CHAPS Property Payments Offer a Near Real-Time Read on UK Housing Activity

CHAPS payment records can give a near real-time view of UK property completions. Since May 2025, participants in the high-value payment system have had to provide purpose codes for property transactions. The most common code, PCOM, identifies a property completion payment. Comparing those payments with existing housing transaction data suggests PCOM volumes can track market activity closely, with less delay than monthly releases.

The change builds on CHAPS’s adoption of the ISO 20022 payment standard in June 2023. Purpose codes make it possible to identify property-related payments directly, replacing earlier estimates that inferred housing activity from payment values. That distinction matters: a direct transaction marker can include a wider range of payment amounts while filtering out payments unrelated to property.

Close alignment with monthly transaction data

Two UK data series offer useful comparisons, though they measure different things. HMRC reports property transactions worth £40,000 or more, using Stamp Duty Land Tax returns submitted after completion. Its figures cover residential and non-residential property. The monthly data arrives with a one-month delay, and the latest month and two preceding months are provisional. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) focuses on completed and registered residential property transactions, with a publication lag of three months.

From May 2025 through August 2026, PCOM was used 1.6 million times. That is equivalent to more than 99% of the residential transactions reported by HMRC during the same period. Monthly PCOM volumes and HMRC residential transactions had a mean absolute percentage difference of 2.8% and a Pearson correlation of 0.96. Against HMRC’s combined residential and non-residential series, the corresponding figures were 9.9% and 0.96.

The high correlation points to a close relationship in month-to-month movements. The difference in percentage error between the comparisons also fits the measures’ different coverage: PCOM can include property-related transactions beyond residential purchases alone. Neither series is a perfect count of the other. CHAPS may capture transactions below £40,000 or payments not represented in tax returns. HMRC may include purchases settled through other payment systems, funded from accounts outside the UK, or assigned a different property-related code.

The data periods also differ at the latest observation: HMRC figures extend through August 2026, including provisional data from June, while PCOM data extends through September 2026. The additional month gives PCOM a timeliness advantage. It may help reveal a change in activity as it develops, though that signal still reflects payments made through CHAPS and should be read alongside the coverage differences.

The chart compares monthly CHAPS PCOM volumes with HMRC transaction counts, showing residential transactions separately from the combined residential and non-residential total. HMRC observations are available through August 2026; CHAPS observations run through September. The chart’s vertical scale is in thousands of transactions.

Completion timing shows clear seasonal patterns

The period from May 2025 to September 2026 is not yet long enough to build a seasonally adjusted PCOM series. Even so, transaction timestamps show several familiar rhythms in when completions take place.

• Average daily PCOM volumes over Christmas and New Year were 57% lower than during the rest of the year, consistent with activity being brought forward to finish before the holidays.
• Fridays accounted for 36% of transactions, pointing to a concentration of completions before the weekend.
• More than half of payments, 56%, settled before midday, making morning the busiest part of the day.

These patterns make the timestamps useful beyond monthly totals. They show when housing payments reach settlement, which can help distinguish a shift in the pace or timing of activity from a change in the broader monthly level. The seasonal observations are descriptive, however; without enough history for adjustment, they do not establish how much of a particular month’s movement is unusual.

Payment values are not house prices

PCOM also offers a more complete view of payment values than earlier proxies based on selected amounts. In the 12 months to July 2026, more than two-thirds of PCOM payments by volume fell between £100,000 and £500,000. Those payments represented 50% of total value settled. At the other end of the distribution, the highest-value 1% of payments made up more than 17% of PCOM value.

That concentration helps explain why value-based estimates can miss part of the market: excluding or underweighting high-value payments can distort aggregate activity. But payment values should not be treated as an index of house prices. Over the same 12 months, ONS reported an average UK house price of £273,000, compared with an average PCOM payment value of £344,000. The figures cover different things and are not directly comparable.

The ONS figure comes from the UK House Price Index, which measures residential property and adjusts for changes in the mix of properties sold. PCOM records the value of completion payments across a broader set of property transactions, so its average is more affected by high-value payments. CHAPS data also lacks property-level details needed to account for differences in property characteristics. As a result, it can track transaction activity and payment patterns, but cannot replicate price measures produced by ONS, Nationwide or Lloyds.

What the new series adds

The earlier CHAPS approach compared payment values with housing activity. That work found broad alignment with HMRC year-on-year movements from 2007 to 2016, but depended on assumptions because detailed purpose information was unavailable. The relationship weakened from 2023, while the proxy could include non-housing payments and miss high-value transactions. PCOM provides a more direct way to identify the relevant payments.

The records used in the analysis include settlement dates, values and purpose codes, not personal information. Their detail may also help payment operators monitor intraday flows and operational demands. A peak in PCOM volumes at the end of March 2025 coincided with changes to Stamp Duty Land Tax thresholds, an example of how timely payment data can register a change in completion activity. That observation describes timing and volume; it does not, by itself, explain the cause of the peak.

A next step could be to compare PCOM with mortgage-related measures, including product sales data, to add context about financing alongside completed payments. For now, the clearest use is as a timely gauge of transaction activity. Its monthly alignment with HMRC is strong, while its broader coverage and payment-value distribution set limits on what it can say about residential prices.