The autumn market: choice, timing and the Budget question

The autumn market begins the week the schools go back, and this year it begins from an unusual starting point. Sellers have already done a good deal of the price adjustment; buyers have more to choose from than at any point in a decade and a half; and the one genuine unknown sits nine weeks away in the Chancellor’s red box.

Rightmove’s August index recorded a 2% monthly fall in asking prices to £364,999 nationally — the largest August drop since 2018 — and an annual decline of 1.0%, the first since 2023. London fell 3.1% in the month, the steepest of any English region, and the portal noted the capital now offers buyers the largest choice of homes since 2010. Rightmove revised its full-year forecast to between flat and minus 2%. Nationwide’s more measured series still showed national annual growth of 1.6% in August, up slightly on July.

Zoopla, looking towards autumn, reported buyer demand up 7% on last year and around 5% more homes for sale, and expects an “autumn bounce” — though with mortgage rates closer to 5% than 4%, it also calculated that a typical household can borrow roughly 9% less than it could in January. That is the market in one sentence: more people looking, with slightly less to spend, at more homes.

Moneyfacts’ averages in early August stood at 5.63% for a two-year fix and 5.66% for five years, with the best rates at 60% loan-to-value nearer 4.4%. The Bank of England did not meet in August; its next decision falls on 17 September. Then comes the Autumn Budget on 28 October. Speculation through August centred on property — including whether the £2 million threshold for the high-value council tax surcharge announced last November, and due from April 2028, might be lowered. Stamp duty itself has not changed since April 2025: the 5% additional-property surcharge and the 2% non-resident surcharge both stand, taking the top marginal rate for an overseas buyer of a second home to 19%.

LonRes’s latest dashboard had new sales instructions in prime London running around 26% above the pre-pandemic average for the time of year, prime central London values still roughly 5% below last year, and the house’s own forecast at minus 2% for 2026 before growth resumes in 2027. Prime rents, by contrast, have turned decisively upward — helped by the fact that lettings above £100,000 a year sit outside the Renters’ Rights Act, which came into force on 1 May.

First, do not let the Budget make your decision for you. Fiscal events change the arithmetic at the margin; they rarely change whether a particular home is right. Second, treat the summer markdown as the discount and negotiate from it, not towards it — a home reduced in July and still unsold in September is a seller whose position is known. Third, keep finance agreed and solicitors instructed, because the autumn window is short: serious sellers want to exchange before December, and buyers who are ready move to the front of the queue. On new homes, the same logic applies with more force — developers closing their year will trade generously with a buyer who can complete.

Choice, adjusted prices, a ready buyer and a deadline. That is as good a set of conditions as London has offered a purchaser in some time.