Home sellers in Britain cut the asking prices of more than 3,000 properties a day on average during September, according to figures from the property website Rightmove shared exclusively with the BBC.
Rightmove said the total was the highest of any month for 15 years.
It attributed the figure in part to a glut of homes on the market, and in part to some sellers setting unrealistic expectations of what their property would fetch.
The proportion of listed homes that eventually had a price cut peaked in 2023 and has remained relatively high since.
Property portals say buyers are now having to be choosy, with many working to a tight budget as mortgage rates have risen to three-year highs.
One seller in Leicester told the BBC that part of the issue was trying to work out the right selling price, and that no one thing defined whether a property would sell at a certain price. He turned down an offer made the day after his home was listed because it came in below the asking price, held out for better offers that never came, and sold after 18 months for £30,000 less than the original asking price.
Colleen Babcock, of Rightmove, described the effect a reduction has on buyers. “Once a home has been on the market for a while and then has a price reduction, some buyers start asking questions, even when there is nothing wrong with the property,” she said. “In a market with so much choice, first impressions matter.”
That observation deserves closer attention than it usually receives. Buyers treat a price reduction as information about the property. Rightmove's figures establish that the reduction is information about the price.
The Questionable Times considers the position now fully resolved. An asking price is not a measurement of a house. It is a proposal about a house, made by somebody who has never sold that house before.
It follows that every reduction is a correction, and that a corrected figure is more accurate than an uncorrected one. More than 3,000 properties a day are therefore being improved.
The market has arranged matters the other way round. A reduced price, being the more accurate of the two, is the one that invites questions. The original price, having been tested against nothing, is the one that commands confidence.
Our analysts note the straightforward consequence. The safest price a seller can advertise is a price that is never reduced, and the surest way never to reduce a price is to set one high enough that the question never arises.
The sequence described to the BBC in Leicester illustrates the mechanism rather than the seller. An offer arrived within a day of listing. The asking price then held for 18 months and attracted no questions whatsoever, which under the market's own rules is the strongest possible endorsement of it.
The Department of Unnecessary Research puts the matter to the industry as a definitional question. If a reduction is a warning sign, and a reduction is also a correction, then the market has agreed in writing to distrust accuracy.