Three quarters into the year, the pattern is consistent across all six of our markets: fewer houses instructed, longer searches, and buyers who know precisely what they want.

Fewer instructions

Owners are not selling unless something in their life requires it. The discretionary seller, the one who moves because the moment feels right, has largely stepped back. That has thinned supply at the top without doing much to prices.

Longer searches, better outcomes

Our average search has run about seven months this year against five last year. That is not a failure of supply so much as a change in buyer behaviour: people are prepared to wait for the right house rather than settle for the available one.

The houses that have sold quickly were, almost without exception, the ones that were correctly priced on the first day. Nothing has changed there, and nothing ever does.