Research from property search website Zoopla.co.uk shows that the number of properties for sale in the UK that have had their asking price reduced at least once since coming to the market has climbed by more than 13 per cent over the past three months, up from 32.2 per cent in August to 36.4 per cent today.
The figures also show that the total value of the house price discounts has risen by almost £500 million over the last three months as owners start to get both more realistic and desperate to sell.
For those properties that have been reduced in price, the average discount currently stands at 6.1 per cent (£15,879) of the original asking price, according to Zoopla.co.uk, which provides a unique feature on its website allowing users to hunt for bargains by sorting properties by how much the price has been reduced by.
Towns in the West and the Midlands are seeing the highest number of asking price reductions, with Swindon topping the list where half (49.5 per cent) of all properties currently on the market for sale have been discounted by the seller from the original price.
Norwich is in second place with 46.8 per cent of properties having been reduced in price, followed closely by Bournemouth at 45.9 per cent.
However, it is in the North that dominates the list of places with the highest average asking price reductions.
The largest discounts are currently to be found in Manchester where price reductions average 7.15 per cent, followed by Newcastle (7.13 per cent) and Milton Keynes (7.04 per cent). At the other end of the scale, the lowest asking price movements are in the South, with average asking prices in Poole and Swindon both down only 5.1 per cent, followed closely by London where the average home has only been reduced in price by 5.2 per cent since coming onto the market.
At the top end of the market, for properties listed for sale at over £1m, the percentage of properties that have been reduced in price has grown by more than 26 per cent over the past 3 months, up from 22.5 per cent in August, to 28.4 per cent today. And the average discount in this price bracket now stands at 8 per cent.
