Attleborough and the Flat Problem: Is The National Shift Coming Closer to Home?
Flats have long been a popular first step onto the property ladder, but across the UK the market is changing. In many areas, flats are taking longer to sell and demand is shifting towards houses. Is Attleborough seeing the same trend, or is the local market telling a different story? Click to learn more...
For decades, the flat was the natural starting point for many first-time home buyers. The first rung of the ladder. The affordable option. The stepping stone to something bigger. For landlords, it was a dependable investment. For first-time buyers, it was often the only way in.
That logic has not disappeared, yet it is starting to crack. Across the UK, there is a growing disconnect between flats and the rest of the housing market. It is not dramatic enough to make daily headlines, yet it is persistent enough to matter. More flats are coming onto the market, fewer are being bought by buyers, and the gap between supply and demand is proving stubbornly difficult to close.
Therefore, I will look at what is happening nationally first, then deep dive into local data to see if this is being mirrored in Attleborough.
The imbalance between flats for sale and flats sold stc in 2026
Start with the simplest measure. What is for sale, and what is selling.
Today, UK flats account for 22% of all homes built in the UK.
Of the 715,479 UK homes on the market on the 1st of April 2026, 27% of them were flats (193,072). Yet when you look at the 110,963 UK home sales agreed in March 2026, just 18.1% of them were flats (20,068). That gap is the story.
Of the UK houses that come to market, 62% of them go on to sell and the homeowner moves (i.e. exchange and complete), yet for flats, that figure drops to 45%. That is a large gap.
Then there is time.
Houses take, on average, 71 days to find a buyer. Flats take closer to 88 days. That gap in time between house and flat is not as stark as whether it will sell or not, yet it all adds fuel to the story.
It is easy to dismiss that as a moment in time. A blip. A reflection of current conditions. It is not. Let us look back over the last few years.
Flats vs Houses in post-pandemic property boom
Wind the clock back to 2021, when the property market was running at full tilt in the post pandemic race for space. Demand for homes surged as the number of homes for sale fell sharply. Buyers were competing for almost everything that came to market. Except, not quite everything. Looking at the supply side of the equation, between January and December 2021, the total number of homes available for sale dropped by 34.6% (539k for sale in Jan 2021 to 352k in Dec 2021) as more homes were selling compared to what was coming onto the market. That was the great supply squeeze felt across the country. Yet flats, told a different story. Over the same period, their numbers only fell by just 22%.
In other words, even in the strongest seller’s market in a generation, flats were not being bought at the same rate as houses. What makes this more than a passing trend is its consistency.
Back in 2021, flats accounted for over a third of available homes for sale (33.5%), yet less than a fifth of sales (19.8%). That is a gap of nearly 15 percentage points. Today, the gap has narrowed, but only slightly. The most recent stats for March 2026 showed 27% of UK homes for sale were flats, yet only 18.1% of the sales agreed were flats (meaning the gap sits at around 9%, yet the proportional difference is around the same).
THE STATS
Stats from the portals, Land Registry, TwentyEA & Denton House Research
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