Home sellers cut asking prices on 3,000 properties a day

Key points

• About 3,000 properties a day had asking prices cut, the highest monthly total in 15 years.
• The average reduction was nearly 7%, about £21,000 off a typically valued home.
• Homes with a price cut took 119 days to find a buyer, versus 39 days for those listed at one price.

Home sellers cut asking prices on about 3,000 properties a day, according to the property website Rightmove, the highest total for any month in 15 years. Rightmove said the figure was driven partly by a glut of homes on the market and by some sellers setting unrealistic expectations. The proportion of listed homes that eventually had a price cut peaked in 2023 and has stayed relatively high since.

Rightmove data put the average price reduction at nearly 7%, equivalent to almost £21,000 off a typically valued home. Homes that had a price cut typically took 119 days to find a buyer, compared with 39 days for those listed at a single price. Last month, 34% of listed homes had a price reduction, slightly below the recent peak of 36% in September 2023.

Buyers in the driving seat

Rival portal Zoopla said buyers were in the driving seat and were being more cautious and selective about the properties they viewed. With mortgage rates at a three-year high, Zoopla said buyers needed to keep monthly mortgage payments affordable. Its figures showed homes for sale were up 5% in September compared with a year earlier, while sales agreed had fallen 9% over the same period.

Zoopla's data showed a quarter of newly listed homes in September had been listed for sale in the last year, and six in 10 of those returned at a lower asking price. September also tends to be the month with the most cuts to asking prices, as sellers often want to complete a sale by the end of the year.

In a market with so much choice, first impressions matter.

— Colleen Babcock of Rightmove

What sellers and agents said

Colleen Babcock of Rightmove said buyers start asking questions once a home has been on the market for a while and then has a price reduction, even when nothing is wrong with the property. She said that "in a market with so much choice, first impressions matter." Richard Donnell, executive director of research at Rightmove, said properties needing a price reduction were half as likely to find a buyer within the normal three-month timeframe.

Sellers who contacted the BBC's Your Voice pointed to difficulties created by lots of homes on the market, and extra problems for those selling leasehold properties in England. One seller, selling his late father's home in south Wales, said: "The market is dead. Lots for sale; no-one buying. No-one thinks it's going to get easier."