Asking prices fell. House prices didn't. Sellers just got realistic.

"Have you seen the headlines? Are we too late?"

I had that question four or five times in the last week of August!

The headline behind it was this. The average asking price of a home coming to the market dropped 2% in a month, down £7,360 to £364,999, the biggest August fall in eight years. Prices normally dip a bit in August, the ten year average is around 1.3%, so this one was steeper than usual and it got picked up everywhere.

What got a lot less attention is that house prices themselves went up. Nationwide recorded a 0.2% rise over the month, leaving prices 1.6% higher than a year ago.

An asking price isn't a value. It's an opinion.

Rightmove's index measures asking prices on homes arriving on the market for the first time, so it tells you what sellers are hoping to achieve on the day they launch. Nationwide, Halifax and the Land Registry measure things in different ways, but they are all far closer to telling you what buyers actually paid.

That distinction is the whole story of August. Asking prices fell while house prices rose, which points to a change in what sellers were asking for rather than a change in what their homes were worth.

Homes didn't get cheaper. Sellers got realistic.

Why they changed their minds

There are more homes for sale at the moment than at this point in any year since 2014, while buyer activity is still below where it was last summer.

Anyone thinking of selling can see that for themselves. Five minutes on Rightmove looking at what would be competing with you and you get the picture fairly quickly. This isn't a market where you can add £20,000 to the figure you really think the house is worth and wait for somebody to knock you down.

They've got another house to click on.

Your asking price is part of the marketing

This is the conversation I have more than any other, and it's the bit I'd like people to take away.

By the time a house comes to market, a lot of work has gone into it. You've spent three weekends clearing the garage and touching up the skirting boards. We've spent a day on the photography, the floor plan, the video and the words. Every one of those things has the same job, which is to make somebody sitting on the sofa with their phone think "I want to see that one."

Your asking price has exactly that job too. It's just the only part of the marketing that tends to get treated as a separate decision, made last, based on what the seller wants rather than on what the number is supposed to do.

Rightmove's figures put a cost on that. Homes that didn't need a price reduction found a buyer in around 36 days. Homes that did took around 127. Nearly three quarters of the homes that have sold this year managed it without a reduction at all.

None of that means pricing cheaply. It means treating the number like the tool it is. I went into what happens in the weeks after an overpriced launch in The Silent Cost of Overpricing.

"The market's really slow"

I hear that a lot, usually about six weeks in.

Picture two houses on the same street, launching the same Friday. Both properly presented, both well photographed, both genuinely nice homes.

One goes on at a price that makes sense. Six viewings in a fortnight, two offers, sold.

The other goes on £25,000 above where the evidence sits. A handful of clicks, no viewings worth the name, and by the middle of October everybody involved has concluded that the market is dead.

Same market. Different marketing.

The buyers were there for both of them. They only booked one.

Where that leaves Crediton

Devon asking prices are 1.4% lower than a year ago, against 1.8% across the south of England, so we're holding up a shade better than the region around us.

There are some encouraging signs from buyers too. Rightmove reported demand up 5% after 20 July, where over the same weeks last year it fell 2%. I'm not going to pretend the market is flying, because activity is still below where it was twelve months ago, but the direction changed over the summer.

The next index lands on 21 September and I'll have a look at what it tells us about Crediton and Mid Devon. Before then, if you're wondering what the right starting figure is for your own place, book a valuation or give us a buzz on 01363 777 999. Allow about an hour, we'll have a proper look round and talk it through. No need to tidy up first either. We're looking at the house, not whether you've done the washing up!

We've been doing this since 1699. We know this market.

Frequently asked questions

Did house prices fall in August 2026?

Asking prices did. House prices didn't. Rightmove recorded a 2% fall in the average asking price of newly listed homes, while Nationwide recorded a 0.2% monthly rise and prices 1.6% higher than a year earlier. The two are measuring different things, which is why the gap between them matters.

Why did asking prices fall so much in August?

Asking prices usually dip in August, but this year's 2% fall was larger than the 1.3% ten year average. There are more homes for sale than at this point in any year since 2014, so sellers coming to market are pricing more competitively from the start.

Is it still worth putting my house on at a higher price to see what happens?

Rightmove's figures suggest there's a real cost to it. Homes that didn't need a price reduction found a buyer in around 36 days, compared with around 127 days for homes that did. Nearly three quarters of the homes sold this year went through without a reduction.

Does pricing sensibly mean selling my house cheaply?

No. The asking price is part of the marketing, alongside the photography, floor plan and description. Its job is to get the right buyers through the door while the property is fresh, which is also when competition between buyers is at its strongest.

Is the property market slow at the moment?

Activity is below last year's level, but buyers are there. Rightmove reported demand up 5% after 20 July. Buyers simply have more to choose from, so price and presentation decide which homes get viewed.

What are asking prices doing in Crediton and Mid Devon?

Devon asking prices are around 1.4% lower than a year ago, compared with around 1.8% across the south of England. Individual towns, villages and price brackets behave very differently, so a county figure only tells part of the story.