By Sir Mark Boleat
STATISTICS Jersey’s House Price Index: December 2025 report, released on 12 February, offers far more than its title suggests.
As with all Statistics Jersey publications, it is objective, timely, and produced to high professional standards. Yet this particular report goes well beyond house prices, providing valuable insights into the wider housing market – especially the private rented sector. This article examines those findings, including new data on the make-up of the private rented sector and long-term trends in prices and rents.
The private rented sector
Debate about the private rented sector is a familiar feature of housing policy. Some argue that private landlords should have no role at all; others accept the need for a private rented sector but support strong regulation, arguing that there is an imbalance of power between landlords and tenants. As with many contentious issues, objective data is essential – but often lacking.
Jersey’s recent introduction of a licensing (or more accurately, registration) scheme for private rental properties should have filled that gap. Registration schemes typically generate rich datasets that help policymakers and others with an interest to understand the market and therefore facilitate an efficient policy-making process. It was therefore reasonable to expect the publication of comprehensive data showing the breakdown of the rented sector by social or private landlord, with private landlords being categorised by the number of properties owned. There should also have been an analysis by parish. However, the first annual report on the operation of the licensing scheme included only one meaningful statistic: 18,044 registered properties.
A Freedom of Information request seeking a breakdown of landlords by the number of properties they own was declined on the grounds that the information was “not held in an extractable format” and would require manipulation to create new data. The response added that the law did not require any such manipulation. This was odd as there is little point in having a registration scheme that does not produce any data.
Fortunately, Statistics Jersey has now been able to analyse the underlying records. The latest report includes a detailed breakdown of private landlords by portfolio size – a significant step forward.
Who owns Jersey’s private rental homes?
The data shows:
- 4,131 landlords (71%) own just one property, accounting for 36% of all privately rented units.
- 1,412 landlords (24%) own between two and five properties, representing 34% of the stock.
- Only eight landlords own 50 or more properties, together holding 534 units, or 5% of the market.
Small landlords own a larger share of Jersey’s rental stock than in England. The 2024 English Private Landlord Survey found that 51% of units were held by landlords with one to four properties, compared with roughly 60% in Jersey.
Small landlords fall into several categories:
- Long-term investors seeking steady income.
- Owners renting out inherited or future family-use properties.
- People unable to sell in the current market.
- Owners temporarily living elsewhere for work or family reasons.
The sector is also dynamic. In 2025, nearly 1,000 new rental agreements were signed. 104 rental properties were purchased and 164 sold, resulting in a net reduction of 64 units. Sales increased as the year progressed, and it remains to be seen whether this trend will be maintained.
In the English survey 44% of landlords reported that their last tenancy ended because the tenant gave notice at the end of their periodic tenancy. Around a quarter (26%) said the tenant came to the end of their tenancy period and decided not to renew and 13% reported having a tenant leave before the end of their tenancy. Eight per cent of landlords said they asked the tenant to leave, 6% evicted the tenant and 4% chose not to renew the tenancy.
The figures for Jersey are probably similar. For many people renting privately meets a short-term need that cannot be met by buying a property, with the many costs that that entails, or by the social rented sector.
Housing market activity
The owner-occupier market has been subdued in recent years. The low point came in the first quarter of 2024, when only 114 transactions were recorded. Activity has since improved: 971 sales took place in 2025, up from 712 in 2024.
House prices: A significant correction
Media coverage often focuses on short-term price movements, such as the 1% reduction in prices between 2024 and 2025. However, the more important story is the scale of the correction since prices peaked.
- House prices reached their highest level in Q3 2022.
- Since then, average prices have fallen 14.7%.
- With inflation at 16.5% over the same period, the real terms fall is around 25%.
The declines vary by property type. One-bedroom flats and two-bedroom houses have seen drops of more than 20%, while two-bedroom flats have fallen by just over 5%. In real terms, the reductions range from 21% to 31%.
Prices fell for predictable reasons. They had become unsustainably high, and rising interest rates sharply reduced demand.
Although Jersey remains an expensive place to buy, the combination of falling real prices and easing mortgage rates has improved affordability. Statistics Jersey’s affordability index illustrates this shift.
Housing was most affordable in 2013, when the index stood at 87.7. By 2023 it had fallen to 54.4, a 38% deterioration. By 2025, rising earnings and falling prices had pushed the index back up to 69.4. The Fiscal Policy Panel is forecasting no change in house prices in 2026 and incomes increasing by 4%. Combined with further falls in interest rates this means that affordability will improve further in the current year.
The relationship between house prices and rents
The relationship between house prices and rents is often debated, but the logic is straightforward: both are ways of paying for the same underlying asset. As a rule of thumb, annual rent tends to equal about 5% of a property’s capital value. Market forces keep the two broadly aligned over time. Statistics have been available since 2002.
Since then:
- The house price index has risen 124%.
- The rental index has risen 115%.
In the short term, rents and house prices do move at different speeds. Rents are “stickier” than house prices. A chart of average rents will be somewhat smoother than one for average house prices. When house prices rise quickly rents tend to rise more slowly and when house prices fall rents tend to fall more slowly. In the period of rising housing costs between the third quarters of 2020 and 2023 house prices increased on average by 34% and rents by 16%.
Conversely, as house prices have fallen rents have fallen more slowly. Since the third quarter of 2022 house prices have fallen on average by 14% and rents by 6%.
The fundamental issue: Supply
Ultimately, Jersey’s high housing costs stem from a simple imbalance: demand has risen while planning policies have restricted supply. This has pushed both prices and rents far above where they would otherwise be.
Low interest rates amplified the problem in recent years, fuelling rapid price growth. The subsequent correction – driven largely by higher interest rates – was inevitable. While the adjustment is not yet complete, affordability has improved significantly and is likely to continue improving through 2026.
Sir Mark Boleat has held a number of leadership positions in companies, public bodies and charities in Jersey and in the UK. He is Senior Adviser to the Policy Centre Jersey.
