Proportion of British homes for sale with prices slashed ‘highest in over a decade’

The proportion of homes on the market in Britain which have had at least one price reduction is at its highest level in over a decade, according to the property website Rightmove.

More than a third (36.3 per cent) of properties have had at least one price reduction, the highest figure recorded since January 2011. The average size of the price reduction is also the highest since January 2011 at 6.2 per cent.

When this reduction is applied to the average asking price, at £366,281 in September, this could equate to a typical price cut of £22,709, Rightmove said.

It said the figures suggest that some sellers were too optimistic on their initial asking prices and have had to make some bigger-than-usual adjustments. The website also said the average price tag on a home jumped by nearly £1,400 in September, but the rate of increase was smaller than the average of 0.6 per cent seen at this time of year.

Rightmove said there are signs of activity starting to pick up, with the number of new properties coming to market jumping by 12 per cent in the first week of September, compared with the average weekly volume in August. It said house prices are still on track to meet its prediction of a 2 per cent fall over the year as a whole.

“The combination of 14 consecutive Bank of England interest rate rises, and many buyers and sellers still catching up on lost pandemic holidays, has contributed to a bigger-than-expected summer lull, though we still anticipate an autumn bounce,” said Tim Bannister, Rightmove’s director of property science.

“New sellers in the middle and upper sectors need to be extra careful not to set their price expectations too high. Plenty of sales are being agreed for properties that are priced at the right level.”

The report was released as a separate index from estate and letting agent Hamptons indicated that in the rental sector, prices are continuing to increase strongly. It said that the average rent in Britain topped the £1,300 per month mark for the first time last month, 11 months after passing the £1,200 mark.

The average monthly rent on a newly-let home in August was £1,304. Hamptons said the average rate of annual rental growth on a newly-let property hit 12 per cent in August, the fastest growth since its index started in 2014.

“Higher rents are only going some way towards helping mortgaged landlords balance their books, rather than boosting their profit,” said Aneisha Beveridge, head of research at Hamptons. “This is one of the reasons we haven’t seen large numbers of new landlords come into the market.”