Offices Property Report Jan to Sep 2026

Key findings

• 189 office sales worth £115.9m were registered across England and Wales for completions between January and August 2026, at a median price of £335,000. Source: HM Land Registry Price Paid Data (property type Other).
• Office charges registered at Companies House across England and Wales were up 22.8% in H1 2026 against H1 2025 (506 vs 412). Source: Companies House charges register.
• High street banks were the most active classified lender group across England and Wales, behind 42.1% of office charges in Jan to Sep 2026. Source: Companies House charges register, CMB lender classification.
• 3,679 office planning applications were submitted across England and Wales between January and September 2026, with 89.3% of decided applications granted. Source: Local planning authority records via Landstack.
• The median office sale price was 7.3% above the £312,250 median for all commercial property in England and Wales. Source: HM Land Registry Price Paid Data.
• Offices ranked 3 of 10 sectors for H1 2026 growth in secured lending. Source: Companies House charges register.

Offices lending Jan to Sep 2026

Lenders registered 736 office charges across England and Wales between January and September 2026. The first half of the year is fully filed, and H1 2026 volumes were up 22.8% on H1 2025 (506 against 412). Charges created from July onwards are still inside the 21-day Companies House filing window at the time of writing, so Q3 2026 counts are provisional and will rise.

High street banks accounted for 42.1% of these charges and specialist and challenger banks for 19.8%. We could match 76.5% of charges to a named lender in our classification. The remainder sit with smaller banks, private lenders and family offices.

The most active named lenders across England and Wales from January to August 2026 were NatWest (76 charges), Handelsbanken (57) and Barclays (54). We compare January to August with the same months of 2025 because September 2026 filings are still arriving.

9.6% of the charges sat behind an existing charge on the same title. That is a useful read on how often owners are raising second-charge borrowing against office rather than refinancing the senior loan.

Offices sales and prices

HM Land Registry has registered 189 office sales across England and Wales with completion dates between January and August 2026, worth £115.9m in total. The median sale price was £335,000, with the middle half of deals between £216,750 and £585,000. 22 sales were at £1m or more.

Commercial registrations run several months behind completions, so these counts will keep rising as the backlog clears. For that reason we do not compare 2026 sales volumes with 2025. Prices are more robust: the median for Jan to Sep 2025 was £377,500 across 684 fully registered sales.

70.4% of the sales were freehold.

Offices planning pipeline

3,679 office planning applications were submitted across England and Wales between January and September 2026. Councils decided 3,365 with a granted or refused outcome in the period and granted 89.3% of them.

Quarterly submissions moved from 1,284 in Q3 2025 to 1,089 in Q3 2026. Applications are a forward signal for finance: a granted change of use or new unit usually needs a purchase, refinance or bridging loan within 12 months.

Offices against the wider commercial market

The median office sale price of £335,000 was 7.3% above the £312,250 median for all commercial property in England and Wales.

H1 2026 lending outpaced the national market: +22.8% here against +1.8% for all commercial property charges in England and Wales.

The planning approval rate of 89.3% compares with 86.9% for commercial applications nationally.

Regional breakdown

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Methodology and sources

Sales: HM Land Registry Price Paid Data, property type "Other", which covers non-residential sales in England and Wales. Rows that share a price and date are counted as one multi-title deal. Data registered to 25 August 2026.

Lending: the Companies House charges register (snapshot 1 October 2026). A charge counts as commercial when it is secured on a property postcode and either the borrower operates in a commercial sector (for example hotels, pubs, care, retail, manufacturing or logistics, by SIC code) or the postcode matches a commercial sale in 2025 or 2026. Lenders are grouped using our own classification.

Planning: local planning authority records collated by Landstack, filtered to applications whose description indicates a commercial use. Discharge of conditions, advertisement consents, householder works and conversions to residential are excluded. Records cover 253 councils; where a council's applications are not yet collated, its pipeline is understated.

Geography: regions follow postcode districts. County reports cover the ceremonial county including its unitary authorities. City reports cover the local authority area named on each page. Scotland and Northern Ireland are outside HM Land Registry coverage and are not included.

Sector identification: a sale or charge is included when its address or charge particulars name the use, or when the borrower's SIC code places it in the sector. Planning applications are included when the description names the use. Sections with too few records to be reliable are not shown.

Commercial mortgages are unregulated lending and fall outside the FCA's regulated mortgage perimeter. We do not hold FCA authorisation because the products we arrange are unregulated. This report is market information, not advice.