and selling now is usually the smarter play.

The trap to avoid is the vague, open-ended wait. "Holding on for a better time" only works if you've defined what better looks like and set a deadline. Otherwise it quietly becomes months of a stale listing that buyers learn to ignore.

What this means if you're selling right now

Strip away the noise and the message from this week's data is simple. Buyers are still out there, but they're selective, patient and spoilt for choice. That means the seller who wins is the one who removes every reason to hesitate. Here's how to be that seller.

Know your category's odds. A three-bed semi in the North is playing a very different game to a five-bed detached in Surrey. Be honest about which side of the split you're on. If you're in the tougher half of the market, the answer is almost always a keener price and better presentation, not a longer wait.

Get the first two weeks right. With the first-month offer rate down to 38%, that opening window is precious. Don't waste it launching at a testing price "to see what happens", then reducing a month later once the initial buzz has gone. Homes that launch high and cut late tend to end up selling for less than those priced right from day one. It's worth checking how long comparable homes have been listed nearby before you set yours.

Sort the paperwork, especially if it's leasehold. A stalled sale often dies over missing documents, not money. Lease details, service charge accounts, guarantees, planning and building certificates: have them ready. In a picky market, friction kills deals.

If it's stalled, change something. A home that hasn't sold isn't cursed, it's mis-marketed nine times out of ten. Price, photos, the agent, the description, the route to market. If your listing has gone cold, our guide to selling a house that won't sell covers how to diagnose the real problem.

Weigh speed against price if certainty matters. If you're moving for a job, a separation, a probate sale or to break a chain, six months of "will it, won't it" may cost you more than a modest discount would. A cash house buyer or a genuine fast-sale route trades a slice of the headline price for a guaranteed, quick completion. It's not for everyone, but for the right situation it's the sensible choice, not the desperate one.

The bottom line

The summer 2026 market isn't collapsing, and it isn't booming. It's choosy. Just over half of listed homes are winning offers, the middle of the market is carrying the day, and the top end and leasehold are having a hard time. Prices are holding up because sellers won't blink, but activity has thinned and homes are sitting longer. A World Cup and some sunshine have made a quiet patch quieter, and a seasonal lift may come in the autumn, though it won't sweep away the deeper caution on its own.

For you, the homeowner weighing a sale, none of that has to be bad news. A selective market rewards the seller who prices to reality and presents well, and punishes the one who waits for a number the data doesn't support. Get those two things right and your home can still sell perfectly well, even now.

If you'd like to see what your property could realistically achieve across different routes, from the open market to a guaranteed cash sale, it costs nothing to compare offers and start a valuation. Get the real numbers in front of you, then make the call on your terms.