House sellers move to slash asking prices in 'challenging' market

House prices in Britain fell 0.8% compared to the previous month in November, property website Rightmove has said.

Sellers knocked nearly £2,400 ($3,100) off the average asking price of properties as they became more realistic about their valuation, a report released by the group said.

Some 37% of properties on the Rightmove website had reduced prices compared to when they were first listed – the highest proportion recorded at this time of the year since 2012.

The average asking price for a property now stands at £311,043.

For those sellers who have had to reduce their asking price at least once, the average size of reduction between the first listing price and the current price was 6.3%.

Rightmove director Miles Shipside said the drop in asking prices across the country was a sign of initial over-optimism among sellers and a challenging market.

"Given that the market has been price-sensitive for a while and a five-year high proportion of sellers are slashing their prices, some sellers and their agents are over-pricing," he said.

"An average reduction of over six per cent means that some properties will be considerably more over-priced than that, and such a big margin of error in the initial price of many properties that come to market can leave them stale and unsold."

Lucy Pendleton, from the London estate agent James Pendleton, said property sellers would be better served by making one big price cut rather than incrementally slashing their asking prices.

"By dropping the asking price in increments all you succeed in doing is making your property look stale and unwanted, with none of the surge in viewings that a keen discount can bring," she said.

"A reduction should be in the order of at least 5% if you want to drive substantial interest, which, ironically, can result in you achieving the price you originally wanted anyway."