The UK Property Talent Paradox: Very High Demand, a Shrinking Pool 

The LinkedIn Talent Insights data referenced in the deverellsmith 2026 Real Estate Salary Guide and Trends Report highlights the current hiring landscape across the sector. There are 122,248 real estate professionals in the UK, and that number is shrinking. Year-on-year growth is running at -0.40% compared to the demand level which is marked on the platform as ‘very high’. 

More movers than job posts 

8,964 UK property professionals changed jobs in the period covered by the data. There were only 4,529 active job posts. It means roughly half of all hiring activity is happening through networks and direct approaches, not job adverts. If your strategy relies on inbound applications, you're missing a large part of the market. 

London is losing senior talent 

London recorded a net loss of 132 real estate professionals, 110 of them at senior level. That's experience and relationships leaving the market, not being replaced at the same rate. 

Some of it is going overseas. The UAE tops the global movement table with a net loss of 358 professionals (153 senior), which is likely due to the draw of tax-free packages and fast-moving development pipelines. Regionally within the UK, Manchester, Oxford, Leeds and Bristol are all holding steady or growing, which is worth considering if your next hire doesn't need to be London-based. 

The structural problem underneath the numbers 

The property talent crunch doesn't exist in isolation. It sits inside a broader UK labour market that has been under sustained pressure since the pandemic. The construction sector alone has seen the number of people employed fall by over 10% since the pandemic, with an ageing workforce making that worse. Across the two decades to 2025, the UK construction workforce shrank by more than 300,000 workers. That structural contraction is the backdrop against which property businesses are now trying to hire. 

The regulatory environment is compounding the problem. 

The Building Safety Act has introduced a layer of compliance obligations that most organisations weren't structurally built to absorb. Gateway 2 and 3 documentation, duty holder accountability, and the requirements around higher-risk buildings have created overnight demand for a category of specialists, building safety managers, compliance leads and fire safety specialists, that the market has simply not had time to produce at scale.  

The consequence for hiring managers is a smaller pool of people who can operate in these roles, and it is being chased by a growing number of organisations that need them embedded in-house rather than brought in on a consultancy basis. 

The pipeline isn't refilling quickly enough 

The wider workforce picture doesn't suggest relief is coming soon. The CITB estimates the UK needs nearly 48,000 extra construction workers per year through to 2029, close to 300,000 additional workers over the next five years. The government's own plan to train 60,000 specialist construction workers by 2029 falls far short of that figure. Meanwhile, fewer than 19% of construction workers are currently under 25, while 35% are over 50, meaning around 750,000 workers are expected to retire by 2036.

What this means in practice 

The businesses I see hiring effectively right now tend to have a few things in common. They move quickly once they've found the right candidate. They've benchmarked their salaries properly, not against what they paid two years ago, but against what the market pays today. And they're not waiting for CVs to land in their inbox. 

The talent is there. It's just moving differently, and it's more selective about where it lands. In a market where the structural pressures are real and the regulatory demands are only increasing, the organisations that treat hiring as a competitive discipline, rather than an administrative process, are the ones pulling ahead.