The average asking price for a UK home in February increased by just £14, property website Rightmove said – the smallest increase it has recorded.
The tiny increase shows house sellers have been heeding advice to market their properties realistically in order to sell them into a market that has slowed sharply in recent months.
The average asking price for a UK home is now £362,452, Rightmove added, as higher mortgage rates and living costs were squeezing what people could afford and buyers were seeking.
“Many sellers are breaking with tradition and showing unseasonal initial pricing restraint,” Rightmove’s Tim Bannister said of the latest figures. Buyers were taking more time to “find the right property at the right price” and wanted “greater realism on price”.
Timothy Bannister, director of Rightmove, said buyers were taking more time to ‘find the right property at the right price’
He said the property market was “transitioning into a slower-paced market, where buyers will take longer to find the right property at the right price due to the higher cost of servicing a mortgage”.
Homeowners who are coming to market in the upcoming spring season should use their agent’s expertise and get the price right the first time, which can really help to find the right buyer more quickly, he said.
With asking prices flat, rather than falling, it could be a positive sign for the housing market, pointing towards less of a collapse in prices than many experts have forecast, Rightmove said.
A poll in November forecast prices would fall by 5 per cent this year, while analysts at Japanese bank Nomura predicted last month that the decline would be 15 per cent by mid-2024.
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Rightmove said there had been some recovery in demand since late 2022, when mortgage rates soared following the former prime minister Liz Truss’s