Best buyer’s market in a generation for UK housing – with some sellers accepting 50% off asking price
The UK has entered its strongest buyer’s market in a generation, with sellers forced to drop prices across the board, accepting more than 50% off asking price in parts of central London.
New analysis by Access Legal has found that sellers are broadly anchored to peak 2022 prices, while buyers are more realistic in their valuations and are unable to stretch their budgets to meet these asking prices.
This has forced sellers to choose between sticking to their outdated valuations or dropping their prices to account for higher mortgage rates and stretched affordability.
The result is a market where homebuyers hold the power. They can negotiate aggressively on terms and price, and the national average final sale price has now reached 22% lower than the national average asking price for UK properties.
Access Legal aggregated property data to measure the areas with the biggest gaps between asking and selling prices.
The biggest discrepancies between what sellers wanted and what they got was in London, but large gaps persisted across many regions of the UK, from Bournemouth to Caerphilly.
In several London boroughs, the average house is now selling for under half of its asking price. The data showed that homes are selling for 53% below their original asking price in Southwark, which equates to an average cash drop of £607,000 per sale.
Similar trends are seen in Westminster, Lambeth, and Kensington and Chelsea, where houses are selling for 52%, 52%, and 51% below their original asking prices, respectively.
In Bournemouth, houses are selling at 43% below their asking price, and in Knowsley, they are selling at 47% lower.
These price gaps appear across the board, not just in London, where they are most severe, pointing to a larger trend of seller expectations not aligning with reality.
Despite heavy price drops in London, the transaction process has slowed significantly as those sitting on overvalued properties patiently waiting for buyers to offer more than they can realistically borrow.
The average time to complete a sale in Kensington and Chelsea, for example, has risen to 548 days.
Reality is slowly sinking in for sellers
Curetons managing partner Robin Edwards said the financial reality buyers are experiencing is slowly trickling through to sellers anchored to 2022-level valuations.
“Many sellers are still anchored to pre-2022 valuations when cheaper borrowing significantly increased what buyers could afford. Today with mortgage rates higher and affordability tighter, buyers simply can’t stretch in the same way,” Edwards said.
“For buyers this environment creates an opportunity to negotiate more confidently, particularly where a property has been on the market for a while or requires a lot of work.”
“Buyers who are financially secure, chain-free and able to move quickly are in a particularly strong position because sellers are increasingly prioritising certainty over squeezing out the very last bit of price,” he added.
Experts believe this analysis portrays a UK housing market in the middle of a price fluctuation as more power flows from sellers to buyers as affordability is stressed.
“This data signals a clear shift in power from sellers to buyers,” said Bold Legal Group CEO Rob Hailstone.
“Higher mortgage repayments are forcing buyers to reassess budgets and negotiate harder, while economic uncertainty and changing investor behaviour has left more properties lingering on the market.”
“As inflation rises and household bills increase, buyers with squeezed disposable incomes are acting more cautiously in the market,” Hailstone said.
