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Bargain-hunting home buyers have caused a spike in “gazundering”, a tactic when a buyer makes a lower offer at the eleventh hour to force the seller to cut a property’s price.

Falling mortgage rates push up demand but it remains a buyers’ market. Buyers negotiated discounts on 50 per cent of properties sold in 2023. Sellers of UK residential property are expected to rein in lofty price expectations this year as buyers remain cautious despite falling mortgage rates, according to agents and housing market experts.

Prime buying agency Black Brick has seen cash buyers double this year.

Data from the buying agent shows 66% of clients have bought with cash this year, compared with 34% in 2022.

The property and interiors trends we will be taking into 2024, and the ones we will leave firmly behind us.

Sellers in London and the South East are being forced to accept offers of an average of £25,000 below their asking price, according to Zoopla’s latest House Price Index.

2023 has been yet another interesting, and somewhat turbulent, year for the prime central London residential market. 

Minutes from Parliament at Westminster, 9 Millbank used to be the headquarters of Imperial Chemical Industries, formerly the largest manufacturer in Britain, which once made products such as the acrylic plastic Perspex.

Buyers are sitting on their hands waiting. Waiting to catch that mythical sweet spot between interest rates falling and property prices rising.

In the early summer the sun was shining, the air was scented with lilac and Kam Babaee was full of optimism when he put his former family home on to the market for £7.95 million.

Owning buy-to-let property can offer a range of benefits, including a passive income and the potential for capital growth. And for those with property in London’s prized ‘golden postcodes’, there’s also the added allure of status. 

Who would you trust with the biggest investment you’ll ever make; the Labour party or the Conservatives? A year on from Liz Truss’s mini-budget, with mortgage interest rates of 6.5 per cent biting into incomes, it feels as though the connection between politics and the housing market has never been stronger.

Demand may have fallen off a cliff during the pandemic, but 2023 has seen apartments mount a resurgence in PCL, accounting for a growing share of sales as lockdown memories fade: 44% of £5mn+ transactions across the capital in the year to last month, up from 40% last year and just 28% in 2021.