Goodbye gazumping: London sales market now trails the rest of country

In stark contrast with the sealed bids and rapacious gazumping of the past, London is now the region in the UK where home-owners have the lowest chance of finding a buyer.

That’s despite the sale rate across the country being the highest in a decade, with 68 per cent of homes put on the market in the past year finding a buyer.

In London, however, only 48 per cent of homes for sale sold between June 2020 and June 2021 as buyers fled the capital in a race for space.

The report, from Rightmove, found high-cost boroughs Westminster (22 per cent) Kensington & Chelsea (25 per cent) and Camden (28 per cent) had the lowest sale rate in the country, with the rest of the bottom 10 also in London.