The average UK home is selling at 9% below the asking price, new research has found.
With the average property valued at £174,493, this means sellers are receiving around £14,000 less for their home than they’d hoped.
According to the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), the gap is widest in the North, where sellers are forced to accept a 12.5% discount off their advertised price.
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Scotland yet to be affected
Unsurprisingly, high property demand means that the margin is smallest in the capital, where transaction prices are on average 8.5% below asking price.
Vendors in the North West, East Midlands, West Midlands and Wales are accepting offers averaging approximately 10% below.
Interestingly, Scotland has yet to be affected, with a gap asking-selling price gap of just 2.4%. However, RICS believes this will widen in the coming months, as price falls in this region have lagged significantly behind the rest of the UK.
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Asking/selling price gap by region
| Area | Gap |
| NW | 10.35% |
| EM | 10.28% |
| WM | 10.38% |
| EA | 9.66% |
| SE | 8.04% |
| SW | 8.75% |
| Wales | 10.12% |
| London | 8.46% |
| Scotland | 2.43% |
| Northern Ireland | 9.38% |
Source: RICS
Chartered surveyors are gloomy
According to RICS, the gloom in the market is unlikely to clear any time soon, as economic fundamentals continue to worsen.
In the North West, the majority of vendors accepted lower asking prices with 82% of chartered surveyors reporting that the gap had widened, while in the West Midlands 75 percent reported a widening gap.
More surprisingly the gap did not appear to widen in London in August with 67% of chartered surveyors reporting no change.
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It’s a sellers market
"With housing transactions currently at a 30 year low, many vendors are being forced to lower their asking prices to achieve a sale in an ever shrinking market or they are being forced to rent their property until the market picks up,” says RICS chief economist Simon Rubinsohn.
“In recent surveys, Chartered Surveyors have reported that some buy-to-let investors are re-entering the market to take advantage of rising yields. In addition, ‘predatory buyers' have been hovering over the corpse of a stalling market with many others cut out by the lack of mortgage liquidity.
"The gap between asking prices and selling prices could widen in the coming months as the downturn in the economy becomes more visible. The London market could be adversely affected as employment in the financial sector drops off."
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