Online and hybrid estate agents lost further ground in 2025, while the self-employed sector continued to take a bigger slice of completed sales, according to TwentyCi.

In its Property & Homemover End of Year 2025 Report, the data firm says: “Online agents’ overall market share in 2025 is 5.2%, down by 0.9% from 2024.” It adds that the high of “8.2% in 2019 is highly unlikely to be repeated.”

Self-employed agents are growing market share fast and now represent 2.2% of the market.”

The report, however, also highlights the continued expansion of the self-employed model, stating: “Self-employed agents are growing market share fast and now represent 2.2% of the market.”

Those shifts come in a higher-volume year overall. TwentyCi recorded 986,665 exchanges in 2025, up 12.6% year-on-year, alongside 1.71m new instructions (+2.1%) and 1.26m sales agreed (+2.3%).

The performance of hybrid agencies is, though, an improvement from earlier in the year when TwentyCi reported that the online/hybrid category was responsible for 5.0% of all exchanges, with self-employed agents accounting for 2.1% within that total.

Long-term decline

It was, though, only a short-term blip, with TwentyCi’s data all pointing in the same direction over the longer term. In Q1 2023, online/hybrid agents accounted for 6.5% of all exchanges and 8.2% in 2019.

At the same time, the performance of some of the bigger names in the sector in 2025 shows how the self-employed sector has been growing. Yopa reported revenue rising 29% to £27.2m in the year to September 2025, while eXp UK continued to scale its self-employed network, reporting that it passed 700 members and later topped 800. Avocado Property Agents has also reported passing 2,000 completed property sales as it expands its model.

In contrast, Purplebricks, once the headline act in the online estate agency space, is “still yet to see a significant resurgence” following its near collapse and purchase by Strike.

Download the report here.