Rightmove: Sellers ‘getting serious’ as asking prices drop in Christmas rush

Asking prices for newly listed homes dropped by the largest rate for November in five years, Rightmove has revealed.

The portal’s latest House Price Index shows that while asking prices usually drop this time of year, they were down 1.7% on a monthly basis during the November, the largest drop in the month since 2018.

Rightmove suggested this indicates that new sellers are “increasingly adopting more realistic price expectations.”

Asking prices were down 1.3% annually to £362,143 on average.

Rightmove said average asking prices are now 3% below May’s peak.

Meanwhile, the level of sales agreed is now 10% below 2019’s more normal market level, improving from 15% below last month, Rightmove said.

The property website also claimed that the pandemic-driven stock shortage is over, with available properties for sale now just 1% behind 2019.

Some regions and market sectors continue to perform better than others though.

The number of sales being agreed for studio, one-, and two-bed properties is just 7% lower than 2019’s level, compared to four-bed detached houses and all five-bed plus properties, where agreed sales are 14% behind 2019, according to Rightmove.

While there are yearly price declines in the Midlands and all Southern regions,  in contrast Wales, Scotland and the North of England have seen rises in the price of newly-marketed properties

Tim Bannister, Rightmove’s director of property science, said: “We’d expect to see a drop in new seller asking prices in the last couple of months of the year, as serious sellers start to separate themselves from discretionary sellers and cut through the Christmas noise with an attractive price to secure a buyer. 

“However, the larger than usual drop this month signals that among the usual pricing seasonality, we are starting to see more new sellers heed their agents’ advice and come to market with more enticing prices to stand out from their over-optimistic competition. 

“Buyers are still out there, but for many their affordability is much reduced due to higher mortgage rates. It now looks like more sellers are understanding Rightmove’s research; that the chances of securing a buyer are much greater if they price right the first time, rather than over-pricing and reducing their price later.”