{
  "id": 1428580,
  "title": "Asking prices for newly listed homes in UK’s richest borough fall by £100k in one month",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/17/asking-prices-for-newly-listed-homes-in-uks-richest-borough-fall-by",
  "topic": "business",
  "section": "Business",
  "published": "2026-08-17T04:00:46.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Guardian Business",
    "slug": "guardian-business",
    "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/aug/17/newly-listed-asking-prices-kensington-chelsea-london-uk-lowball-offers"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "The average price of homes coming up for sale in Britain's wealthiest borough has plummeted by nearly £100,000 in just one month, data reveals. Rightmove, a property website, reported that the UK as a whole saw a 2% decrease in newly listed asking prices for homes, marking the largest August drop in eight years. This sharp decline in London's housing market is attributed to intense competition among sellers and a cooling market.\n\nBuy-to-let investors are taking advantage of the weakened housing market by making lowball offers, forcing sellers to accept less. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) reported that the UK housing market remained subdued in July. Lloyds, a lender, stated that UK house prices were largely stagnant last month due to higher mortgage rates, economic pressure from the Middle East conflict, and stretched affordability. Nationwide revealed that prices only rose by 0.1% in the same period.\n\nWhile the national average price reduction amounts to a £7,360 decrease in the average newly listed asking price, London experienced an even sharper drop of 4.4%, or almost £30,000 off the initial price. In Kensington and Chelsea, the Royal Borough of London, the average new asking price for a home dropped from £1,648,148 to £1,552,970 over the past month.\n\nColleen Babcock, a property expert at Rightmove, stated that the larger-than-usual August price drop indicates that many sellers are recognizing the market reality and are pricing their homes more competitively. A recent survey by estate agency Hamptons found that investor buyers are capitalizing on the market conditions to negotiate better deals, pushing for price reductions and accepting steep discounts. In July, landlords accounted for 14.1% of home purchases in Great Britain, up from the previous year's average of 12.4%. The average landlord buyer paid just 88.7% of the initial asking price in July, and 56% of investor offers were at least 10% below the seller's asking price, the highest since April 2020.\n\nThe report highlights the challenges faced by leasehold properties in attracting buyers, with 41% of offers on leasehold properties being at least 10% below the asking price, according to Hamptons.",
  "summary": "Fierce competition in some areas of London means landlord purchasers are making successful lowball offers The average price of a home coming up for sale in Britain’s richest borough has dropped by almost £100,000 in a month as fierce competition among sellers in many areas prompts some to slash their price expectations, data shows. The property website Rightmove said that for Britain as a whole,…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}