RICS June 2026: new instructions to sell fell to -23%, the weakest in over a year. Tenant demand in the lettings market rose to +18%, the strongest since May 2025. The supply glut that gave BTL buyers negotiating power is easing. The income case for owning rental property is not.
What Has Happened?
RICS published its June 2026 UK Residential Market Survey on 9 July 2026. The survey draws on responses from chartered surveyors across England, Scotland, and Wales, and covers both the sales and lettings markets on a monthly basis. The data reflects conditions on the ground in June, so it runs approximately six weeks behind real-time, but it is one of the most consistent leading indicators available for where the market is heading rather than where it has been.
In the sales market, the headline buyer enquiries net balance came in at -29% in June 2026, the least negative reading since February. In April and May, both printed at -34%. The direction is modestly improving, though the absolute level confirms buyer activity remains subdued rather than recovering sharply. Agreed sales moved similarly: -32% in June versus -35% in May. Surveyors expect near-term (three-month) sales volumes at -16%, a meaningful improvement on the -34% recorded in March.
The figure I keep returning to is new instructions to sell. It fell from -10% in May to -23% in June, the weakest reading in over a year. When fewer vendors bring properties to market, the available inventory contracts. That is a structural change in the buyer's market that has existed since the second half of 2025. The Rightmove June 2026 asking price data, published in mid-June, showed the average asking price at £376,191, down 0.6% in the month. If supply continues to contract while buyer demand stabilises, asking prices stop falling and the negotiating dynamic for buyers changes.
Over the next twelve months, RICS survey respondents expect sales volumes to be broadly flat, with a net balance of +1%. House prices show a net balance of +8% of surveyors expecting prices to rise rather than fall over the same period, up from +6% previously. Neither figure is a strong growth call. Both are signals that the market expects to stop declining rather than start recovering sharply.
In the lettings market, tenant demand rose to a net balance of +18% in June 2026, the highest reading since May 2025. Over the same period, landlord instructions remained in negative territory at -18%. The persistent mismatch between rising tenant demand and contracting rental supply sits underneath the Goodlord Rental Index figure published the previous week, which showed new-tenancy rents in England up 6.5% year on year in June. RICS expects rental prices to continue rising, projecting approximately 2.5% growth over the twelve months ahead, with +36% of survey respondents anticipating further increases. RICS members in the north of England were notably more optimistic about the private rented sector than those in the south.
Why This Matters to UK Property Investors
The supply story matters most for investors who have been waiting to buy. The reasoning for waiting was rational: lots of stock, motivated sellers, prices still softening. The -23% reading on new instructions in June does not mean the buyer's market has ended, but it raises the question of when it does. If vendors are becoming less willing to list in June, the pool of available properties shrinks heading into late summer and autumn. September traditionally sees a burst of new listings. If that seasonal effect is weaker than usual because overall confidence has stabilised, the inventory advantage buyers have had may not reload the way it normally does.
For BTL investors specifically, the relevant acquisitions are typically not generic family homes. They are properties where the vendor is motivated for a reason: a landlord exiting the market, an executor sale, a developer clearing old stock, an owner who needs to move fast. Those deals exist independently of the broad market supply cycle, and they will continue to appear. But the density of those opportunities is related to how many properties are actively circulating, and the June RICS data says that number is falling.
On the rental side, the +18% tenant demand reading alongside -18% landlord instructions is the gap that drives rent growth. Every landlord who exits by selling a property removes a supply unit from the lettings market. The Goodlord data from the previous week showed new-tenancy rents up 6.5% in June. The RICS lettings data is the structural explanation for why that is happening. More tenants competing for fewer properties, with a formal Section 13 process now limiting how frequently rents on existing tenancies can be reviewed. Landlords who have stayed in the market and hold well-located stock are the beneficiaries of that structure.
Northern England stands out in the RICS data. Survey members in the north report greater optimism about the private rented sector than those in the south. Fleet Mortgages' Q2 2026 Rental Barometer, published the same week, supports that view with numbers: average BTL gross yields of 9.2% in the North East, 8.8% in the North West. These are markets where yield compression from rising prices is real (Nationwide's June 2026 data showed North East annual house price growth at 9.9%), but the combination of income and capital appreciation is still the strongest of any English region.
The Risks Investors Need to Understand
The -23% new instructions reading is a one-month data point, not a confirmed trend. May printed at -10%. A single month's drop could reflect seasonal patterns, local surveyor sampling variation, or temporary post-election caution. One negative reading does not confirm the supply glut is over. It raises the possibility. Investors should treat it as a prompt to check their pipeline rather than a signal to buy at any price to beat a closing window.
Agreed sales remain deeply negative at -32%. Buyer enquiries at -29% are less negative than earlier in the year, but they are still negative. The market is not recovering, it is slowing its rate of decline. A BTL investor who overpays for an acquisition because they believe prices are about to turn is running ahead of what the data actually shows. The twelve-month price outlook of +8% net balance means more RICS members expect prices to rise than fall, but it is a sentiment measure, not a forecast of specific percentage growth. Acting on it as if it means prices will rise 8% in twelve months is a misread of the metric.
Tenant demand at +18% is strong relative to recent readings but moderate by historical standards. Before the Renters' Rights Act came into force and before the peak of the cost-of-living pressure on households, tenant demand net balances were running at +40% to +60% in some years. The current figure reflects recovery from a period of suppressed demand, not a spike. The 2.5% rental growth projection for the next twelve months from RICS sits below the 6.5% Goodlord figure for new-tenancy rents in June, which is partly a methodology difference (RICS covers existing and new tenancies; Goodlord covers new lettings only). Rental income growth from an existing tenancy, subject to the Section 13 Form 4A process, will track closer to the RICS 2.5% projection. New-let properties can capture the 6.5% rate at inception.
The RICS data does not capture what is happening with individual property types or specific postcodes. A net balance of -23% on new instructions nationally includes markets where supply is thinning faster and markets where it has not changed much. For a BTL investor targeting a specific postcode in Sunderland or a specific property type (licensed HMO in a selective licensing area, for example), the national RICS figure is background context, not deal-level intelligence. Local agent conversations and postcode-specific data from portals are what actually inform whether a specific deal is priced correctly for current conditions.
Where the Opportunity Could Be
If the supply of sales properties is starting to contract, the most actionable response is not to rush acquisitions but to sharpen the deal criteria now, before competition increases. The landlord-to-landlord sale market, where a motivated exiting BTL investor sells to a professional buyer at a price that reflects their need to leave rather than the full market rate, tends to run ahead of the broader RICS supply picture. Estate agents who specialise in landlord stock know which clients are planning to exit and often offer those properties to known buyers before they hit Rightmove. Being on those lists before the supply falls is worth more than reacting after it does.
Auction houses are a separate channel. SDL Auctions, Bond Wolfe, and Allsop list northern and Midlands BTL lots regularly, including executor sales and motivated vendor stock. The -23% RICS new instructions figure does not change what appears at auction. Properties arrive there because of the vendor's circumstances, not because of the monthly RICS survey. An investor with finance arranged, who attends auction catalogues in advance, continues to find motivated vendor pricing in a channel that is structurally independent of the broader supply dynamic.
The tenant demand pickup at +18% strengthens the income case for acquiring into the rental market now rather than in six months. If RICS members in the north are more optimistic than those in the south, and Fleet Q2 data puts North East yields at 9.2%, the case for acquiring well-located terraced stock in Sunderland, Hartlepool, or Middlesbrough before either supply contracts further or capital growth compresses yields is clear. The window where you can buy at current prices into a market where rents are already rising is worth more than waiting for prices to fall another couple of percent in the hope of a better entry point that may not materialise.
For investors already holding property, the +18% tenant demand reading supports active portfolio management. Properties with vacancies should be re-let promptly and at current market rates, because Section 13 means the starting rent on a new tenancy locks in the baseline for at least twelve months. A property re-let at below-market rent in July 2026 because the landlord misjudged the local rate is carrying a cost that compounds for a full year before Form 4A can correct it.
Arsh's Investor View
I have been watching the RICS survey monthly for a long time. The -23% on new instructions is the number I took most seriously from the June report. Not because one month tells you the trend has turned, but because it breaks the pattern. May was -10%. Readings before that were also in the single digits negative or occasionally flat. A move from -10 to -23 in one month is not noise. It suggests something shifted in vendor sentiment in June. Whether that is because the general economic picture stabilised slightly, or because potential sellers decided to wait for a better moment, or something else entirely, I do not know. What I know is that fewer properties hitting the market is the first step toward prices stabilising, and then rising. The RICS twelve-month price outlook at +8% net balance is telling you that surveyors on the ground are already pricing that in.
My honest view on the buyer's market: it has been better in the past twelve months than at any point since 2018 for finding properties with some price flexibility. I have used it. I bought two properties in Q4 2025 where the vendor was willing to negotiate 3% to 5% below initial asking because there was plenty of competing stock around. If the June RICS data is the start of a trend rather than a blip, that specific dynamic becomes less common. Not impossible. Just less common. I'd rather be looking at deals now than waiting to see whether the RICS July survey confirms the June reading.
On the rental side, the +18% tenant demand figure alongside -18% landlord instructions is exactly the gap I expect to persist. Every month that the regulatory burden makes a smaller landlord decide to sell, that is one more household competing for one fewer rental property. The Goodlord 6.5% figure for new-tenancy rents in June is partly a Section 13 repricing story (which I covered in the previous post), but it is also a supply story. RICS is pointing at the same cause. The people who shout about the Renters' Rights Act being bad for landlords are, strangely, correct about the short-term compliance overhead and wrong about the income outcome. Income is up. In most of the markets I follow, it is up substantially.
Northern landlords being more optimistic than southern ones in the RICS data is consistent with what I see on the ground. A landlord holding two terraced houses in Middlesbrough letting at £750 per month each, bought at £100,000 each, is sitting on 9% gross yield, a property portfolio rising in capital value, and a rental market where tenant demand runs ahead of supply. The friction from the Renters' Rights Act is real for that landlord, but it is manageable friction on a profitable base. A landlord holding a single two-bedroom flat in a Zone 2 London building that has a BTR competitor three doors down, a service charge rising 8% per year, and a gross yield of 4.2%, is in a harder position with the same regulatory changes on top. The north/south gap in surveyor sentiment is not sentiment. It is arithmetic.
How Property Investor App Can Help
Property Investor App tracks BTL listings across England and Wales, including off-market and landlord-to-landlord sale opportunities in the northern markets where the RICS data shows both strong tenant demand and investor optimism. If you have been monitoring the sales market for acquisition opportunities and want to act before supply contracts further, PIA's regional deal listings show gross yield on current asking prices so you can assess whether June 2026 asking prices in specific postcodes still produce positive leverage at current BTL mortgage rates. For investors who want to re-let properties promptly at current market rates to capture the Section 13 baseline advantage, PIA connects you with local letting agents who can provide July 2026 comparative market evidence for specific property types and postcodes, which is also the documentation you will need if a Form 4A increase is ever referred to the First-tier Tribunal. And for anyone who has been tracking the RICS monthly data as a signal for when to move on acquisitions, PIA's market intelligence section contextualises the national figures down to regional yield data, so the supply signal in the June survey can be mapped against the specific markets where the income arithmetic still makes sense for individual investors.
Key Takeaways
- RICS June 2026 UK Residential Market Survey (published 9 July 2026): new instructions to sell fell to a net balance of -23% in June, down from -10% in May and the weakest reading in over a year. New buyer enquiries came in at -29% (least negative since February; down from -34% in April and May). Agreed sales: -32% (up from -35%). The data signals that the supply glut which gave buyers negotiating leverage over the past six months is beginning to ease.
- Twelve-month outlook from RICS June 2026: sales volumes expected to be broadly flat at a net balance of +1%. More surveyors expect house prices to rise than fall over the next twelve months, with a net balance of +8% (up from +6% in May). These are sentiment indicators, not point forecasts of specific percentage change. They confirm the market is expected to stop declining rather than recover sharply in the near term.
- RICS lettings market, June 2026: tenant demand rose to a net balance of +18%, the strongest reading since May 2025. Landlord instructions in the lettings market remained negative at -18%. RICS projects approximately 2.5% rental price growth over the next twelve months, with a net balance of +36% of survey respondents expecting rents to rise. RICS members in northern England reported greater optimism about the private rented sector than those in the south.
- The RICS supply signal interacts directly with the acquisition opportunity for BTL investors. Properties brought to market by exiting landlords (vendor sales, executor disposals, motivated developers) are the primary source of BTL acquisition flow at negotiated prices. When fewer properties enter the sales market overall, the density of those motivated vendor opportunities reduces. Acting before that density falls further is a more defensible position than waiting for an additional price correction that the supply data no longer supports.
- For existing portfolios: the +18% tenant demand reading and -18% landlord instructions gap supports re-letting vacant properties promptly at current market rates. Section 13 of the Renters' Rights Act (in force from 1 May 2026) means the starting rent on a new tenancy becomes the baseline for the first 52-week Form 4A review cycle. A property re-let at below-market rent because the landlord misjudged the June 2026 rate is carrying an income shortfall that cannot be corrected without a formal Form 4A notice, and the next opportunity to do so is twelve months away.
Frequently Asked Questions
What did the RICS June 2026 UK Residential Market Survey show?
RICS published its June 2026 UK Residential Market Survey on 9 July 2026. The key findings: new buyer enquiries came in at a net balance of -29%, the least negative since February 2026 (down from -34% in April and May). New instructions to sell fell sharply to -23%, from -10% in May, the weakest reading in over a year. Agreed sales were -32%, up from -35%. Over the next twelve months, RICS members expect sales volumes to be broadly flat (net balance of +1%) and house prices to edge upward (net balance of +8% expecting prices to rise vs. fall). In the lettings market, tenant demand rose to a net balance of +18% in June, the strongest since May 2025, while landlord instructions remained negative at -18%. RICS projects approximately 2.5% rental price growth over the following twelve months.
Why are new instructions to sell falling in June 2026?
The RICS June 2026 survey does not isolate a single cause for the drop in new instructions to sell, from -10% in May to -23% in June. Possible factors include vendors becoming less willing to test the market as asking prices have softened (Rightmove June 2026 data showed average asking prices down 0.6% in the month to £376,191), some potential sellers deciding to wait for market conditions to improve, and a seasonal element as confidence in the second half of 2026 becomes clearer. A reading of -23% means significantly more surveyors reported a fall in new listings than reported an increase. One month does not confirm a trend, but the move from -10% to -23% in a single survey period is material and worth watching in the July 2026 report.
What does falling sales supply mean for buy-to-let investors buying in 2026?
A fall in new instructions to sell means fewer properties enter the sales market over that period. For BTL investors who have been using the elevated supply of recent months to negotiate prices, especially on motivated vendor stock from exiting landlords and executor sales, a contracting supply pool means the density of those opportunities reduces over time. It does not mean deals disappear. Auction sales, landlord-to-landlord transactions, and off-market deals via agents with exiting landlord relationships continue independently of the broad RICS supply reading. But the overall backdrop of buyer leverage that has existed since late 2025 becomes less reliable as a planning assumption if the June -23% reading reflects the start of a trend. BTL investors with finance arranged and clear deal criteria are better positioned to act on remaining opportunities than those still in a research phase.
What is the RICS net balance figure and how should investors read it?
The RICS net balance is the percentage of chartered surveyors reporting an increase in a metric minus the percentage reporting a decrease, across a monthly survey of RICS members. A net balance of -29% for buyer enquiries means 29% more respondents saw demand fall than saw it rise. A net balance of +18% for tenant demand means 18% more saw tenant demand rise than fall. The figures are directional indicators, not absolute counts or percentage changes in market activity. A balance of +8% on twelve-month house price expectations means more surveyors expect prices to rise than fall, not that prices will rise 8%. The RICS survey is useful as a consistent leading indicator of market direction over many years of comparable data, but it does not replace postcode-level pricing data or property-specific yield calculations for individual investment decisions.
How does the RICS June 2026 rental data affect landlords in northern England?
RICS survey members in the north of England reported greater optimism about the private rented sector in June 2026 than their counterparts in the south. This is consistent with regional yield data from Fleet Mortgages' Q2 2026 Rental Barometer, which showed average gross yields of 9.2% in the North East and 8.8% in the North West, and with the Goodlord Rental Index for June 2026 showing Yorkshire and Humberside at 16% annual new-tenancy rent growth. The RICS lettings data, showing tenant demand at +18% and landlord instructions at -18%, reflects a supply-demand imbalance that is more pronounced in northern markets where landlord exits have been most significant since 2022. Northern England currently offers the strongest combination of rental income growth and entry-price affordability of any English region, and the RICS June data reinforces rather than challenges that view.
