United Kingdom · GBR · snapshot 2026-08-16
United Kingdom
Measured
Currency movement
-1.2%
The local currency bought more euros at the end of this window than at the start — a more expensive entry for a euro-denominated buyer, and a better exit for anyone already holding the asset.
What it does not show. It is not a forecast and not a property return. A currency move and a price move are different facts and routinely point opposite ways; nothing here says which way either is going next.
Foreign-buyer rules
3 of 3 published rules apply
These are the restrictions a foreign buyer meets before price is even discussed — approval regimes, surcharges, ownership limits.
What it does not show. It is not a completeness claim. A rule we have not read is not a rule that does not exist, and this row counts what is cited, not what is in force.
Cost of money
3.75%
The price of money to banks in this jurisdiction, which sets the floor everything else is priced from.
What it does not show. It is emphatically not a mortgage quote. What a non-resident is offered is a different number, usually much higher, and the gap between them is where a market's financing story actually lives.
Supply against absorption
Not measured
No statistics agency for this market has been read and cleared for republication. Two have been anywhere: Canada and Singapore. The data very likely exists; the permission to publish it has not been established.
Residential price cycle
107.6 against a 2015 base of 100
House prices have risen faster than consumer prices since 2015 — the market is above its own inflation-adjusted level of that year.
What it does not show. It is a position, not a direction, and it is not a valuation. Deflating by consumer prices says nothing about what the asset yields or what credit costs, and a market can sit above its 2015 level for years without that meaning anything is due.
Valuation against its own history
116.6 to income, 131.4 to rent
Housing costs more relative to incomes than it did in 2015, on this country's own index. Buying takes more years of a local salary than it did then, which is a statement about the people who live there rather than about a foreign buyer's return.
What it does not show. It is not comparable to another country's figure. Each index is 100 in its own 2015, so two of these side by side are two different base years wearing the same label — a market at 120 is not dearer than one at 90, it has merely moved further from its own past. It is also not a forecast, and a ratio can stay stretched for a decade.
On the market now
Not measured
No listings platform has been read for this market. The one platform this site can read covers Russian cities only, and inventing a count for anywhere else would be worse than an empty row.
No dossier has been written for this market yet. What follows is the measured layers and the rules, each with its source — not an argument about whether to be here. A market reaches this page as soon as two layers can be cited, because an unwritten thesis is a reason to publish less, not a reason to publish nothing.
The series behind those figures, and the workings
Currency
-1.2%
Twelve-month move in GBP per euro, 0.8647 in 2025-07 to 0.8539 in 2026-07. Positive means the local currency weakened. Source: European Central Bank monthly reference averages.
0.8545
Latest daily fixing, GBP per euro on 2026-08-14. Shown because it is what a reader would see if they went and looked; the window above uses monthly averages, which one volatile day cannot move.
Against other base currencies
A market is cheap or dear relative to the capital entering it, so the same twelve months read differently depending on what the buyer holds. Both legs are quoted per euro, so the euro cancels and no third source is involved.
| Buyer holds | GBP per unit, 2025-07 | GBP per unit, 2026-07 | Twelve-month move |
|---|---|---|---|
| US dollar (USD) | 0.7405 | 0.7479 | +1.0% |
| Swiss franc (CHF) | 0.9273 | 0.9226 | -0.5% |
| Singapore dollar (SGD) | 0.5780 | 0.5791 | +0.2% |
| Australian dollar (AUD) | 0.4841 | 0.5208 | +7.6% |
Cost of money
3.75%
Central bank policy rate, 2026-07. Source: Bank for International Settlements.
This is the price of money to banks, not the price of money to a non-resident buying a building. The gap between those two is where a market’s financing story actually lives, and it is not in this number. A mortgage quote for a foreign buyer depends on the lender, the asset and the borrower, and no public dataset carries it.
BIS terms permit this figure on a free page and state that nothing in their statistics constitutes investment advice. They also allow inclusion in a commercial product only where it adds no charge, so this series is published here and is not priced into any paid work.
Background
Annual national statistics from the World Bank, under a licence that permits reuse with attribution. They describe the country; they do not time an entry, and they are not counted as measurements of this market — otherwise every territory on earth would claim to be measured on the strength of one dataset.
| Indicator | Value | Year |
|---|---|---|
| GDP per capita | 57,602 US$ | 2025 |
| Consumer price inflation | 3.9 % | 2025 |
| Population | 69,487,000 | 2025 |
| Urban population | 83.3 % of total | 2025 |
| Official exchange rate | 0.7595 per US$ | 2025 |
What the rules do to a foreign buyer
Each entry cites the instrument and the authority page it was read from, with the date it was retrieved. Facts of law change; the retrieval date is how you know how old this reading is.
| Topic | In force | When it bites | Applies to | What applies | Instrument | Read on |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The surcharge on buying, and the day-count that triggers it | In forcefrom 2021-04-01 | On the way in | Residential only | Rates of Stamp Duty Land Tax for non-UK residents purchasing residential property in England and Northern Ireland are 2 percentage points higher than those that apply to purchases made by UK residents. The test is presence rather than nationality or domicile: an individual buyer is non-UK resident for this purpose if they are not present in the UK for at least 183 days during the 12 months before their purchase, measured against the effective date of the transaction, which is normally completion. A buyer can therefore be UK-resident for income tax and non-resident for this surcharge, and the two tests are not the same test. | Stamp Duty Land Tax: rates for non-UK residents, guidance published by HM Revenue & Customs. In force from 1 April 2021. | 2026-08-16 |
| An annual charge on holding through a company | In forceNot stated by the source | While you hold it | Residential only | The Annual Tax on Enveloped Dwellings is an annual tax payable mainly by companies that own UK residential property valued at more than GBP 500,000. It reaches companies, partnerships where any partner is a company, and collective investment schemes such as unit trusts and open-ended investment vehicles. The charge is banded by valuation and for 2026-27 runs from GBP 4,600 to GBP 303,450. It is a cost of holding rather than of buying, and it falls on the structure rather than the person: the same dwelling held directly by an individual does not attract it, which makes the ownership vehicle a recurring annual cost decision rather than a one-off conveyancing one. | Annual Tax on Enveloped Dwellings: the basics, guidance published by HM Revenue & Customs, last updated 4 March 2026. | 2026-08-16 |
| Sixty days to report a sale, whether or not anything is owed | In forcefrom 2021-10-27 | On the way out | All property | A non-resident disposing of UK property or land must report the disposal to HM Revenue & Customs within 60 days of completion where the completion date was on or after 27 October 2021, and must pay any tax due in the same 60-day window. The obligation to report does not depend on there being tax to pay: the guidance states that a disposal must be reported even where there is no tax to pay on it, and even where the disposal made a loss. The window is short by international standards and it starts at completion rather than at the end of a tax year, so a seller who plans around an annual return misses it by default. | Capital Gains Tax for non-residents: UK residential property, guidance published by HM Revenue & Customs. | 2026-08-16 |
What is missing, and why
supply — Source does not cover this market
The dataset simply does not include this territory. Absent, not zero.
No statistics agency for this market has been read and cleared for republication. Two have been anywhere: Canada and Singapore. The data very likely exists; the permission to publish it has not been established.
What supports this, what would make it wrong, and how it could go
Record
| Why this market is on the list | Added on two licensed macro layers, then given a friction layer when HM Revenue & Customs was read across all three cost phases — the surcharge on buying, the annual charge on holding through a company, and the sixty-day reporting window on selling. It is the first market on this screen whose rules cover entry, holding and exit rather than entry alone. |
|---|---|
| Dossier | None written. Layers and rules only, which is why this market reads as “Measured” rather than reviewed. |
| Next review | 2026-11-15 |
| Evidence snapshot | 2026-08-16 |