If you had to sum up Q3 2025 in the UK housing market then ‘slightly subdued’ does the job. Certainly not a leap off a cliff, also not a surge, just that hesitancy you hear when buyers, sellers and lenders are all waiting to see what happens next.
Our own numbers tell the tale. The split between purchase and remortgage instructions stayed where it was in Q2 – roughly 63/37% – which is itself a story. Despite the noise, the drivers haven’t changed: borrowers rolling off fixes, life-stage moves that can’t be deferred forever, and a public that’s now sharply tuned to total cost.
What did move for us as a business was broker/user depth. New sign-ups were steady, but the count of advisers actively submitting over a rolling three-month period ticked up again. That’s the metric that proves momentum.
GOOD ADVICE IN 2025
It says more of you are putting our tools to work for your clients. And when you look inside those cases, you can see the shape of good advice in 2025: clarity on price, fewer problems, and a ruthless focus on client reality/financials.
Take our All-Inclusive Remortgage. It was built to kill the small-print nonsense: one clear price, no hidden charges, and the ability to make the most of any lender cashback without the client getting stung at completion.
The proof is in your selections. In over 60% of all-inclusive cases, brokers chose to include the TT fee in the price, voluntarily taking a lower referral. More than half of business flows through the lowest two price bands.
CONSUMER DUTY IN PRACTICE
In other words, advisers are deliberately sacrificing part of their fee so the customer isn’t blindsided by a ‘standard’ £30-£50 fee that magically appears later. That looks like Consumer Duty done properly, not just talked about.
It also explains why the tired old ‘free legals’ pitch keeps losing when you run the numbers. Free never means free by the time the dust settles. There’s nearly always a transfer fee, sometimes portal or admin charges, and other ‘sundries, plus the client ends up paying for the privilege of being told it was zero.
With the All-Inclusive Remortgage plus a lender cashback, many borrowers cover the legal work cleanly and avoid those extras entirely. That’s the conversation to have: not “Is there a free option?” but “What’s the true cost to completion, who is being represented legally and who controls the process?”
SUBDUED MARKETS
Meanwhile the wider market did what slightly subdued markets do, especially in the lead up to Budget announcements, and especially when you have a government throwing potential property-based taxation changes into the melting pot every week. They take longer to come together to forge sales and purchases as people wait to see what the Chancellor might or might not announce. In the current context why wouldn’t you wait and see?
That said, for some there is no ability to wait and see. They need to be active now so transactions are still ongoing, particularly remortgaging, and while those wanting to purchase may be waiting a little bit longer for clarity, advisers can certainly expect a flood of enquiries and activity as the landscape becomes clearer.
This is where advisers earn their keep. If you know the pressure points – searches, survey diaries, lender offer timing, conveyancer workload – then you also know that promises made in October/early November become panicked phone calls in mid-December if you don’t manage expectations early.
We’ll keep beating that drum: set the tone at recommendation, steer clients to portals and firms like ourselves that publish the full cost up front, and avoid cliff-edge decisions that can rely on luck rather than process.
