Asking price vs sold price: what homes go for

You are looking at a number on a screen and trying to work out whether it is real. That is the whole problem. The listing says £425,000. Nothing on the page tells you where that figure came from, who chose it, or whether anyone has ever paid it.

Here is the number that should reframe how you read it. In the first three months of 2026, the average home sold for 3.5% below its asking price — £18,800 below the original advertised figure. Zoopla also ran a survey of sellers: of those who found a buyer, 52.8% had cut their asking price to do it.¹

More than half of the sellers in Zoopla’s survey who found a buyer had cut first. The asking price is not a fact about the house — it is an opening position.

Where the number actually comes from

An asking price is set by an estate agent who was competing for the instruction. Usually two or three agents visit, each gives the seller a figure, and the seller picks one. Guess which figure tends to win.

That is not a conspiracy. It is just how the incentive runs. The agent is paid by the seller, on completion, as a percentage. Suggesting the highest number is how you get in the door. Reducing it later is a conversation for week eight.

None of that makes the agent dishonest. It makes the asking price a negotiating anchor rather than evidence. Evidence is what someone actually paid, for something comparable, recently, nearby.

What evidence looks like

Sold prices are public. HM Land Registry publishes the completed price of residential sales sold for value and registered in England and Wales, in the Price Paid Data. It is free to look at.² That is a real transaction: two parties, a mortgage lender, a solicitor, money moved.

Good comparable evidence has four things going for it:

Recent. Sales in the last six to twelve months carry far more weight than sales from 2022.
Close. Same street beats same postcode beats same town. A quarter of a mile can be two different markets.
Similar size. Not “3-bed” — actual square footage. A 950 sq ft three-bed and a 1,300 sq ft three-bed are not the same product.
Similar type and condition. A refurbished terrace and a probate sale on the same road are not the same product, and the gap between them can be large.

Convert the comparables to £ per square foot, then apply that range to the floor area of the home you are looking at. You get a range, not a point. That range is your reference. The asking price is a separate number that may or may not sit inside it.

Four things on the listing that tell you where you stand

You do not need software to do a first pass. You need to read the page properly.

1. Listing history. Most portals show when a property was first listed and whether the price has changed. A home listed in March at £450,000 and now showing £425,000 has already told you the first number was fiction. It may also be telling you the second one is.

2. Days on the market. In a normal market a correctly priced home in a decent area attracts offers in a few weeks. Something that has sat for four months is either priced above what buyers will pay, or it has a problem the photographs are not showing. Both are worth knowing before you offer.

3. Relisting. Watch for a property that disappears and comes back as a “new” listing with a fresh date. The counter resets on the portal. It does not reset in reality. If the same photographs appear under a different agent, it has been on the market longer than the page admits.

4. £ per square foot against sold prices in the same postcode. This is the one that does the real work. Take the asking price, divide by the floor area from the EPC or the floorplan, and compare it to what actually completed nearby. Say the listing is at £480 per sq ft and recent sales on the same streets sit between £390 and £430. You have found the gap. It might be justified — a loft conversion, a south-facing garden, a genuinely better street. But now you are asking a specific question instead of a vague one.

Where this gets less tidy

Sold data lags. A sale that completes in September might not appear in the Land Registry record for weeks or months — registration typically takes between two weeks and two months, and the two most recent months of the data are always incomplete.² The price was agreed months before that. So sold evidence describes a market that is a little behind the one you are standing in. In a rising market, comps understate. In a falling one, they flatter.

Floor areas are not always right. EPC data is the usual source, and it is measured by an assessor to a standard that can disagree with the floorplan by a meaningful margin. Two figures that differ by 10% will move your £ per sq ft by 10%.

And plenty of homes are priced correctly. A well-run agent with a realistic seller and a good property in a tight market will price it to sell, and it will sell. If your comparables and the asking price agree, that is a useful signal too — it means the asking price and the sold evidence are telling you the same thing. That is a different situation from a gap you cannot explain.

The point is not that asking prices are always inflated. The point is that you have no way of knowing which kind you are looking at until you check.

What to do with a gap

For example, if your evidence puts a home in a £395,000–£420,000 range and it is on at £450,000, you have three readings. The seller is optimistic. The property has something your comparables do not capture. Or your comparables are wrong.

Work out which before you decide anything. Look at the ones that sold closest and most recently. Check whether they had the extension, the parking, the corner plot. If nothing explains the difference, then the difference is the seller’s opening position, and on Zoopla’s survey, more than half the sellers who ended up with a buyer had moved off their opening number first.

You are not obliged to negotiate. You are obliged, to yourself, to know the size of the gap before you commit to it.

Check any listing free

Sources

Zoopla, Half of UK homes aren’t selling, 14 May 2026 — https://business.zoopla.co.uk/why-half-of-uk-homes-arent-selling
HM Land Registry, About the price paid data — scope, exclusions and registration lag. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/about-the-price-paid-data