Why isn't my house selling? The brutal truth about your asking price

Cold open

Presenter: Right now, the average UK home that needs a price reduction to sell is sitting on the market for 127 days. The average home that's priced right from day one? 36 days. That's not a small gap — that's the difference between selling by half-term and still being on Rightmove at Christmas.

Presenter: And here's the thing that actually matters: most of the people that happens to aren't doing anything wrong. They're not being greedy, and they're definitely not being stupid. In most cases, somebody else set that price for them — and then went quiet.

Presenter: So today, we're going to look at why this actually happens, using real UK data, not vibes. We're going to hear directly from people who lived through it. And later on, I'm going to show you, live on Rightmove, exactly what an overpriced listing looks like from the outside — so you can go and check your own.

What This Actually Looks Like

Presenter: Before any data, I want you to hear this from people it actually happened to — because the numbers only mean something once you've heard what they feel like from the inside.

Seller: We found that they were more realistic — if we could go to a high street one they normally put a ridiculous price on it and you're waiting months for anybody to come and even view. Springbok Properties put a realistic price on it, I thought, and there was quite a lot of interest to begin with.

Presenter: That word he uses — "realistic" — is going to come up a lot today. It's really the whole video in one word.

Seller: We'd been on the market with three different estate agents in total for nearly two years. We'd had some near sales but very, very few viewings.

Presenter: Nearly two years. Not because there was anything wrong with the house — we'll get to why in a minute.

Seller: Our house had been on the market for about 18 months previous to that, with another company.

Presenter: Three different people, three different houses, three different agents — and the same shape of story. So let's actually look at why that shape keeps repeating.

The Actual UK Data

Presenter: Let's start with the headline figure, because it's a big one. According to Rightmove's House Price Index, homes that sell without ever needing a price reduction take an average of 36 days. Homes that do need a reduction take an average of 127 days. That's not a bit longer — that's three and a half times longer.

Presenter: And it's not a small minority this happens to. Zoopla's data shows that of the homes that did eventually sell, 53% had to cut their asking price first — by an average of 7%. Put another way: on the average UK home, that's not a rounding error, that's tens of thousands of pounds knocked off, after months of nobody viewing it.

Presenter: Savills looked at exactly how much gets cut, and how often. On average, each reduction is 4.4%. A third of all sales need one cut. 1 in 9 need two or more. And it's worse the more expensive the home — properties over £1 million see average total cuts of 8.5%, against 6.4% for the wider market.

Presenter: Here's the part I actually find most interesting, though: it's not evenly spread across the country. In South-East England, 39% of sales need a reduction. In Scotland, it's just 13%.

Presenter: That's not because Scottish sellers are better at pricing. It's because, in Scotland, you legally can't just pick a number — the asking price has to be based on a Home Report, which includes an independent surveyor's valuation, done before the property is even listed. England and Wales don't have that requirement. An agent can suggest almost any number they like to win your instruction, and there's no independent check on it at all, before it goes live to the public.

Presenter: Which brings us to the actual question: if it's not the seller's fault, and it's not really the house's fault — whose number is it?

Why This Actually Happens

Presenter: This is the bit I want to be really careful with, because it's easy to make this sound like an attack on estate agents, and that's genuinely not what this is. Most agents are doing an honest job. But the incentive underneath this specific problem is worth understanding, because once you see it, you can't unsee it.

Presenter: When you're deciding who to sell your house with, most people ask two or three agents round for a valuation. And the agent who says the highest number is, understandably, the one that's tempting to go with. Nobody picks the agent who tells them the smaller, less exciting figure — even when that number is the honest one.

Presenter: So there's a quiet pressure on agents to suggest a number closer to what a seller wants to hear, not necessarily what the market will actually pay. That's sometimes called "buying the listing" — quoting a flattering figure to win the instruction, with the plan being to talk the price back down a few months later once you're locked into a contract.

Presenter: I want to be fair here too — it's not always deliberate. Sometimes an agent genuinely believes the number, based on how the market looked six months ago, and just hasn't caught up with how quickly things have shifted. Either way, the outcome for the seller looks the same: weeks of silence, a property everyone's already seen online and mentally filed as "not moving," and a growing feeling that something must be wrong with the house itself — when very often, nothing is.

Presenter: And there's a second, quieter cost to all this: the longer something sits, the more buyers assume there's a hidden reason why. Not because there necessarily is one — just because that's how people read a stale listing.

Live on Rightmove: What This Actually Looks Like

Presenter: Let me actually show you this rather than just tell you about it. I'm going to search a completely normal area, and I want you to look at the exact same things I'm about to point out, next time you're browsing yourself.

Presenter: So here's one. You can see it's got that little "Reduced" flag under the price. Click into it — and Rightmove shows you the full price history right here, on the listing itself.

Presenter: Now here's the bit most people never think to check: click "Sold Prices" in the Rightmove menu, search the same street or postcode, and compare what actually sold nearby against what this one's asking. That's the single most useful five minutes you can spend before accepting any agent's number — not what they tell you it's worth, what the street has actually, provably sold for.

Presenter: This isn't complicated, and it isn't hidden. It's sitting right there in public data. Most people just never think to look, because you trust the person who's supposed to know.

What Actually to Do With This

Presenter: So if any part of this sounds like your situation right now, here's what's actually worth doing about it — not "panic and slash the price," just a clearer way to think about it.

Presenter: First: get two or three valuations, not one, and be suspicious of whichever one is noticeably higher than the others — not because higher is always wrong, but because it's worth asking exactly which sold properties they're comparing yours to, and whether those comparisons genuinely hold up.

Presenter: Second: check sold prices yourself, on the Land Registry or Rightmove's sold-price search, before you agree to any number. You don't need to be an expert to do this — it takes ten minutes and it's the single best protection there is against a flattering valuation.

Presenter: Third — and this is the one people find hardest — if your home has already been sitting for a while at a price that isn't moving it, a reduction now, done properly, is very rarely the disaster it feels like. The data we looked at earlier says the same thing: correctly priced homes sell in 36 days. The version of this that actually costs you money isn't cutting the price. It's the extra 90-odd days of mortgage payments, council tax, and life on hold, spent finding that out the hard way.

Presenter: And if the whole process — the re-listing, the price-testing, the waiting — sounds like more than you want to take on, that's exactly the kind of situation a direct sale can shortcut. We're Springbok Properties — we don't compete for your instruction with a number designed to win you over, because there's no listing to win. We give you one figure, based on what's actually sold nearby, and you're free to check it against everything we've just talked about.

Presenter: There's a free, no-obligation offer on our website if you want to see what that actually looks like for your property — no pressure either way. And if your house is already on the market and just isn't moving, that's genuinely one of the most common reasons people come to us, so you wouldn't be starting an unusual conversation.

Close

Presenter: So — 36 days versus 127. That's really the whole video. If your house has been sitting for a while, it's very unlikely that there's something wrong with it. It's much more likely there's something wrong with the number attached to it — and now you know exactly how to check.

Presenter: If this was useful, there's a lot more on the channel about the honest side of selling in the UK — what to actually ask an agent, what not to fix before you sell, and more. Thanks for watching.