UK Estate Agency Insolvency Statistics

Insolvencies in SIC 683 are falling clearly. There were 101 cases in the first half of 2026, compared with 131 in the first half of 2025, a decline of 22.9%.

The rolling 12-month total fell at almost the same rate, from 261 to 203, down 22.2%. These are Company Debt calculations from Insolvency Service supplementary industry Table A1b data.

The agreement between the two measures matters. A single monthly fall can reflect timing or reporting noise, but a lower half-year total and a lower rolling total together give much stronger evidence that insolvencies are genuinely easing.

June itself recorded 15 cases, three more than May’s 12 but six fewer than June 2025’s 21. That monthly increase does not overturn the wider downward movement.

Annual insolvencies in SIC 683 were broadly stable before the pandemic, ranging from 145 to 165 between 2016 and 2019.

Recorded cases then fell to a joint series low of 125 in both 2020 and 2021, when government support and creditor restrictions distorted the figures.

The total rose sharply to 230 in 2022 after temporary protections ended, then reached a series peak of 272 in 2024. Insolvencies fell 14.3% to 233 in 2025.

The fall in 2025 was meaningful, but the total remained 48.4% above the 2019 figure of 157. The first-half and rolling data for 2026 indicate the decline has continued into this year.

In the estate agency and property-management cases we see, distress does not follow one cash-flow pattern. A sales agency can carry payroll, portal fees and branch costs for weeks while commission sits in an uncertain completion pipeline.

A letting or property-management business has more recurring revenue, but it still has to fund staffing, compliance, contractor administration and client-account controls.

By the time advice is sought, the warning sign is often not simply a lack of instructions. Completions may keep slipping, tax balances may be ageing, or short-term borrowing may be quietly covering routine costs.

Client money must remain separate and should never be treated as working capital.

The useful weekly test is unrestricted cash after committed payroll, PAYE, VAT, rent, portal subscriptions, software and supplier costs. Instructions, gross commission and units under management are activity measures; they do not show whether the company can meet its liabilities as they fall due.

Creditors’ voluntary liquidations remained the dominant procedure, accounting for 72 of the 101 SIC 683 insolvencies recorded in the first half of 2026, 71.3% of the total.

The overall decline was driven principally by fewer CVLs, which fell by 31 cases, from 103 to 72. This reduction was larger than the total 30-case fall because four additional administrations and one CVA partly offset it. Compulsory liquidations also fell, from 26 to 22.

Administrations increased from two to six, but the base is too small to support a claim of a broad administration trend. The clearer conclusion: voluntary closures fell materially while a small number of rescue or sale processes moved the other way.

Compulsory liquidations are creditor-driven and can follow petitions by HMRC, landlords, lenders or other unpaid creditors; the statistics do not identify the petitioning creditor within this sector table.

Real estate insolvencies rose sharply in the first half of 2026, but the increase was not spread across the division. SIC 681, which covers companies buying and selling their own property, rose from 116 to 363 cases, an increase of 247 cases, or 212.9%.

By contrast, SIC 682 fell 9.9% and SIC 683, covered on this page, fell 22.9%. The 2026 increase across real estate overall was therefore more than fully accounted for by SIC 681, while the other two groups improved.

SIC 683’s share of real estate insolvencies nearly halved, from 32.9% in the first half of 2025 to 16.8% in the first half of 2026. This is the clearest evidence that the connected real estate administrations reported during 2026 should not be presented as an estate-agency failure wave.

The England and Wales figures come from the Insolvency Service’s Company Insolvency Statistics June 2026 release and its supplementary industry tables. SIC 683 totals are taken from Table A1b; procedure-level figures are taken from Tables A2 to A6.

All SIC 683 figures shown on this page are not seasonally adjusted, and the latest month is provisional and can be revised.

The Insolvency Service notes the latest month can contain more compulsory liquidations with an unknown SIC code, since industry information is sometimes captured later, so recent industry totals may be revised as those cases are classified.

Industry is assigned using the first recorded SIC code on the Companies House register. SIC codes are self-reported and may not describe every activity a company carries on. The release uses UK SIC 2007.

These figures count formal company insolvency procedures. They exclude members’ voluntary liquidations, dissolutions, strike-offs and businesses that stop trading without entering a formal insolvency procedure.

The figures are company counts, not branch, office or property counts. One insolvent legal entity may operate several branches, brands or managed portfolios. They are volumes, not a sector-wide failure rate, because they are not divided by a matching number of active SIC 683 companies.

A registered office is not a reliable guide to where a company actually trades. It may be an accountant’s office, an insolvency practitioner’s address, a head office or a virtual office.

Procedure-level industry data is published quarterly, alongside the January, April, July and October headline releases. This page’s procedure section is updated on that schedule.

A falling sector total does not make an individual cash-flow problem less urgent. Directors should act if the company cannot meet payroll, PAYE, VAT, rent, portal and software charges, contractor invoices or other liabilities as they fall due.

Start by separating the underlying trading position from overdue debt. For a sales agency, test expected completion income against committed weekly costs, allowing for delays or fall-throughs.

For a letting or management business, assess recurring unrestricted fee income separately from client money and against the full cost of servicing the portfolio.

Early advice leaves more scope to approach HMRC or other creditors, reduce loss-making overheads, and agree an HMRC Time to Pay arrangement or assess whether a Company Voluntary Arrangement, administration or an orderly creditors’ voluntary liquidation is appropriate.

Once a winding-up petition is advertised, the bank account is usually frozen within days and the available options narrow to what is left rather than what you would choose. If you want to talk it through first, our insolvency advice for directors is the place to start.