New-Build Sales and the Development Exit: Q3 2026

Fewer new homes are selling, and more of the flats are going to buyers other than private individuals.

Sales repay most development loans. This report looks at how many new homes are selling, who is likely to be buying them, and how long it takes.

• Volume. 80,203 new-build sales in the four quarters to 2025 Q3, down 8.6% on the year.
• Buyers. Our category cut suggests company and investor purchases have become a much larger part of new-build flat sales, at lower median prices.
• Time. Homes took 67 days to find a buyer in September, the slowest such month in our series and well above the unusually fast 2022.

80,203 new-build sales in the latest settled year, 36.6% below 2022

Four quarters to 2025 Q3, down 8.6% on a year earlier. New homes are the money that repays most development loans, so this is the plainest measure of how fast the exit is clearing.

Fewer sales can mean weak demand or thin supply, and the register cannot separate them. Rightmove's July 2026 index reported the number of new developments coming to market at its lowest level since January 2017, which points to supply as a large part of the fall. For a scheme already built, the distinction matters: lower competing supply is some protection when demand is steady, but none if buyers have also stepped back.

More than a third of new-build flats now sell outside the standard private sale category

36.0% of new-build flat sales in the year to September 2025 were recorded as Land Registry Category B, up from 23.2% four years earlier. The share for houses is 10.7%.

The rise is specific to flats. Across all new-build sales the share eased in the latest year, from 17.7% to 16.3%, as houses fell back from 13.3% to 10.7%, while flats rose again from 31.6%.

Category A is a standard sale at full market value to a private individual. Category B is everything else the register records: repossessions, buy-to-lets identified by a mortgage, and transfers to non-private individuals. New-build plots are rarely repossessions, so for new homes the category is mostly a proxy for company and investor purchases, including block sales. The register does not itemise this, so treat it as an inference, not a count of block deals.

The price gap is the part a developer should underwrite. Median Category B new-build flats sold at £295,000, against £376,000 for Category A, a gap of 21.5%. That does not show the discount on any one scheme, because the two groups differ in location, size and specification. It is consistent with block and corporate buyers paying less than retail, which is what an appraisal assuming unit-by-unit sales needs to test.

The North West and the Midlands stand out, with 49.0% and 44.4% of new-build flats recorded this way, against 20.5% in the South West and 27.0% in the East of England. Where these sales are a normal part of the market, a block or part-block exit may be a more realistic plan. Where they are not, a buyer may take longer to find.

Standard new-build flat sales fell 21.9%, while their median price rose

Over the latest settled 12 months, standard new-build flat sales fell from 14,608 to 11,402. Houses fell 3.3%, from 57,592 to 55,689.

Price and volume moving in opposite directions is usually a mix effect rather than evidence of pricing power. If cheaper flats, or flats in cheaper places, drop out of the sample, the median rises with no home selling for more. Lenders valuing a completed scheme will look through the median to comparables on the same street, and developers should too.

The tracker's premium measure, which covers every price paid category, puts the premium on new-build houses at 20.3% for 2025 Q3, against 17.2% a year earlier and 13.6% in 2022. The Category A figures in the table come from a different sample, which is why the two measures differ. On either, buyers are still paying more for new, which the tracker reads as a signal pointing away from exit stress.

Homes take 67 days to find a buyer, the slowest September in our series

Rightmove's average for September 2026, against 64 days a year earlier and 37 in September 2022. This is the one series in this report that we do not derive ourselves.

Until the summer, this looked like a market returning to normal. July came in at 63 days against 62 in July 2019, our only same-month comparison with the years before 2022, and the 2022 figures were unusually fast. A scheme appraised on 2022 speeds has a timing shortfall even without any further weakening, which is likely to be one reason facilities reach their end date with units unsold.

The autumn figures add a second concern. Some of the rise since July is seasonal, but each September since 2023 has been slower than the last: 59, 61, 64, 67 days. London moved from 70 days to 78 in a year.

Rightmove's October 2026 index points to buyers as well as the calendar. It reports that the average two-year fixed mortgage rate has risen to 5.55%, from 5.29% last month and 4.25% before the war in Iran started. It also reports that the number of sales agreed is down 8% on the same period a year ago, broadly in line with the year to date. It adds that the number of new potential buyers contacting agents is 9% lower than a year ago and new listings are 3% higher. And the total number of homes available for sale remains at its highest level for this time of year since 2014. More homes competing for fewer buyers on dearer mortgages is a harder setting for a scheme that needs to sell quickly.

Rightmove's July index also reported that homes that needed an asking price reduction spent an average of 127 days on the market, against 36 days for those that sold without a reduction; nearly three quarters (74%) of homes sold in 2026 did so without a reduction. Price discipline and time on market are linked: a scheme priced above the market can lose far more time than the average suggests.

What this means if you are approaching practical completion

This is our opinion as finance arrangers, drawn from the evidence above. It is general commentary rather than advice on any scheme, and indicative structures vary by lender, asset and borrower.

• Start the exit conversation before the facility forces it. With selling times at 67 days to find a buyer before any legal work, a scheme with a few months left on its loan has little room. A development exit facility is easier to arrange with time in hand and sales evidence than with a default date approaching.
• Test the appraisal against today's selling speeds, not 2022's. Rebuild the cash flow with the current time to find a buyer, then add the legal process, and allow for buyers borrowing at higher mortgage rates. If the numbers need faster sales, consider sales period finance before you need it rather than after.
• Decide early whether a block sale is a real option. Company and investor buyers exist, but sales in this category show a much lower median than standard sales, so stress the debt against a lower price. If it does not repay, the plan needs another route, such as finance against unsold units.
• Treat a part-complete scheme as a different conversation. Where the build is unfinished, the funding gap and the exit need to be solved together. Part-complete development exit sets out what lenders generally want to see.
• Bring evidence, not hope. Lenders usually size an exit on what the units will achieve and how fast they will sell. Reservations, local comparables and a realistic sales plan tend to do more for your terms than any market average, including the ones in this report.

How this report was built

Every figure is calculated from the sources below when the page is built. Nothing is estimated, and cuts below the minimum sample are shown as suppressed.

• Charges. Companies House mortgage and charge filings. A charge is security registered by a lender. It shows a loan was taken and when it was repaid, but not how much was lent, because filings have recorded no amounts since 2013. Registered to 30 October 2026, satisfactions filed to 2 November 2026.
• Lender populations. Specialist means charges held by a curated set of pure-play development lenders (10,127 charges). Development-like adds charges from development-active mixed lenders where the borrower carries a housebuilding code (SIC 41100 or 41202), the charge particulars use development terms, or a newly formed property company with no buy-to-let code is the borrower (66,728 charges in total). These mixed lenders also write buy-to-let books, so this wider measure is noisier. Location and exit-type figures use the strict version, with housebuilding codes only. Lenders are never named.
• Satisfactions. Filing is not compulsory, so every repaid figure is a floor and every aged figure is a ceiling. A quarter-end is provisional until 30 days after the data cut-off, which our tests between successive data vintages support: charge filings arrive within about 20 days, and figures at that age did not move materially when re-run three months later.
• Survivorship. The company register holds live companies only, so older cohorts are missing scheme companies since dissolved. Cohorts up to 2020 are reference only.
• Sold data. HM Land Registry Price Paid Data, England and Wales, detached, semi-detached, terraced and flats. New-build figures stop at 2025 Q3 because registrations lag completions by a year or more.
• Two new-build counts. National series in this report count every price paid category, giving 80,203 sales in the four quarters to 2025 Q3. Location reports and rankings count Category A only, giving 67,091 in a near-identical window. Most of the difference is Category B, which the buyer mix analysis measures directly.
• Regions. Charges are placed by property postcode where one can be identified: 43.6% of the specialist book and 65.3% of the development-like book. England and Wales only.
• Suppression. Shares and medians with fewer than 30 observations are withheld rather than estimated.
• Planning. Approved residential applications from council portals, deduplicated by authority and reference. Approvals lead completions by two to four years, and coverage differs by region, so totals are context and are not ranked.
• Selling time. Rightmove House Price Index, entered from published releases. It covers all listings, not new-build alone.

Contains HM Land Registry data © Crown copyright and database right 2026, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Companies House data is used under its public register terms. You are welcome to cite or chart these figures with a link to this page.

This report is general market commentary. It is not financial, legal, tax or investment advice, and it is not an offer of finance. DevExit is a finance arranger and introducer, not a lender.