HOM-B
April 10, 2025
The Average Asking Price in Richmond Upon Thames is 14% higher than the Average Sold Price. So just what is going on?
HOM-B
If it isn’t the weather, it’s house prices. I’m talking about conversations you’ll hear British people talking about at the bus stop, or in the queue at the shop, or down at the local pub over half a pint of Jawbone.
And in general we (generally speaking) feel it is good news when prices shift up rather than down.
So it should therefore feel like good news if I tell you that the average sold price of properties in Richmond upon Thames, sits at £786,000 and reflects a 5.3% annual increase. This is according to the most recent official government data, published by the ONS, which due to Land Registry lag is the figure as at January 2025.
The below graph shows how property prices have ebbed and flowed here in Richmond over the past few years:
Figure 1 - a graph showing property price changes in Richmond upon Thames over 20 years
So, all hunky dory then!
Well…. It would be, except, whilst it would feel good news that property sales values are going up (currently at that £786,000 mark, just to put that number front and centre again), the average asking price looks to be far higher by comparison - currently £894,741, according to the good folk at property analytics site home.co.uk.
That is a difference of well over £100,000...
To put it another way, the average sold price for a property in Richmond upon Thames is 12% lower than the average listing price… or, to run the maths the other way around, the average listing price is 14% higher than the average sold price.
So what exactly is happening? Are Estate Agents in Richmond upon Thames really overvaluing properties by 14%? Over £100,000 on average?! And if they are, what is driving them to do so?
In today’s blog we explore the numbers and aim to bust a couple of myths, because as is so often the case, things are not necessarily always as they seem…
Before we dive into the analytics, let’s take a moment to understand the way the market currently looks when it comes to property in Richmond, Twickenham and Teddington.
There are 1,847 properties listed ‘For Sale’ on Rightmove in a Richmond Upon Thames property search. On top of that, a further 1,189 properties are listed as ‘Sold STC’ – which means, out of a total of 3,036 properties on the sales market currently, well over a third of sellers (in fact, very nearly 40% of sellers) are currently inching their way towards the result they want.
So, 1,847 Richmond Borough properties still for sale; is that good or bad?
Well, when we consider that of those 1,847 properties, a total of 463 came to market within the last two weeks alone, i.e. just over a whole quarter of the total properties for sale, these numbers start to look pretty positive.
In fact, to sprinkle just a little more positivity – but also to perhaps add to the confusion – only around 300 of those 1,847 homes for sale in Richmond Upon Thames have been on the market at their current price prior to Christmas 2024.
That means only around 16% of the total market has been potentially ‘languishing’ – and in UK property market terms, that is not bad at all.
The Richmond Upon Thames property market is therefore not looking to be in terrible shape as we head into the busy Spring period.
So the question remains, when it comes to those 1,189 ‘sold’ subject to contract properties, have they really had to drop 12% off their list price, in order to achieve a sale?
Most people on the street would tell you that properties go on the market for more than they eventually sell for.
But 14% more? Really?
We’ve had a look at our own figures, and on average the properties we sell do so at within 1.5% of the value they are on the market for.
Now, we know we’re good at what we do here at Bartlett and Partners – but not even I would claim that we are eight times better than the local competition (well, perhaps on second thoughts…).
But, if sellers aren’t really dropping 12% off their listing prices in order to sell a property in Richmond Upon Thames, what is causing the stark difference between the Asking Prices we see on sites such as Rightmove and Zoopla, and the sale prices that get recorded by Land Registry and end up with the ONS?
As I said earlier, things are not necessarily how they first appear.
Here are a few things to consider.
Higher-end, aspirational properties often remain on the market for extended periods, keeping the average asking price of property inflated. Sellers might be testing the market with ambitious initial prices, causing these listings to skew the overall asking price data upward.
For example, the twenty-four highest priced listings in Richmond Upon Thames on Rightmove right now – the full first ‘page’ of Rightmove listings in fact, ‘highest-price first’ – sit between £4,500,000 and £12,000,000.
As if to prove a point, twelve of those top ten – half of them, in other words – have been on the market since prior to Christmas 2024.
So, 16% of all properties here have been on the market for longer than three and a half months, but 50% of the most expensive have been. And of course that leads to a skewing of the data.
Not a criticism, just an observation. But it is the sort of observation that leads to a question: how many accurately priced ‘average’ Richmond Upon Thames sales, at around that £210,000 mark, will have come to market, found a buyer, gone through conveyancing and already come off Rightmove, during the same time frame that some of those expensive aged-listings have been ‘trying’, given that some date all the way back to February 2024…?
Like I say, not a criticism (cough cough), but it does illustrate just how easy it is to skew the average asking price figure upwards of the average sale price reality, when higher priced listings clog the marketplace.
Entirely unrelated to my last point (I promise), but some properties are listed significantly above their realistic market value, and frankly these homes don't sell – or, if they do, it is not without substantial price reductions.
Either way, those initial over-inflated asking prices contribute heavily to the overall average asking price that then gets recorded.
Average asking prices – whether they are inflated or otherwise – do reflect real-time market sentiment. Sold price data on the other hand, as recorded by the Land Registry, reported by the ONS, and being the data that feeds through to the reports that you find on Zoopla and Rightmove, trails behind actual market activity by several months. Case in point, the nearest official ‘sold’ data we have provided in this article, as given by the ONS, is from January.
This lag can create a mismatch, particularly if market conditions change quickly..
The types of properties currently listed versus those recently sold can differ significantly. An influx of higher-value homes newly listed can inflate asking price averages, for example, even if recent sales predominantly occurred among lower-value properties – and especially if a glut of sales recorded over the past 12 months had been at a lower value.
And again, lower priced, general-market properties, being more accessible to ‘average buyers’, tend to naturally shape those ‘average sold prices’ with their naturally quicker, more frequent churn.
It's not an uncommon practice for sellers to start with a more ambitious asking price. That opinion of the ‘average person on the street’ I mentioned earlier? Well, they do have a point!
Of course, ‘ambitious’ is perhaps a euphemism for ‘probably too high’, and therefore – if motivated (I hinted about this earlier, and I’ll come to that next), they may then gradually reduce the price until achieving a sale.
Whilst the final agreed sale might be very close to the final asking price – who knows, maybe even a little higher than asking – that price reduction journey from the original listing price can be substantial.
But it is the initial asking price that forms those asking price averages on data aggregator sites, and so it is that data that commentators and news outlets then report.
Motivated sellers typically price their properties more realistically from the outset, securing quick sales more quickly and at close to or even at their asking price.
Conversely, opportunistic sellers – those who feel inclined, or who are potentially even encouraged by an agent, to ‘take a punt’, will tend to inflate their asking prices. In such cases it is about selling ‘if it is worth it’, which might mean selling if a top price, or even a ‘better-than-market-value’ price can be achieved.
But the problem is, this practice can contribute significantly to the higher average listing prices we see, as such speculative listings rarely achieve the sale price they hope to.
The counter argument there of course is that ‘rarely’ also means ‘they occasionally do’, and therefore this type of practice is always going to be something that for some homeowners is worthwhile, but which we have to accept will impact the property market when it comes to average values.
To sum up, the apparent 28% gap between the average Richmond Upon Thames property price when sold versus the price for sale is not actually indicative of the price any given property sells for compared to the price it is listed for at the time. As I mentioned, our own figure is vastly, vastly closer – on average, just 1.5% off asking price at the point of sale.
Instead, this discrepancy is the result of various market dynamics and behaviours, coupled with the vagaries a system such as ours will throw up when it records asking prices in one way, at one point in time, but sold prices another way, and with a time lag thrown in to boot.
Understanding these nuances should provide clarity and reassurance to both buyers and sellers navigating our local Richmond Upon Thames property market.
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