House sellers in Britain’s wealthiest borough have slashed asking prices by almost £100,000 in a month as fierce competition benefits opportunistic buy-to-let investors.
Average newly listed asking prices across Britain fell by 2% in August to record the largest monthly drop in eight years.
The national decline equates to a £7,360 reduction but masks deeper cuts in London, where asking prices dropped by 4.4%.
Property owners in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea reduced their average asking price from £1,648,148 to £1,552,970 over the past month.
The volume of available homes for sale in the capital has reached a 16-year high.
Landlords are capitalising on these conditions to drive hard bargains with sellers who are struggling to generate buyer interest.
Buy-to-let investors accounted for 14.1% of all home purchases in Great Britain during July.
More than half of offers from these investor buyers were at least 10% below the initial asking price.
This proportion of heavily discounted offers represents the highest level seen since the first pandemic lockdown in April 2020.
Sellers are increasingly yielding to this pressure and accepted 27% of these heavily discounted offers in July.
Leasehold flats remain particularly difficult to sell as prospective buyers avoid the discredited ownership system.
Desperate sellers of leasehold properties accepted 41% of heavily discounted investor offers last month.
The wider UK housing market remains largely stagnant as prospective buyers face high mortgage rates and stretched affordability.
