19/05/2026
Is 2026 actually the year to buy?
I'll be honest with you. Last year was one of the hardest years in the removals industry in living memory. Forty years of trading, and 2025 felt like walking through mud. We saw smaller firms go under. We nearly felt it ourselves. When your business moves people, you feel the housing market in your bones — and last year, it was telling us something wasn't right.
So where does that leave 2026?
I bought my first home in 2018 at 35. Self-employed, which meant twice the paperwork, twice the hoops, twice the frustration — even though my mortgage was going to cost me less every month than the rent I was already paying. The system made me feel like I was asking for something I hadn't earned. But when we finally got the keys, walked through that door and knew it was ours — truly ours — that feeling is something I've never forgotten.
I've spent twenty years moving people. First time buyers walking into a home that belongs to them for the first time. Kids realising they're getting their own bedroom. Families upgrading into space they've worked years for. I've also moved people the other way — couples in their seventies leaving a family home of thirty, forty years. The marks on the wall where they measured the kids every birthday. The garden where they learned to ride a bike. That kind of grief is real.
You don't see that depth of feeling when you move someone into a rental. The memories are lighter. Because deep down, it was never truly theirs.
Ownership means something. It always has.
So is 2026 the year to buy? My honest answer is — maybe not quite yet, but we're heading there. Wages are starting to outpace house prices. Mortgage rates are more manageable than they were two years ago. And with the new Renters' Rights Act potentially nudging some landlords to sell up, we may see more properties come onto the market — which could be a genuine opportunity for first time buyers.
But I'll also be straight with you. The world feels unpredictable. Wars, global uncertainty, economic pressures nobody saw coming. I run a business, I pay wages, I see the pinch from both sides — the customers who want a great service but are feeling the squeeze, and the team who are working hard but finding everything more expensive. It's a difficult place to be standing in the middle of all that.
What I will say is this — it feels like we've turned a corner. Slowly. Quietly. But a corner nonetheless.
If the trajectory holds, if nothing blindsides us again, late 2026 and into 2027 might be the moment people look back on and say — that was the time to move.
Fingers crossed. And watch this space.
— Jay Newton, Director, Painless Removals
