Property Market Update | August 2026
August is rarely the month you judge a market by. Everyone's away, viewings thin out, and the numbers that come back tend to say more about the school holidays than about anything structural. Even so, this August was noisier than most, and the first fortnight of September has already told us something about what the autumn is going to ask of sellers.
August in Review
The national average asking price fell 2.0% over the month to £364,999, according to Rightmove. That's a little over £7,000 off the average home, and the largest August fall in eight years. Annually, asking prices are down 1.0%.
It's a supply story more than a demand one. Homes for sale are sitting at a twelve year high for the time of year, at around 65 per agent. Anyone coming to market in August was pricing against unusually heavy competition, and a good number of those already listed decided to adjust rather than sit tight. Zoopla noticed the same pattern, and expects more reductions through September as expectations reset.
It's worth separating asking prices from achieved prices here, because they're telling different stories. Rightmove measures what sellers hope for. Zoopla, tracking what actually completes, has annual house price inflation at 0.9%. The gap between those two numbers is more or less the whole picture. Buyers haven't gone anywhere. Optimistic pricing has simply stopped working.
Interest Rates: What's Actually Moving
The base rate hasn't moved. It's been held at 3.75% for a fifth consecutive meeting, most recently on 30 July, and it's widely expected to be held again on 17 September.
Mortgage rates have moved anyway, and upward. Rightmove put the average two year fixed rate at 5.09% in August, up from 4.95% the month before. Five year fixes have climbed from below 4% at the start of the year to somewhere around 4.8%.
The reason sits with swap rates rather than with the Bank. Swaps price what lenders expect rates to do over the next few years, and that expectation has turned. Inflation came in at 2.9% in July, pushed up largely by energy costs, and markets that were pricing in two cuts this year are now entertaining the possibility of a rise instead. Fixed rates get repriced on that expectation long before the Bank does anything at all.
For buyers the effect is arithmetic rather than dramatic. Zoopla reckons purchasing power has fallen by around 9% since January, which changes what people can stretch to without stopping them moving. It's why the top of any price bracket is where offers are hardest to find at the moment.
We're not going to tell you where rates go next. Anyone claiming to know is guessing, and the last nine months have made fools of far better forecasters than us.
The Regional Picture
The South East had a soft month, and there's no sense dressing that up. Average asking prices fell 2.1% over August to £469,604, and they're 2.1% down on the year. It took an average of 69 days to find a buyer here, against 63 nationally.
Look past the headline though. Zoopla has achieved prices across the South East just 0.3% below where they were a year ago. Asking prices falling far faster than sold prices isn't a market in decline. It's a market correcting seller expectations, and most of that correction is happening to homes that came out too high in the spring and have been reducing ever since.
Across Surrey and Kent we're seeing that split very clearly. Homes priced properly at launch are still finding buyers in reasonable time. Homes that started ambitiously in March are on a second or third reduction and struggling to shake the impression of having been passed over already.
If You're Thinking of Selling
The competition point matters more than anything else this autumn. With stock at a twelve year high, a buyer looking around Sevenoaks or Godalming this month has more genuine choice than at almost any point in the last decade. Your home isn't being judged in isolation. It's being judged against the other eight houses they saw that weekend.
That puts nearly all the weight on two things: the price you launch at, and how the house looks in the first three photographs. Reductions rarely recover the ground a wrong launch price loses, because the buyers who would happily have paid your revised figure had already written the house off weeks earlier.
Presentation is where the return is. Autumn light is generous in a way summer light isn't, and photography booked for a bright morning in early October will do more for a listing than another reduction ever will.
If You're Buying
You have leverage you didn't have eighteen months ago, and it's worth using it calmly. There's more to look at, sellers are considerably more realistic than they were in the spring, and time is on your side in a way it rarely is.
The one thing worth moving on quickly is your mortgage. With fixes repricing on shifting expectations rather than on any Bank decision, an offer held for six months is worth having.
Our Read
The headline says asking prices had their worst August in eight years. What sits underneath it is duller and far more useful. There are a lot of homes for sale, searches are up 7% on a year ago, and sales agreed are steadily recovering ground. None of that is a crisis. It's a market that has stopped rewarding hope and started rewarding preparation.
Which, honestly, suits us. It's always been the part of this job we're best at.
