Source: New Build vs Existing Property Sales: Fresh UK Data Added

I’ve just added a new dataset to the site that I think many of you will find useful. It comes directly from the UK House Price Index downloads, published by HM Land Registry and the Office for National Statistics.

You can access the raw files yourself on GOV.UK here: UK House Price Index data downloads – June 2025.

The specific file I’ve used is the one called “New build and existing resold property”, which is around 18MB in size. It covers England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and breaks down prices and sales volumes into two categories:

• New build – homes sold for the first time after construction.
• Existing (resold) property – all other transactions, i.e. homes being resold.

What the dataset contains

Each row in the file includes:

• Date (monthly snapshots)
• Region name and code (down to local authority level)
• Average price for new build properties
• Average price for existing properties
• Index values (a relative measure of prices over time)
• Monthly and annual change percentages
• Sales volumes for both new build and existing property

That means we can look not just at how prices move, but also at how many transactions are happening in each category.

Why this matters

Most house price commentary treats the market as one single block, but the new build market behaves very differently to the second-hand market:

• New builds are more influenced by planning, developer pipelines, and government schemes like Help to Buy (when it existed).
• Existing resales are more reflective of day-to-day buyer and seller sentiment.

By splitting the data this way we can see, for example:

• Whether volumes are rising in new builds while existing resales stagnate.
• How price changes differ between brand-new stock and the broader second-hand market.
• Regional patterns – for instance, Scotland has a much larger share of new build sales relative to total transactions compared with London boroughs.

How it’s shown on the site

On the new “New vs Existing Dashboard” you’ll see:

• Annual totals of new vs existing sales, broken down by country and by local authority.
• A top-20 list of areas ranked by the share of sales that are new builds.
• A trend chart showing how the split between new and existing property has evolved over the last 15 years.

This makes it easier to answer questions like: What proportion of transactions in Wales are new builds? How has the balance shifted since 2010? Which districts rely most heavily on new housing stock?

Next steps

I’ll be refreshing this dataset as new monthly releases are published. Over time, it will help build a clearer picture of how new build supply contributes to the overall housing market, and how different regions depend on new vs existing stock.

If you’re interested in diving deeper, the raw file is public and free to download from the GOV.UK site linked above. On PropertyResearch.uk, I’ll continue to make the data more accessible and visual so you don’t have to wrestle with 18MB spreadsheets.