Christie & Co brought 22% more pubs and restaurants to market between January and August 2026 than in the same months of 2025, according to the property adviser. It was instructed to sell more than 360 properties and agreed more than 230 deals, up 12.5% on the year before, as operators contended with cost and staffing pressures.
The figures were published on 6 October 2026 and reported by Restaurant Online. They describe Christie & Co‘s own pipeline of instructions and completed deals, not the whole UK pub and restaurant market. Average completion values rose by about £105,000 for freehold sales and £87,000 for leasehold sales. The adviser links the rise in activity to resilient trading, motivated buyers and steady demand for quality hospitality assets, set against continuing cost pressures and staffing difficulties across the sector.
How pub and restaurant deals split by tenure
Pubs and restaurants trade on very different property terms. Freehold transactions made up 79% of pub deals, against 12% leasehold and 9% new leases. For restaurants the pattern reverses: new leases accounted for 44%, leaseholds for 37% and freeholds for 19%, the tenure most of the restaurant brands recruiting UK operators expect a franchisee to take on.
The split reflects how each format is usually held, with pubs more often bought outright and restaurants more often taken on lease. Both sets of percentages are drawn from the deals the adviser counted in the same eight months, so they can be read side by side.
What the adviser says about demand
Stephen Owens, managing director of Christie & Co, said buyer demand is expected to stay strongest for businesses that are “realistically priced” and able to show clear growth potential, as the market moves towards the end of 2026 and into 2027. He described a more dynamic property market, with operators working through significant cost pressures, staffing challenges and wider economic uncertainty.
Good to know
The numbers describe one adviser’s instructions and deals. They are private data rather than an official statistic, and the coverage does not say whether they cover England only or the whole UK.
Why tenure matters for operators
For multi-site operators, the freehold and leasehold balance shapes how a site can be sold, assigned or taken on. A sale through an agent is one of the routes by which a pub or restaurant changes hands, alongside company transfers, group acquisitions and franchise resales that never reach the open market, the last of them handled within the networks recruiting operators in the UK. The Christie figures therefore show how one adviser’s pipeline moved during eight months, not how many sites changed operator across the country.
What comes next
The adviser’s outlook points to demand concentrating on businesses it considers well positioned and realistically priced. The coverage gives no forecast for the number of instructions in 2027 and no breakdown by nation. Further market data on pub and restaurant transactions would come from the adviser’s next report and from trade bodies’ own trading surveys, which use different methods and are not directly comparable.
