Mind the gap! Large discounts on asking prices exposed as properties are tracked to Land Registry
An exercise involving the tracking of first asking prices through to sold prices lodged at the Land Registry has shown large gaps.
Altogether 65,384 properties were tracked that were registered at the Land Registry in the 12 months up to this August.
Fast sale firm Property Solvers then compared the actual selling prices with what had been originally asked on Rightmove.
The biggest gap was in south-west London, with £71,178 taken off the original asking price.
All ten of the areas with the largest drops were in or close to London.
There were no areas where the average sold price exactly, or almost exactly, matched the original asking price, but some of the lowest asking to sold reductions were in Wigan (-£3,890), Hull (-£4,258), Doncaster (-£4,705), Sheffield (-£4,884) and Sunderland (-£4,915).
Property Solvers co-founder Ruban Selvanayagam said: “Even the most experienced estate agents are failing to understand the current realities.”
He said that agents who “knowingly state exaggerated valuations at the initial stages” perform a disservice.
| Region | Average Difference Between Asking and Sold Prices | No. of Properties Analysed |
| South West London | -£71,178 | 575 |
| North West London | -£68,840 | 206 |
| West London | -£53,998 | 243 |
| North London | -£37,597 | 369 |
| Kingston upon Thames | -£28,147 | 641 |
| Harrow | -£27,818 | 260 |
| Slough | -£27,584 | 258 |
| Watford | -£25,705 | 276 |
| Guildford | -£25,435 | 694 |
| Western Central London | -£25,268 | 4 |
More data broken into local postcodes in England and Wales can be accessed here: https://www.propertysolvers.co.uk/local-house-market-insights/
Property Solvers will be repeating the exercise next month.