The BIG 2026 Clicky Property Report

Property edition, November 2026: Buyers are asking harder questions

UK property searches did not fall in 2026; they changed shape. Total searches for "houses for sale" held at 165,000 a month, but the questions around them moved sharply towards mortgages, new builds, renting rules and running costs. At the same time, the places people ask those questions are moving into AI tools and social feeds.

We pulled Semrush UK search data for over 100 property keywords and set it against the latest market data from Rightmove, the Bank of England, the ONS and the trade press. Here is what we found:

• Mortgage anxiety is back. Searches for "mortgage rates" hit around 303,000 in June 2026, more than 3 times the level a year earlier, as 2-year fixed rates climbed from 4.25% in February to 5.55% in October.
• New builds had their moment. "New build homes" searches averaged 5 times last year's level, peaking at around 34,000 a month over the winter, before cooling in May.
• Policy drives search. Searches for the Renters' Rights Act tripled, with spikes at Royal Assent in October 2025 and again before Section 21 ended on 1 May 2026.
• The portals' rivals lost ground. OnTheMarket fell 19%, Purplebricks 33% and SpareRoom 33%, while Rightmove held at around 11.1 million searches a month.
• Property search has entered AI. Rightmove launched an AI search beta built with Google's Gemini and became the first UK portal inside ChatGPT in March 2026.

Join us on 26 November: we are taking these findings further at Property Marketing 2027, a free morning event at The Hive in Manchester. Reserve your free seat.

How we measured it

As in the travel edition, we compared Semrush's UK database for 2 like-for-like periods: August 2024 to July 2025, and August 2025 to July 2026 (the latest full month available). Volumes are Semrush's average monthly UK Google searches, and monthly figures are estimated from its 12-month trend data.

Semrush groups volumes into bands, so small moves can show as a jump of around 18 to 22%. And these are searches, not transactions: they show what people are thinking about, which usually leads enquiries and sales by weeks or months.

How property search changed in 2026

The headline numbers held steady while the detail underneath moved a long way. "Houses for sale" held at 165,000 searches a month and "houses to rent" at 40,500, but searches around new builds, first-time buying and offices surged, while stamp duty, local agents and the portals' smaller rivals fell.

The winners

• New builds. "New build homes" rose 5-fold, the biggest jump in our data. We look at this in detail below.
• First-time buyers and remortgagers. "First time buyer mortgage" and "remortgage" both rose by around half, and "lifetime isa" by 22%, as buyers worked out what they could afford.
• Offices are back. "Serviced offices" nearly tripled and "office space to rent" more than doubled, with "commercial property for sale" up 22%.
• Valuations. "House valuation" rose 23%, a sign that more owners are testing the market, in line with Rightmove's report of the highest stock levels for the time of year since 2014.

The losers

• Stamp duty. "Stamp duty" fell 33% and "stamp duty calculator" 18%. The year before was inflated by the April 2025 threshold changes, when "stamp duty changes" alone averaged 33,100 searches a month. It is now down to 5,400.
• Local agents and portal rivals. "Estate agents near me" and Purplebricks both fell 33%, OnTheMarket 19% and SpareRoom 33%. Rightmove held at around 11.1 million searches a month and Zoopla at 1.8 million: buyers are going straight to the biggest portals.
• Investors and students. "Buy to let mortgage" fell 18% and "student accommodation" 33%.
• Mortgage rates, on average. Across the year "mortgage rates" was down 19%, but that hides a sharp spike from March 2026, covered next.

Rates and rules: the moments that moved property search

In 2026, property search was driven by news as much as by the seasons. Each big policy or rate moment produced a spike that agents, developers and lenders could have planned content around.

Mortgage rates

Mortgage rate searches were running below the previous year until February. After the Middle East conflict began on 28 February 2026, they jumped to around 163,000 a month in March and April, then to around 303,000 in June. The average 2-year fixed rate rose from 4.25% in February to 5.55% in October, according to Rightmove's tracker (WRE News). Searches for "remortgage" rose 49% across the year as homeowners coming off cheaper fixes looked for options.

Renters' Rights and Section 21

The Renters' Rights Act received Royal Assent on 27 October 2025, and Section 21 "no-fault" evictions ended on 1 May 2026 (Generation Rent). Combined searches for the bill and the act peaked at around 131,000 in October 2025, then climbed again to around 96,000 in April 2026 as the Section 21 deadline approached. Searches for "landlord" rose 22% across the year, and "buy to let mortgage" fell 18%.

Stamp duty

The April 2025 stamp duty changes drove a rush of searches in early 2025. With no change this year, "stamp duty" searches fell 33% to 60,500 a month. Any future change to thresholds would trigger the same rush again, so it is worth having content ready.

New builds and first-time buyers

New builds were the biggest growth story in the data. "New build homes", "new homes" and "new build homes near me" each averaged 22,200 searches a month, up from 4,400 to 5,400 a year earlier. Monthly searches for "new build homes" ran at around 27,000 to 34,000 from October 2025 to April 2026, then cooled to around 9,800 a month from May.

That demand is chasing a shrinking supply. Rightmove data shows the number of new-build developments coming to market is at its lowest since early 2017 (Morningstar / Alliance News).

First-time buyers were the other riser:

The government's new Your First Home scheme should add fuel in 2027. It offers first-time buyers a 20% equity loan on modest new-build homes with a 2.5% deposit, with pre-registration due to open by the end of 2026 (ITV News). Developers who join will pay a fee linked to property values.

Housebuilder brand searches were mixed. Taylor Wimpey (40,500) and Barratt Homes (18,100) held steady, Bellway rose 22% and Countryside 22%, while Persimmon fell 18% and Redrow 33%.

Manchester and the North West

The North West is outperforming the country, and Manchester search demand shows it. House prices in the region rose 4.4% in the year to July 2026, around 3 times the UK rate of 1.4%. Private rents rose 5.8%, joint highest in England, and homes in the North West take an average of 57 days to find a buyer, against 64 nationally (Farrell Heyworth, citing ONS, Land Registry and Rightmove).

Manchester buyers searched more for houses and new builds and less for flats, the opposite of the national trend, where "flats for sale" rose 49%. For developers and agents in the region, demand is there; the challenge is being found by buyers who are now asking more specific questions.

AI search and the long question: what it means for property websites

Buyers are no longer typing "3 bed house Stockport". They are describing the life they want. Google's own UK figures show searches of 8 words or more grew 14% year on year in the first half of 2026 and now make up 32% of all UK searches, while 1-word searches fell 3% (we covered Google's numbers here).

The portals have noticed. In 2026 Rightmove launched a conversational search beta built with Google's Gemini, where buyers ask for things like homes with good commuter links and green space, or solar panels near a station (Estate Agent Today). Rightmove's chief technology officer said it responds to growing interest in description-based search. In March 2026 Rightmove also became the first UK property portal to launch an app inside ChatGPT (Rightmove).

The search data points the same way. Short, generic terms were flat or falling while the questions behind a move grew:

When a buyer asks an AI tool a question like that, it answers from the content it can find and trust. A listing with 3 lines of copy and a development page with nothing but a gallery give it nothing to quote.

What this means for property websites

• Write listings and development pages for description-based search. Cover what AI tools are asked about: commute times, schools, green space, EPC rating, running costs, service charges, parking and broadband.
• Answer the money questions on your own site. Deposits, schemes such as Your First Home and shared ownership, stamp duty and mortgage affordability are what buyers are searching for. Clear, up-to-date answers win both Google and AI citations.
• Build local area guides with real expertise. Named authors, first-hand local knowledge and data give search engines and AI tools a reason to trust you over a generic page.
• Use structured data and clean feeds. Schema markup for listings, FAQs and reviews, plus detailed portal feeds, help your homes show up in conversational search on and off the portals.
• Make the site fast and simple to act on. Buyers who arrive from an AI answer have already done their research. Get them to a viewing, valuation or brochure in as few steps as possible.

Meta Andromeda: why your creative is now your targeting

While buyers move into AI search, the way Meta chooses which property ads they see has also changed. Andromeda is Meta's ad retrieval system: before any ad is ranked, it narrows tens of millions of possible ads down to a few thousand relevant candidates for each person (Admetrics). Meta reports a 10,000 times increase in model capacity and an 8% improvement in ad quality on selected segments.

The practical effect is that Meta now works out who an ad is for largely from the ad itself. Tight audience targeting matters less; the range and quality of creative you give it matters more. One ad, shown in 5 slightly different crops, now counts as 1 idea, not 5.

For property marketers, that means:

• Build creative around different buyers, not one campaign. First-time buyers, families moving up, downsizers and investors want different things. Give each a distinct angle: affordability and schemes, space and schools, low maintenance, yields.
• Vary the format, not just the copy. Short vertical video walkthroughs, floorplan carousels, lifestyle and local area content, and plain offer statics each reach different people.
• Keep campaign structures simple. Fewer, broader ad sets let the system learn faster. Add new creative concepts in regular batches rather than constantly editing live ads.
• Feed back what a good lead looks like. Send qualified leads and viewings from your CRM back to Meta through the Conversions API, so it learns to find buyers who book viewings, not just people who fill in forms.

What 2027 is likely to look like

2027 looks set to be a buyer's market, where the brands that answer buyers' questions best will win the enquiries. Rightmove's October 2026 figures show asking prices at £371,015, 0.1% below a year earlier, with sales agreed down 8%, buyer enquiries down 9% and the most homes for sale at this point in the year since 2014 (WRE News, reporting Rightmove).

Borrowing costs are the swing factor. The Bank of England held the base rate at 3.75% on 17 September 2026, but 3 of its 9 members voted for a rise and markets are pricing in 4 rises by June 2027, taking it to 4.75% (Money to the Masses).

Based on the search data and research, we expect 2027 to bring:

1. More money questions, earlier. With rates likely to rise, searches for mortgage rates, deposits and affordability will keep growing, and buyers will research for longer before they enquire.
2. A new-build push from Your First Home. Pre-registration opens by the end of 2026, and developers who join will need landing pages, eligibility content and lead nurture ready for the first wave of interest.
3. More stock, more competition. With stock at its highest for the time of year since 2014, listings that are not found and not convincing will sit longer.
4. AI search going mainstream. Rightmove's Gemini search and ChatGPT app are early signs. More buyers will start their search in a conversation, not a filter.
5. The North West staying ahead. Faster price and rent growth, and quicker sales than the national average, make the region one of the more resilient markets in 2027.

What property marketers should do now

1. Map the questions your buyers ask and build pages that answer them in full, from deposits and schemes to commute times and running costs.
2. Set up for SEO and GEO together, so your pages rank in Google and are the source AI tools quote.
3. Rebuild Meta creative for Andromeda, with distinct concepts for each buyer type and clean CRM data flowing back.
4. Get ready for Your First Home if you build or sell new homes: eligibility pages, calculators and a pre-registration journey.
5. Track policy moments. Renters' Rights, stamp duty and rate decisions all drove clear search spikes in 2026. Content published before those dates captures the demand.

Join us on 26 November: Property Marketing 2027

This report is the starting point for our next property event, where we will take these findings further and turn them into a plan for 2027.

Property Marketing 2027: Search, Andromeda and the Modern Buyer Journey

• When: Thursday 26 November 2026, 10:00 to 11:30, followed by networking
• Where: The Hive, 47 Lever Street, Manchester M1 1FN
• Cost: Free, in person

Agenda

Who it is for: marketing directors and heads of digital in property, estate agents and developers, commercial directors and CEOs, and anyone responsible for digital strategy in property, construction or related fields.

You will leave with a clear picture of how property buyers search today, practical ways to improve your website, an understanding of how AI search and Meta Andromeda affect your visibility, and new connections across the North West property industry.

Places are filling fast. Reserve your free seat.

Sources

• Semrush UK keyword database, over 100 property keywords, August 2024 to July 2026
• Google UK search query length data, H1 2026, from Google's Mastering LeadGen in the AI Era session
• WRE News: UK house prices, Rightmove October 2026
• Money to the Masses: Bank of England holds rates at 3.75%
• Generation Rent: Section 21 abolition date
• ITV News: Your First Home scheme
• Morningstar / Alliance News: new-build developments near decade low
• Farrell Heyworth: UK housing market autumn 2026, North West outlook
• Estate Agent Today: Rightmove launches AI-powered property search
• Rightmove: first UK property portal to launch in ChatGPT
• Admetrics: how Meta's Andromeda works
• Clicky event: Property Marketing 2027