46 England & Wales county reports and 5 per-town deep-dives. Real HM Land Registry transactions. Real Acuitus auction yields. A clear read on lender appetite. Authored and editorially reviewed by the team at Commercial Mortgages Broker.
Birmingham is the deepest commercial property market outside London, with HM Land Registry recording 5,723 commercial-leaning transactions across the rolling five-year window to Q1 2026 — split between 1,048 commercial freehold sales and 4,675 corporate-acquired residential investment purchases. The market is being reshaped by HS2 Curzon Street, the Paradise and Smithfield schemes, and a Big Nine office story that has held up better than most regional centres. Median commercial transaction price sits at £200,000, with the top end of registered activity reaching £1.7m for industrial freehold stock.
Bristol is the deepest commercial property market in the South West and a core Big Nine regional office centre, with HM Land Registry recording 3,248 commercial-leaning transactions across the city in the rolling five years to Q1 2026. Activity is concentrated in the £210,000–£425,000 inter-quartile band, with a small tail of large institutional deals — including the £25.95m Graphic Packaging International facility on Filwood Road registered in December 2025. No Bristol lots cleared in the most recent public commercial auction cycle, so transacted yield evidence in the city is dominated by privately negotiated sales rather than auction prints.
Leeds is the UK's second financial centre and the deepest commercial property market outside London and Manchester, with 4,307 commercial-leaning transactions registered with HM Land Registry across the rolling five years to Q1 2026. The city's South Bank regeneration, Big Nine office market position and strong logistics belt continue to attract institutional and SPV capital, with HMLR median commercial-leaning prices sitting at £165,000 and a long tail of multi-million-pound deals through to a £46.2m higher-education campus sale recorded in December 2025.
Greater London's commercial property market remains the deepest and most liquid in the UK, with over 23,000 commercial-leaning transactions registered with HM Land Registry across the last five years. The market is sharply bifurcated between prime assets — where competition has compressed yields below 4% — and secondary stock that continues to offer 5–8%. Recent auction results in the capital cleared at yields between 4.06% and 4.79%, reflecting cautious investor selectivity rather than broad-based repricing.
Manchester is the deepest commercial property market outside London, with 6,853 commercial-leaning HM Land Registry transactions over the rolling five-year window to Q1 2026 and a further 22,611 private-individual residential sales providing context for the wider investment ecosystem. The city continues to attract institutional capital across offices, Build-to-Rent and logistics, and is routinely cited in Avison Young's Big Nine reporting tradition as the strongest regional office market in the UK. Lender appetite is comparable to London for prime stock, with secondary income still pricing materially wider.
Bedfordshire is a compact, sub-700,000-resident county wedged between Hertfordshire to the south, Buckinghamshire to the west, Northamptonshire to the north and Cambridgeshire to the east — defined by the M1 / A1 logistics spine, London Luton Airport, and a manufacturing and aviation heritage that has reshaped into one of the more pragmatic mid-market commercial property economies in the East of England. HM Land Registry recorded 2,814 commercial-leaning transactions across the five principal towns with data over the rolling 60 months to Q1 2026, alongside 15,711 residential transactions. Pricing is materially keener than in neighbouring Hertfordshire: median commercial transaction prices run from £262,500 in Luton through £295,000 in Bedford to £350,000 in Biggleswade, the headline-priced sub-market. Four Acuitus auction lots have been matched to the county across Bedford and Luton, including a Bedford shopping-centre arcade clearing at a striking 15.1% net initial in March 2026 — a yield print that frames the wider end of value-add retail in the county cleanly.
Berkshire is the spine of the Thames Valley and one of the most institutionally-financeable commercial property markets in England outside London. HM Land Registry recorded 3,585 commercial-leaning transactions across the ten principal Berkshire towns over the rolling 60 months to Q1 2026 — heavily weighted to Reading (1,420) and Slough (899), the twin engines of the M4 corridor — alongside 22,385 residential transactions. The county is anchored by an unusually deep concentration of corporate occupiers (Oracle, Microsoft, Cisco, Symantec, Vodafone, Mars, Reckitt Benckiser, Lonza, GSK), Europe's largest single-ownership trading estate at Slough, a national-scale data-centre cluster, and an affluent royal/commuter belt around Windsor, Maidenhead and Wokingham. Median commercial transaction prices sit in a £310,000–£470,000 band depending on town, with Windsor and Maidenhead pulling materially harder at the upper quartile (£1,000,000 and £742,000 P75 respectively). Fifteen Acuitus auction prints across the county over the rolling window provide a direct read on yields, with sold lots clearing between roughly 5.65% and 10.40% net initial.
Bristol is the deepest commercial property market in the South West and a core Avison Young Big Nine regional office centre, with HM Land Registry recording 3,259 commercial-leaning transactions across the unitary-authority area in the rolling five years to Q1 2026. As a unitary authority rather than a traditional shire county, Bristol is small geographically — the metro core covered by this report comprises Bristol city itself plus the immediate satellite settlements at Filton, Kingswood and Bradley Stoke — but it punches well above its physical footprint on commercial property metrics. Bristol city alone accounts for 3,248 of the 3,259 transactions, with a £300,000 commercial-leaning median that is the highest of any metropolitan core outside London, Greater Manchester's prime city centre and the M25 ring.
Buckinghamshire is one of the most lopsided commercial property markets in the South East: a single-city economy in Milton Keynes — purpose-built, motor-industry-anchored and HS2-adjacent — wrapped around an unusually affluent ring of Chiltern AONB market towns and a thin strip of administrative-county geography running north through Buckingham. HM Land Registry recorded 2,102 commercial-leaning transactions across the ten towns covered here in the rolling 60 months to Q1 2026, alongside 12,155 residential transactions; Milton Keynes alone accounts for 1,485 of the commercial transactions — 71% of the county-wide total. The Chiltern commuter belt (Beaconsfield, Marlow, Amersham, Gerrards Cross, Princes Risborough) drives the higher-value end of the price distribution, with Beaconsfield posting a county-leading P50 of £1,050,000 and a P75 of £2.3m. One Acuitus auction print provides a direct yield anchor: a mixed office and retail asset at Coopers Yard, Newport Pagnell, sold under the hammer at £759,000 against £98,445 passing rent for a 12.97% net initial yield in October 2025.
Cambridgeshire is a two-engine commercial property market with no English equivalent: Cambridge — a Tier 1 global knowledge-economy city anchored by the University, the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, AstraZeneca's DISC R&D headquarters, ARM, Microsoft Research and the wider Cambridge Cluster of biotech, AI and quantum-computing occupiers — and Peterborough, an Eastern logistics and distribution hub sitting on the A1, A14 and East Coast Main Line, anchored by Anglian Water, Caterpillar, Travelex and a deep manufacturing and food-processing base. HM Land Registry recorded 3,648 commercial-leaning transactions across the seven principal towns in the rolling five-year window to Q1 2026, alongside 22,565 residential transactions, with two-thirds of all commercial activity concentrated in Cambridge and Peterborough alone. Pricing is bimodal: Cambridge medians at £390,000 with a P75 of £580,000 reflect Silicon Fen scarcity, while the Fenland market towns (Wisbech, March) clear at £160,000–£191,500 medians on a more conventional East-of-England agri-and-light-industrial footprint. Six Acuitus auction lots have traded or been offered across the county, with sold prints ranging from a 5.34% net initial yield on a Cambridge-orbit veterinary asset in Ely to 11.25% on a Peterborough office-and-warehouse complex.
Cheshire is one of the most economically diversified counties in the North West, with HM Land Registry recording 4,150 commercial-leaning transactions across its principal towns in the rolling 60 months to Q1 2026. The market is anchored on a four-town spine — Warrington as the M6/M62 logistics nexus, Chester as the heritage cathedral and university city, Crewe as Britain's rail capital and Macclesfield as the headquarters of the AstraZeneca pharma cluster — supplemented by a deep secondary tier across Northwich, Ellesmere Port, the historic market towns of Nantwich and Sandbach, and the affluent Cheshire golden-triangle commuter centres of Knutsford and Wilmslow.
Cornwall is England's most south-westerly county and one of its most tourism-dependent commercial property markets. HM Land Registry recorded 2,056 commercial-leaning transactions across 14 principal towns in the rolling 60 months to Q1 2026, alongside 12,296 corporate-acquired residential transactions. Five Acuitus auction lots have surfaced with disclosed yields running from 10.13% on Newquay high-street retail to 16.00% on a Truro mixed-use building. The county is structurally tourism-led — every coastal town carries hospitality occupier exposure that sits outside conventional commercial-property risk frameworks — and AONB / UNESCO World Heritage designation covers a substantial share of the geography.
County Durham is the strategic bridge between the Tyne-Wear conurbation and the North Yorkshire and Tees Valley investment markets, with HM Land Registry recording 6,555 commercial-leaning transactions across the county's nine principal towns in the rolling five years to Q1 2026. Stockton-on-Tees (1,495 transactions), Hartlepool (1,301) and Darlington (1,020) form the Tees Valley axis; Durham city anchors the historic core; and a long tail of post-coalfield centres at Bishop Auckland, Peterlee, Seaham, Consett and Chester-le-Street round out the county's commercial mortgage market. Median pricing of £44,000 in Peterlee through to £105,000 in Stockton sits well below national averages, generating a structural running-yield premium that defines the county's investment thesis.
Cumbria is the second-largest English county by area but one of the thinnest commercial property markets in the North West, with HM Land Registry recording 1,989 commercial-leaning transactions across the county's nine principal towns in the rolling 60 months to Q1 2026. Activity is concentrated on Carlisle as the county town and English-Scottish border city, supported by Barrow-in-Furness (BAE Systems Submarines, the UK's nuclear submarine builder), the post-coal-and-steel west coast at Workington and Whitehaven (anchored by the Sellafield nuclear complex), the M6 service centre at Penrith, the Lake District tourism economies at Kendal, Windermere and Keswick, and Ulverston on the Furness peninsula. Roughly half the county sits inside either the Lake District National Park (the UK's largest) or the Yorkshire Dales National Park, which materially constrains the commercial development pipeline.
Derbyshire is an East Midlands manufacturing and aerospace economy bookended by the Peak District National Park to the west and the M1 corridor to the east. HM Land Registry records 4,589 commercial-leaning transactions across the county's nine principal towns in the rolling 60 months to Q1 2026, alongside 23,090 owner-occupier residential transactions in the same window. Activity is dominated by Derby — Rolls-Royce aerospace headquarters, Toyota Burnaston, Bombardier/Alstom rail and the University of Derby — with Chesterfield providing a clear second pole on the Sheffield commuter belt and a long tail of Peak District and M1 satellite markets behind them.
Devon is the largest county in the South West and one of the most internally varied commercial property markets in England: a 1.2 million-population economy anchored by two Tier 1 cities — Plymouth on the Naval and marine-engineering coast, Exeter on the M5/A30 growth axis — with a long tail of coastal, market and Dartmoor-fringe towns built around tourism, agriculture and retirement demand. HM Land Registry recorded 4,222 commercial-leaning transactions across the eighteen principal towns in the rolling 60 months to Q1 2026, alongside 29,137 residential transactions. Plymouth alone accounts for 1,194 of those commercial prints and Exeter for 739 — together more than 45% of countywide activity — with Torquay, Newton Abbot, Bideford, Paignton and Barnstaple forming a consistent secondary tier. Pricing varies sharply: median commercial transaction prices range from £162,500 in Ilfracombe to £414,000 in Totnes, with Plymouth posting £200,000 and Exeter £290,000. Eight Acuitus lots have been matched to towns across the county over the rolling window, with sold prints clearing in a 7.83–9.90% net initial yield band — a clean read on a market that lenders increasingly treat as a legitimate secondary geography rather than a peripheral one.
Dorset is a 770,000-population South West county whose commercial property economy sits in two distinct halves: the Bournemouth-Christchurch-Poole conurbation along the eastern coast — the United Kingdom's 25th-largest urban area, anchored by JP Morgan, Vitality, RIAS and a deep beach-tourism and professional-services base — and a long tail of historic county and coastal towns running west to the Devon border, framed by the Jurassic Coast UNESCO World Heritage site, the Dorset AONB, Cranborne Chase and the Purbeck Heritage Coast. HM Land Registry recorded 2,876 commercial-leaning transactions across the thirteen principal towns in the rolling 60 months to Q1 2026, alongside 19,491 residential transactions. Bournemouth alone accounts for 1,031 of those commercial prints and Poole for 681 — together more than 59% of countywide activity — with Weymouth, Dorchester and Christchurch forming a clear secondary tier. Pricing varies sharply across the county: median commercial transaction prices range from £210,588 in Weymouth to £383,000 in Wimborne Minster, with Bournemouth at £240,000 and Poole at £280,000. Thirteen Acuitus lots have been matched to towns across the county over the rolling window, with disclosed sold prints ranging from £120,000 to £530,000 and one disclosed yield at 8.93% — a clean read on a market where lenders treat the BCP conurbation as a Tier 1-equivalent secondary geography and the western county towns as a tightly-held lifestyle market.
East Riding of Yorkshire is a Humber-anchored ceremonial county whose commercial property market is dominated, structurally and statistically, by Kingston upon Hull. HM Land Registry records 2,589 commercial-leaning transactions in Hull alone in the rolling 60 months to Q1 2026 — the entirety of the bundle's matched commercial volume — supported by 7,469 owner-occupier residential transactions and a single Acuitus lot at 336 Holderness Road. The county's economic frame is unusually concentrated: deep-water port, offshore-wind manufacturing, a Reckitt global headquarters and two universities sit inside the city, with a rural and seaside hinterland — Beverley, Bridlington, Driffield, the Yorkshire Wolds AONB — providing a quite different and far thinner commercial sub-market behind it.
East Sussex is one of the more idiosyncratic commercial property markets on the South Coast: a coastal-and-Wealden county of roughly 560,000 people anchored by Brighton & Hove on the western edge, Eastbourne and the Hastings/Bexhill belt to the east, and a string of historic market towns — Lewes, Uckfield, Heathfield, Crowborough, Hailsham — across the High Weald. HM Land Registry recorded 2,893 commercial-leaning transactions across the twelve principal towns in the rolling five-year window to Q1 2026, with Brighton (864), Hastings (591) and Eastbourne (500) generating roughly two-thirds of all activity. Pricing skews lower than home-county peers in Surrey, Hertfordshire or large parts of Kent: typical commercial transactions land in a £220,000–£385,000 median band, with the more affluent Wealden towns (Lewes, Uckfield, Crowborough, Heathfield) producing materially higher upper-quartile prints on the back of period stock and tightly-held supply. Seven Acuitus auction lots have been matched to the county over the rolling window, with the cleanest sold-yield anchor a Sold prior medical centre print at 36 The Goffs, Eastbourne in November 2024 at 8.31% net initial.
Essex is one of the largest and most economically diverse commercial property markets in the East of England: a county of roughly 1.8 million residents wrapped around the north and east of Greater London, anchored by Stansted Airport and the Harlow life-sciences corridor in the west, the Thames estuary logistics belt running through Basildon, Grays and DP World London Gateway in the south, the A12 commuter spine through Brentwood, Chelmsford and Colchester, and the Southend-on-Sea coastal economy in the south-east. HM Land Registry recorded 5,728 commercial-leaning transactions across the eleven principal towns in the rolling 60 months to Q1 2026 — more than twice the volume of neighbouring Hertfordshire and roughly four-and-a-half times Suffolk's commuter towns — with a county-wide median price band of £175,000–£415,000 depending on town and a long industrial and logistics tail driven by the M11, A12, A13 and M25 corridors. Five Acuitus auction lots have been matched to the county over the rolling window, with one clean sold print at £585,000 in Clacton-on-Sea and a £60,000-rent Colchester high-street unit traded prior to auction.
Gloucestershire is a south-west county where commercial property activity is shaped by the M5 / A40 / A417 corridor and a sharp split between two anchor centres — Cheltenham (the Regency spa town and GCHQ host) and Gloucester (the cathedral and former-port city) — and a tight ring of distinctive market towns running through the Cotswolds and the Forest of Dean. HM Land Registry records 2,606 commercial-leaning transactions across the county's six principal towns in the rolling 60-month window to Q1 2026, with another 16,572 corporate-acquired residential transactions registered under PPD Category B. Gloucester (1,043 transactions) and Cheltenham (855) deliver 73% of all county activity, with Stroud (363), Cirencester (174), Tewkesbury (130) and Cinderford (41) filling out the rest. Ten matched Acuitus auction lots — five in Gloucester, three in Cheltenham, and one each in Stroud and Cirencester — give a direct read on county clearing levels, with disclosed yields running from 7.08% on prime Cheltenham-fringe Gloucester high-street retail (Howden Insurance, Eastgate Street) to 11.20% on Cheltenham leisure (1 & 2 Regent Street). Lender appetite is broad across high-street, challenger and specialist debt, but borrowers must underwrite the Cotswolds AONB, which covers around 80% of the county area, and the planning friction that comes with it.
Greater London is the deepest and most actively traded commercial property market in the United Kingdom by a wide margin, with 37,318 commercial-leaning transactions registered with HM Land Registry across the 37 boroughs and named submarkets covered in this report. The market is sharply bifurcated between prime central assets clearing below 5% and outer-borough secondary stock trading at 6–10%, with 25 Acuitus auction lots matched across the conurbation showing disclosed yields between 4.10% and 10.30%. For investors, developers and owner-occupiers, the headline is depth and lender competition rather than blanket affordability.
Greater Manchester is the deepest commercial property market outside London, with 17,588 commercial-leaning HM Land Registry transactions across its ten metropolitan boroughs in the rolling five-year window to Q1 2026 and a further 67,037 private-individual residential sales providing the wider investment context. The county is routinely cited within Avison Young's Big Nine reporting tradition as the strongest regional office market in the UK, anchored by Manchester city centre and supported by Salford Quays / MediaCityUK, the M60 / M62 logistics belt, and a deep pool of SPV-acquired residential investment stock across all ten boroughs. Six matched Acuitus auction lots — four industrial units in Bolton, a high-street retail trade in Wigan and a small Hyde retail lot — give a locally observable yield read for the first time, with sold yields ranging from 5.11% on prime small industrial in Bolton to 9.19% on secondary high-street retail in Wigan.
Hampshire is the largest commercial property market on the South Coast and one of the most diverse county-level markets in England: a 1.6 million-population county built around two maritime cities (Southampton and Portsmouth), a deep technology and pharmaceuticals corridor in Basingstoke, the Solent Enterprise Zone advanced-manufacturing belt, and a layer of affluent inland market towns from Winchester through Petersfield to Romsey. HM Land Registry recorded 6,293 commercial-leaning transactions across 20 towns in the rolling 60 months to Q1 2026 — more than two-and-a-half times the volume of neighbouring Hertfordshire and the deepest pool of identifiable office sales (847) of any non-London county we cover. Twenty-one Acuitus auction lots have been matched to the county across the same window, with prints in Southampton, Portsmouth, Winchester, Basingstoke, Fareham, Gosport, Andover, Farnborough, Lymington and Ringwood — an unusually broad geographical spread. The county's defining tension in Q2 2026 is between the structural demand pull of the Solent maritime, defence and pharma economy and the structural supply friction of two AONBs (South Downs and the New Forest) that cover roughly half the land area.
Hertfordshire is one of the most distinctive commercial property markets in the South East: an affluent home county of roughly 1.2 million people, ten districts, sitting directly on London's northern edge with the M25, M1 and A1(M) running through it. HM Land Registry recorded 2,404 commercial-leaning transactions across the eleven principal towns in the rolling five-year window to Q1 2026 — a smaller market than Greater London by an order of magnitude, but one of the most consistently financeable secondary markets in the country, anchored by life sciences in Stevenage and Hatfield, logistics along the M25/M1 belt, and a media and film cluster around Watford. Pricing sits clearly above the South East average: the typical commercial transaction lands in a £315,000–£480,000 median band depending on town, with the more affluent commuter centres (St Albans, Potters Bar, Bishop's Stortford) trading at materially higher levels. Nine Acuitus auction prints across the county over the rolling window provide a direct read on yields, with sold lots clearing between roughly 7.1% and 10.4% net initial.
Kent is one of the largest and most varied commercial property markets in the South East: a county of roughly 1.85 million people sprawling from the M25 commuter belt at Dartford and Sevenoaks through the Medway towns and the Garden of England farmland to the Channel ports at Dover, Folkestone and Ramsgate. HM Land Registry recorded 8,472 commercial-leaning transactions across the 25 principal towns in the rolling five-year window to Q1 2026 — by some distance the deepest commercial market of any English shire county outside Essex, and a market that mixes high-yielding coastal and Medway secondary stock with M25-fringe investment grade pricing in Sevenoaks, Tonbridge and Westerham. Pricing is bimodal: Medway and the east-coast resort towns trade with town median commercial prices in the £180,000–£250,000 band, while the M25-belt and Wealden market towns push £384,000–£720,000. Nineteen Acuitus auction prints across the county over the rolling window provide a direct read on yields, with sold lots clearing between roughly 4.06% and 11.96% net initial — the widest county yield range in the South East and a clean expression of how heterogeneous the Kent market actually is.
Lancashire is the broadest, most diversified commercial property market in the North West outside Greater Manchester, with HM Land Registry recording 8,885 commercial-leaning transactions across the county's 15 principal towns in the rolling 60 months to Q1 2026. Activity is anchored on Preston as the administrative and university centre, supported by Blackpool's coastal tourism economy, Blackburn and Burnley's post-industrial textile-heritage stock, Lancaster's university and historic core, and the M61/M6 logistics corridor running through Chorley, Leyland and Skelmersdale. The Samlesbury and Warton aerospace cluster anchors a separate institutional occupier base across central Lancashire.
Leicestershire is one of the most strategically positioned commercial property markets in England — a Big Nine regional centre at Leicester sitting at the meeting point of the M1, M69 and the East Midlands Airport / Magna Park logistics belt. HM Land Registry records 4,105 commercial-leaning transactions across the county's eight principal towns in the rolling 60 months to Q1 2026, alongside 23,104 owner-occupier residential transactions in the same window. Leicester alone accounts for 2,414 of those commercial-leaning trades — close to 59% of the county total — with Loughborough's university-anchored economy and the Hinckley / Coalville logistics catchment forming the principal supporting tier.
Lincolnshire is England's second-largest county by area but its lowest-density commercial property market — a county where 3,293 HM Land Registry commercial-leaning transactions over the rolling five years to Q1 2026 spread across eight principal towns and a vast agricultural hinterland from the Wolds to the Wash. The county is anchored by Lincoln (1,126 transactions), the cathedral, university and military-aerospace hub on the A46/A15 cross, and three Fenland and A1-corridor sub-engines: Spalding (445), Boston (436) and Grantham (417). Stamford, the smallest town in the bundle by population at 21,795, is the highest-value market by some distance — a £295,000 commercial median and a £500,000 P75, more than double the median of any other Lincolnshire town and the only Burghley-orbit print in the data. Skegness and Mablethorpe-adjacent Louth represent the East Coast tourism and Wolds-AONB friction line; Gainsborough sits at the lowest end of county pricing at a £106,000 P50. Five Acuitus auction lots have surfaced across the window, with the Stamford St Michael's Church retail print (8.91% net initial yield, March 2026) framing the market's secondary-retail clearing level cleanly.
Merseyside is the Liverpool City Region commercial property market, anchored on Liverpool — a Big Nine regional office centre, two-university city, working port and cruise terminal — with HM Land Registry recording 8,888 commercial-leaning transactions across the metropolitan county's principal towns in the rolling five years to Q1 2026. Liverpool dominates by a wide margin, accounting for 5,654 of those transactions, with St Helens, Southport, Birkenhead and Bootle making up the bulk of the remainder and the Wirral, Sefton coastal and Knowsley/Halton borough towns filling out the long tail.
Norfolk is the most structurally diverse commercial property market in East Anglia: a regional-capital city in Norwich (UEA, Aviva's group headquarters, two cathedrals, the Norwich Research Park), a working port and offshore-wind energy hub in Great Yarmouth (East Anglia ONE / TWO and Norfolk Vanguard supply chain), an A47 / M11-corridor port-and-agri-food cluster in King's Lynn, the Brecks forestry-and-distribution belt around Thetford, and a spread of historic market towns and North Norfolk coastal-tourism centres feeding into a county base of around 925,000 residents. HM Land Registry recorded 3,691 commercial-leaning transactions across the eight principal towns over the rolling 60 months to Q1 2026, alongside 21,937 residential transactions, with Norwich (1,780 transactions) and Great Yarmouth (728) accounting for roughly two-thirds of all commercial activity registered in the set. Pricing runs from a £115,000 Great Yarmouth median and a £45,000 P25 — the lowest in the East of England — to a £305,000 Hunstanton P50 and £687,000 P75 reflecting the thin, prime-edge North Norfolk coastal market. Twelve Acuitus auction lots have surfaced across the county over the window, with sold prints clearing in a 6.85–14.69% net initial yield range and framing the county's secondary-market repricing cleanly.
North Yorkshire is England's largest historic county by area and the most landscape-constrained commercial property market in the north, with the Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors National Parks plus the Howardian Hills AONB covering well over 40% of its land mass. HM Land Registry records 3,280 commercial-leaning transactions across the nine principal towns in the rolling 60 months to Q1 2026, anchored by York (1,371), with Scarborough (549) and Harrogate (463) forming the secondary centres of activity.
Northamptonshire is the geographical heart of the UK distribution economy and the southern edge of the Midlands Golden Triangle. HM Land Registry records 3,948 commercial-leaning transactions across the county's nine principal towns in the rolling 60 months to Q1 2026, alongside 21,252 owner-occupier residential transactions in the same window. Northampton — the county's only Tier 1 centre at 229,815 people — alone accounts for 1,733 of those commercial-leaning trades, around 44% of the county total, with Kettering (634), Corby (522) and Wellingborough (504) forming the principal supporting tier. Daventry, the M1 / DIRFT logistics anchor, contributes a further 178 commercial-leaning trades.
Northumberland is England's most northerly and most rural significant commercial property county, with HM Land Registry recording 1,457 commercial-leaning transactions across the seven principal towns covered in this report in the rolling 60 months to Q1 2026. Ashington (322 transactions, £62,500 median), Morpeth (298, £150,000) and Blyth (290, £85,000) lead the league table, with Cramlington (232, £145,000), Hexham (111, £160,000), Alnwick (107, £255,000) and Berwick-upon-Tweed (97, £170,000) filling out the spread. Roughly 80% of the county sits within the Northumberland National Park or the Northumberland Coast AONB, and the commercial market is shaped by a single Newcastle-facing commuter and energy-transition belt in the south, set against a long, thin coast-and-moorland tourism economy running north to the Scottish border.
Nottinghamshire is the East Midlands' second commercial property economy after Leicestershire, anchored on Nottingham — a Big Nine regional office market with two universities, the Boots head office at Beeston, Experian, Capital One and Speedo. HM Land Registry records 6,756 commercial-leaning transactions across the county's nine principal towns in the rolling 60 months to Q1 2026, supported by 30,400 owner-occupier residential trades. The Acuitus rostrum has matched 20 county lots over the same window, the bulk of them in Nottingham, providing a usable read on cleared pricing in a market that has historically traded in the shadow of Leicester and Sheffield.
Oxfordshire is a four-engine commercial property market with no straightforward English peer: Oxford — a Tier 1 global knowledge-economy city anchored by the University of Oxford, the BMW Mini Plant at Cowley, the John Radcliffe Hospital and a deep biotech, AI, fusion-energy and space-tech occupier base radiating out through Begbroke Science Park, the Harwell Campus and the Diamond Light Source; Banbury — an M40 manufacturing and logistics anchor with Aston Martin's headquarters, Norbar Torque Tools and a deep food and automotive supply chain; Bicester — the UK's most-visited tourism destination by Chinese visitor count thanks to Bicester Village luxury outlet; and the Vale of White Horse science corridor (Wantage, Didcot, Faringdon, Abingdon-on-Thames) hosting Diamond, ISIS Neutron Source, the UK Atomic Energy Authority's Culham fusion campus and the wider Harwell Science and Innovation Campus. HM Land Registry recorded 1,715 commercial-leaning transactions across the nine principal towns covered here in the rolling five-year window to Q1 2026, alongside 12,126 residential transactions, with Oxford and Banbury together accounting for roughly 59% of all county commercial activity. Pricing is unusually wide for a county of this size: Henley-on-Thames Tier 3 commercial medians at £750,000 (P75 £1.4m) sit higher than Oxford itself (£395,000 P50, £620,000 P75), reflecting the Thames-corridor affluence belt; Bicester (£280,000 P50) and Witney (£330,000 P50) sit at conventional Oxfordshire-commuter pricing. Five Acuitus auction lots have surfaced across the rolling window, with sold prints clearing in the £775,000–£816,000 range on industrial and high-street stock in Banbury and Witney.
Shropshire is one of the lower-density and most rurally-textured counties in the West Midlands, anchored by the historic county town of Shrewsbury and the post-war new town of Telford, with a string of distinctive market towns — Whitchurch, Market Drayton, Oswestry, Bridgnorth and Ludlow — knitted together by the M54, A5 and A49. HM Land Registry records 2,213 commercial-leaning transactions across the seven principal towns in the rolling 60-month window to Q1 2026, alongside 11,662 corporate-acquired residential transactions registered under PPD Category B. Telford alone delivers 1,079 of those commercial transactions — close to half the county total — at a £152,750 median, while Bridgnorth prints the highest median at £282,000 on the back of a thinner, higher-quality stock. Four Acuitus auction lots — Telford's 20/22 New Street at 7.56% NIY (£311,000), Oswestry's M&S Foodhall at 6.61% NIY (£1.805m), Ludlow's 33 Bull Ring (£121,000) and Ludlow's 3-4 Broad Street (sold prior on £69,500 passing rent) — give a direct read on secondary clearing levels across the county, from prime food-anchored convenience to small-lot high-street retail. For commercial mortgage borrowers Shropshire offers entry pricing well below the West Midlands metropolitan core, a deep mid-market Property Type "O" freehold opportunity set, and an unusually heritage-rich landscape — Ironbridge Gorge UNESCO, the Shrewsbury Tudor core, the Shropshire Hills AONB — that shapes both planning friction and tourism-led occupier demand.
Somerset in Q2 2026 is the South West's most sectorally varied commercial property county outside Greater Bristol — a market that runs from the UNESCO-listed terraces and twin-university occupier base of Bath, through the M5 logistics and Hinkley Point C nuclear-construction economy of Bridgwater, to the Leonardo Helicopters defence cluster at Yeovil and the seaside-resort and tourism economies of Weston-super-Mare, Minehead and Glastonbury. HM Land Registry recorded 2,622 commercial-leaning transactions across the ten principal towns in the rolling 60 months to Q1 2026, alongside 17,104 residential transactions. Bath alone accounts for 536 of those commercial prints, Taunton 501, Weston-super-Mare 489 and Bridgwater 400 — together more than 73% of countywide activity. Pricing varies sharply: median commercial transaction prices range from £210,000 in Yeovil to £375,000 in Shepton Mallet, with Bath posting £355,000 and the historic cathedral and lifestyle markets of Wells (£330,000) and Glastonbury (£273,000) sitting clearly above the county average. Eight Acuitus lots have been matched to towns across the county over the rolling window — three in Wells, two in Taunton, one each in Bath, Bridgwater and Yeovil — with sold prints clearing in a 7.01% to 12.50% net initial yield band. For lenders, Somerset is a confident two-speed market: high-street pricing into Bath and the better M5 corridor stock, challenger and specialist dominance across the secondary towns and the AONB-fringe lifestyle markets.
South Wales is the M4 corridor commercial property economy — Cardiff, Newport and Swansea on the southern coast, with the Wrexham–Deeside cross-border manufacturing belt in the north-east bundled into the same coverage. Across these four principal urban centres HM Land Registry records 4,425 commercial-leaning transactions in the rolling 60 months to Q1 2026 alongside 25,240 owner-occupier residential transactions, with Cardiff alone accounting for 1,517 commercial trades and the only genuine institutional office, Build-to-Rent and core investment market in Wales.
South Yorkshire is a four-town metropolitan county anchored on Sheffield, with HM Land Registry recording 8,121 commercial-leaning transactions and 34,351 owner-occupier residential transactions across Sheffield, Doncaster, Rotherham and Barnsley in the rolling 60 months to Q1 2026. The county's commercial property market is structured around a Sheffield core that delivers Big Nine office context, two universities and the Advanced Manufacturing Park, supported by a logistics-led second tier in Doncaster, Rotherham and Barnsley along the AMID corridor between the M1 and M18.
Staffordshire is one of the more economically diverse Midlands counties, anchored by Stoke-on-Trent and a string of mid-sized market and industrial towns spread across the M6, A38 and A50 corridors. HM Land Registry records 5,117 commercial-leaning transactions across the county in the rolling 60-month window to Q1 2026, alongside 26,458 corporate-acquired residential transactions registered under PPD Category B. Stoke-on-Trent alone delivers 2,511 of those commercial transactions — close to half the county total — at a £105,000 median, while Lichfield prints the highest median in the county at £300,000 on the back of a cleaner, professional-services-led stock. Ten Acuitus auction lots across Stoke-on-Trent, Stafford, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Cannock, Burton upon Trent, Leek and Uttoxeter give a direct read on secondary clearing levels in town-centre retail, banking-hall development plays and Stoke industrial. For commercial mortgage borrowers Staffordshire offers entry pricing well below the West Midlands metropolitan core, a deep mid-market Property Type "O" freehold opportunity set, and a logistics build-out along the A5 / M6 / M6 Toll that continues to attract specialist debt.
Suffolk is the most strategically important coastal-and-rural commercial property county in the East of England, anchored by Ipswich (137,500 — county town, North Sea port and a long-standing financial-services cluster around AXA UK and Willis Towers Watson), Felixstowe (the UK's largest container port, run by Hutchison Ports as part of CK Hutchison Holdings), Lowestoft (the easternmost point of the UK, the operations-and-maintenance base for the Southern North Sea offshore-wind sector), and the cathedral-and-brewing town of Bury St Edmunds (Greene King's spiritual home, alongside the long-established British Sugar refinery). Newmarket — the global capital of thoroughbred racing, headquarters of Tattersalls and the Jockey Club — completes a county economic structure that no other English geography replicates. HM Land Registry recorded 2,768 commercial-leaning transactions across the eight principal Suffolk towns in the rolling five-year window to Q1 2026, alongside 17,373 residential transactions, with Ipswich alone accounting for 1,101 (39.8%) of all commercial activity. Thirteen Acuitus auction lots have surfaced across the window — heavily concentrated in Newmarket (six) and Ipswich (four) — providing a clean public-yield read on the county's two most actively-traded centres.
Surrey is the most affluent commercial property county in the South East commuter belt: sixteen principal towns ringing the M25 and stretching south down the A3 to the Surrey Hills AONB, supporting a tightly-held office, mixed-use and residential-investment market. HM Land Registry records 2,298 commercial-leaning transactions across the county over the rolling 60 months to Q1 2026 alongside 18,858 residential transactions, with the Guildford and Woking corridor accounting for 912 of those commercial prints between them. The county is structurally office-heavy by South East standards — 248 office-coded transactions versus only 109 retail and seven explicitly industrial — reflecting the McLaren / BAE / Northrop / Lockheed defence-and-engineering footprint around Frimley and Camberley, the wealth-management and professional-services concentrations in Reigate, Epsom, Esher and Walton-on-Thames, and the two-university anchor at Surrey (Guildford) and Royal Holloway (Egham). Median commercial transaction prices run from £318,000 in Caterham up to £533,000 in Godstone, with Leatherhead, Cranleigh, Farnham and Dorking all printing P75s above £850,000. Nine Acuitus auction lots have been catalogued across the county over the rolling window, weighted towards offices and trade-counter / specialist retail. Surrey is one of the most heavily-banked secondary markets in England — but also one of the most planning-constrained, with the Surrey Hills AONB, the Metropolitan Green Belt and conservation overlays in Guildford, Farnham, Reigate and Dorking shaping every development conversation.
Tyne and Wear is the commercial property heartland of the North East, anchored on Newcastle upon Tyne — a Big Nine regional office market and the only English Core City between Leeds and Edinburgh — with HM Land Registry recording 7,237 commercial-leaning transactions across the metropolitan county's principal towns in the rolling five years to Q1 2026. Newcastle and Sunderland are near-twins by transaction volume (2,196 and 2,183 respectively) but trade at very different price levels; Gateshead's Quayside regeneration story sits between them, while a long tail of post-industrial and coastal towns adds genuine yield premium for income-focused buyers.
Wales is a separate jurisdiction from England, with its own devolved planning system, Land Transaction Tax in place of SDLT, and a distinct Welsh-language policy framework that touches signage, planning consultation and customer-facing service. Across 46 principal towns, HM Land Registry records 10,790 commercial-leaning transactions in the rolling 60 months to Q1 2026 alongside 58,098 owner-occupier residential transactions, with activity concentrated on the south Wales M4 corridor between Cardiff, Newport, Swansea and Bridgend, a secondary cluster around Wrexham–Deeside in the north-east, and a long tail of tourism-led coastal and rural markets.
Warwickshire is a structurally important Midlands county, sitting east of the West Midlands metropolitan core and threading the M40, M42, M6 and M69 corridors that carry much of the UK's central logistics traffic. HM Land Registry recorded 2,293 commercial-leaning transactions across the county's eight principal towns in the rolling five-year window to Q1 2026, alongside 15,595 corporate-acquired residential transactions registered under PPD Category B. Activity is led by Nuneaton (619 transactions), Rugby (542) and Leamington Spa (321), with Warwick (271) and Stratford-upon-Avon (261) close behind. Three Acuitus auction lots — one in Leamington Spa and two in Stratford-upon-Avon — give a direct read on Warwickshire's tightly bid prime high-street retail, including a Q1 2026 Stratford lot that sold at a 2.37% yield reflecting alternative-use upside. For commercial mortgage borrowers Warwickshire offers a rare combination: tourist-economy pricing in Stratford and Warwick, prime games-cluster office demand in Leamington Spa, deep automotive and engineering covenants around Rugby and Gaydon, and HS2-driven logistics expansion at the Birmingham Interchange and Coleshill fringe.
The West Midlands is the deepest commercial property market outside London and the South East, with HM Land Registry recording 13,049 commercial-leaning transactions across the county's seven metropolitan boroughs in the rolling five-year window to Q1 2026. Birmingham accounts for 5,723 of those transactions on its own — comparable in scale to a small county. The market is being shaped by HS2 Curzon Street, the Big Nine office cycle, an exceptionally active M6 / M42 / M5 logistics corridor, and the legacy of post-industrial regeneration across the Black Country. Twelve historical Acuitus auction lots across Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley and Walsall give a direct read on secondary yield clearing levels, with sold lots printing in the 8.6%–12.3% band. For commercial mortgage borrowers the county offers genuine lender breadth, clearer entry pricing than London, and one of the largest pools of secondary income-producing stock anywhere in the UK.
West Sussex is one of the more economically diversified commercial property markets on the South Coast — a county of roughly 870,000 people anchored by the Crawley/Gatwick airport-and-aerospace cluster on its northern edge, the Worthing/Bognor Regis/Littlehampton coastal belt to the south, the cathedral city of Chichester in the west, and a Mid Sussex commuter-belt economy around Horsham, Haywards Heath and Burgess Hill feeding the Brighton Main Line and the M23 into London. HM Land Registry recorded 2,629 commercial-leaning transactions across the thirteen principal towns over the rolling 60 months to Q1 2026, with Worthing (481), Chichester (467) and Crawley (400) generating roughly half of all activity. Median commercial transaction prices land in a £230,000–£440,000 band across the populated towns, with the Wealden and South Downs-fringe market villages of Petworth (P50 £1,585,000), Pulborough (£440,000) and Haywards Heath (£425,000) producing materially higher upper-quartile prints on the back of period stock and tightly-held supply. Four Acuitus auction lots have been matched to the county across the rolling window, with the cleanest hard-yield prints a Sold Multi-Let Industrial lot at Raleigh Court near Gatwick (Crawley, February 2026) at 6.72% net initial and a Sold Supermarket/Convenience lot in Aldwick, Bognor Regis (December 2025) at 5.82% net initial.
West Yorkshire is the financial and legal capital of the north of England outside Manchester, with HM Land Registry recording 11,339 commercial-leaning transactions across its principal towns in the rolling five years to Q1 2026. Activity is dominated by Leeds — a Big Nine regional office market and the centre of Europe's largest city centre regeneration scheme at South Bank — but the wider county adds genuine mid-market depth through Bradford, Wakefield, Huddersfield and Halifax, each registering several hundred to several thousand commercial-leaning trades over the same window.
Wiltshire is a 1.3 million-acre, low-density South West county whose commercial property market is unusually concentrated: HM Land Registry recorded 2,246 commercial-leaning transactions across the seven principal towns in the rolling five-year window to Q1 2026, of which Swindon alone accounts for 1,065 — close to half. The county pairs that single Tier 2 economic engine on the M4 with a network of historic market towns (Salisbury, Chippenham, Trowbridge, Devizes, Melksham, Warminster), the MoD's Salisbury Plain training estate, and an unusually heavy AONB overlay that frames investment economics in Marlborough and the Cotswolds and North Wessex Downs fringes. Pricing sits well below Berkshire and Hampshire equivalents — typical commercial transactions clear in a £220,000–£272,500 median band depending on town — but headline yields on cleanly-let stock are commensurately wider. Ten Acuitus auction lots have been matched to the county over the rolling window, with three sold prints anchoring net initial yields at 4.52% (a Swindon ground rent), 7.07% (a Trowbridge convenience-store let) and 8.18% (a Chippenham office), giving a usable yield map across asset types.
Worcestershire is a mid-sized West Midlands county where commercial property activity is anchored by Worcester (the cathedral city, university and county-town centre) and shaped by a manufacturing-and-logistics belt running north along the M5 and A38 from Bromsgrove and Redditch into the Birmingham metropolitan ring. HM Land Registry records 1,906 commercial-leaning transactions across the county's eight principal towns in the rolling 60-month window to Q1 2026, with 14,494 corporate-acquired residential transactions sitting underneath. Worcester (526 transactions), Kidderminster (370), Redditch (321) and Bromsgrove (281) deliver 78% of all county activity. Five Acuitus auction lots — three in Worcester, one each in Redditch and Bromsgrove — give a direct read on secondary high-street retail clearing levels, with sold lots running between £350,000 and £470,000 and a high-street Worcester print at 18.09% net initial yield. Lender appetite is broad across high-street, challenger and specialist debt, but borrowers need to underwrite Worcestershire-specific friction — Malvern Hills AONB and Cotswolds AONB planning, conservation-area scrutiny in Worcester, Droitwich and Evesham, and a development pipeline that competes directly with the deeper West Midlands metropolitan market on the Bromsgrove and Redditch fringe.