Rightmove reported the average asking price rose to £368,031 in January, up 2.8% from December. This is the largest January increase on record and the biggest monthly rise since June 2015. Worth noting that asking prices and achieved prices are different datasets entirely. The Nationwide index showed a 0.4% month-on-month fall in December with annual growth slowing to 0.6%. Anyone timing a disposal this tax year should be working from achieved prices and recent comparables, not headline asking figures. The Rightmove data reflects seller optimism at listing stage, not what buyers are actually paying.
This is exactly what I was getting at in the house price thread last week, the asking price data is doing an enormous amount of work in these headlines and I suspect most of it is agents telling vendors to stick an ambitious number on in January because that is when the portals get the most traffic. I sold my flat last year and the agent literally said to me on the phone, we always list a bit higher in the new year because buyers are fresh and keen, you can always drop it in March. So there you go, the record January asking price rise is partly just a coordinated overpricing strategy by the industry, dressed up as market data. The Nationwide figure telling you prices actually fell in December is the one people should be paying attention to, but that does not make for a cheerful headline does it.
I keep coming back to this thread because the headline number is doing a lot of heavy lifting and I am not sure anyone is picking it apart properly. A record January asking price rise tells you that sellers are feeling confident, which is fine, but it tells you absolutely nothing about what buyers are actually paying or whether those listings are converting into sales. I sold my BTL flat last year and there was a solid two months where the Rightmove estimate was about fifteen grand above what any actual human being offered me, and that was in a supposedly strong area. The gap between asking and achieving has been widening for a while now in most places outside the north west, and a headline that just tracks what vendors type into a form on a Sunday afternoon is not really market data in any meaningful sense. I would be much more interested in seeing Land Registry completions for Q4 2025 when they finally surface, which will probably be about April knowing how that lot work.
I have been watching these monthly Rightmove press releases for years and the pattern is always the same. Record asking prices in January because that is when the optimists list, then a slow grind downward through the spring as reality bites. The Nationwide data that came out on Friday rather tells the real story: 0.3% up in January, which did not even claw back December’s fall, and annual growth sitting at 1.0%. Meanwhile the number of homes for sale is at an eleven year high for January. That is a lot of stock chasing not very many buyers. Asking prices are aspirations, not transactions. I would be looking at the HMRC completions data and the Land Registry price paid records before drawing any conclusions about where values are actually headed.
@subjecttovat the trouble with the Land Registry price paid data is it is running three months behind at best, so by the time you see what actually sold in January it will be April and the market will have moved on again, or more likely not moved at all. I take your point about asking prices being aspirations but sometimes the aspiration is the story, especially when you combine it with record stock levels and the Nationwide number sitting at 1.0% annual growth, which is basically flat in real terms. What you end up with is a market where everyone wants to sell at last year’s price and nobody wants to buy at it, and the data just reflects two sides of the same standoff. I sold my BTL flat last spring and the whole process felt like negotiating with someone who had already left the room, so I have some sympathy with agents trying to spin these numbers into something resembling momentum.