Asking Prices Cut on 3,000 Homes a Day, a Fifteen-Year High
More than 3,000 properties a day had their asking price reduced in September, the most in any month for fifteen years, by an average of nearly 7% — about £21,000 off a typically valued home. A third of all listed homes were marked down. Reduced homes took 119 days to find a buyer against 39 for those listed once at the right price.
Three different measures are circulating this morning and they are not in conflict, so it is worth separating them. Asking prices for newly listed homes rose 1% this month to £371,015; house prices over the past year are down 0.1%; and a third of homes already on the market are being cut, heavily. The first is what sellers hope for, the second is roughly where the market is, and the third is the gap between them closing. The reason is affordability: average two-year fixed mortgage rates have climbed to 5.55% from 5.29% last month and 4.25% before February, which adds around £250 a month to a new loan. Colleen Babcock of Rightmove points to the penalty for getting it wrong first time: “Once a home has been on the market for a while and then has a price reduction, some buyers start asking questions, even when there is nothing wrong with the property. In a market with so much choice, first impressions matter.” The figures are the company’s own rather than official statistics, though a rival firm reports homes for sale up 5% on the year and sales agreed down 9%.