Thousands of UK homeowners are pricing themselves out of the property market by setting unrealistic asking prices that no longer reflect buyer demand, a London estate agent has warned.

Josh Endacott, estate agent at 1st Avenue, argued that many sellers were still pricing homes as though the pandemic property boom had continued, despite buyers now having the widest choice of homes in more than a decade.

"The data paints a really troubling picture for sellers who are going to market with inflated expectations," Endacott said.

"We are seeing a market where buyers have more choice than at any point in over a decade, and yet too many sellers are still pricing as if it were 2022 or 2021, when demand was at its absolute peak, and buyers were competing fiercely for every available property."

His comments followed recent Zoopla analysis of more than two million property listings, which found that 44% of homes listed for sale over the past three years failed to find a buyer. Sales agreed over the four weeks to 21 June were 7% lower than a year earlier, while buyer demand fell 15% year-on-year as prospective movers delayed decisions amid rising borrowing costs and uncertainty over the political and economic outlook.

Zoopla's house price index (HPI) also found that 41.8% of sales were agreed within the first four weeks of listing, while the likelihood of selling dropped sharply after 12 weeks on the market.

“What makes this particularly damaging is the stigma that builds around a property that has been sitting on the market for months. Estate agents say many homeowners are making the mistake of basing their asking price on what they need for their next purchase, or what similar properties sold for during the peak of the market, rather than what current buyer demand can support," Endacott said.

He added: "We see sellers making the same mistake repeatedly. People base their asking price on what they need for their next move, or on what a neighbour got three years ago, rather than what the current market will actually support. Our advice is always to go to market at the right price from day one. "

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