The research reveals an average price drop of 6.1% for all homes that have been discounted and a total of £1.5 billion that has been slashed off the asking prices of properties that are currently listed for sale on Zoopla.co.uk, which allows users to sort results on its website by the properties that have been most reduced in price.
According to the latest figures, at least one third of properties for sale have been discounted from their original asking price in 36 of the main 50 cities/towns studied by Zoopla.co.uk. Barnsley tops the list of locations that have seen the most price reductions with 44% of all properties currently listed for sale having been discounted at some point.
At the other end of the scale, only 24% of current sellers in Glasgow have knocked anything off their original listing price.
The highest average price reductions have been in Rotherham, Manchester and Barnsley, where average asking prices have been discounted by 7.1%. In Rotherham that represents a £9,442 drop in asking prices whilst average prices have been reduced by £11,376 in Manchester and £8,978 in Barnsley.
By contrast, average price reductions in the south have been smaller, with average asking prices in Chelmsford and Brighton both having been reduced by 5.1%, or £18,814 and £19,928 respectively.
At the top end of the market, for properties with current asking prices of £1million or over, sellers are not feeling the pinch to quite the same degree with only 22% of properties having been reduced in price since first being put on the market. However, for those properties that have been reduced in this price bracket, the discount is much higher than the average at 9.6%.
Nicholas Leeming, Commercial Director of Zoopla.co.uk, said:
“Sellers across the country are certainly feeling the heat this summer as the recovery has slowed and the market direction is uncertain. More and more sellers are cautiously reducing asking prices in a bid to attract buyers and lock in the house price gains of the past 16 months.
"But, Britain is not one uniform housing market and smaller reductions are clearly evident in some locations in the south of England where the outlook for employment and economic growth is brighter. In a buyers’ market, astute house hunters will be on the lookout for properties with the biggest reductions in the hope of picking up a bargain.”
