A buyer’s market, by any measure

Every summer someone declares the London market “stalled”. This year the description is closer to fair than usual — but stalled is the wrong word. The market is moving; it is simply moving in the buyer’s favour, and the evidence for that is unusually consistent.

Rightmove reported that the average asking price of newly listed homes fell 0.6% in June — the largest June fall the portal has recorded since 2012 — and put it down to high supply, a more price-sensitive buyer, and an early summer lull. Zoopla counted sales agreed nationally around 7% below last year’s level, and noted that flats were the only property type still falling in price year-on-year. The official Land Registry series, which lags by two months, had London prices down 2.1% over the twelve months to April, at an average of £553,000, while the national figure was still rising.

Set against that, Nationwide’s June reading had national annual growth firming to 2.2%. Both things are true. The rest of the country is edging up; London — and London flats in particular — is edging down.

The Bank of England held Bank Rate at 3.75% on 18 June, with two of the nine committee members voting for a rise rather than a cut. That is not a dovish committee. Yet the mortgage market moved anyway: Moneyfacts’ average two-year fixed rate slipped from 5.65% at the start of June to 5.55% by the end of it, with twenty lenders cutting in the final week. Lenders are competing for a smaller pool of borrowers, and competition shows up in the price of credit before it shows up in the price of homes.

Three practical things. First, the asking price is a starting position, not a valuation; in a market where sellers are already trimming before they list, the gap between asking and achieved is where representation earns its fee. Second, the weakness in flats is not uniform — a well-planned apartment with outside space, a good aspect and a sensible service charge still sells; the discount lives in the compromised stock. Third, on new homes, a developer’s summer sales position is a negotiating fact in its own right, and incentives that are never advertised are very much available to a buyer who asks properly.

The Renters’ Rights Act took effect on 1 May, converting assured shorthold tenancies to periodic tenancies and ending Section 21. Anyone buying with a tenant in place, or buying to let, is now operating under that regime. Leasehold reform, by contrast, has not arrived: the draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill was published in January and scrutinised by the Commons committee in May, and the government does not expect Royal Assent before 2027. For a flat purchase this summer the lease is still the lease — read it accordingly.

A buyer’s market is not a signal to wait. It is a window in which the careful buyer has more choice and more leverage than they will have when confidence returns. Windows close.