It’s the number of homes changing hands rather than their price that’s bearing the brunt of the slowdown say research chiefs at lettings agency Hamptons.

With fewer homes coming onto the market, buyers are facing less choice than they were a couple of months ago, which in turn is putting a floor under prices, according to Aneisha Beveridge, Head of Research at Hamptons.

She says average home sold in England and Wales last month achieved 99.1 per cent of its final asking price, up from 98.5 per cent in August.  

This meant that sellers achieved closer to their asking price than in any month since October last year.  While both mortgaged and cash buyers paid closer to the asking price, the biggest uplift came from those reliant on borrowing.  

As the number of lenders cutting rates gained momentum, buyers with the largest deposits were once again able to lock in sub five per cent rates.  

More affordable homes, where buyers are most likely to use a mortgage, saw a bigger monthly improvement in the ratio of asking to achieved prices than the top end of the market, says the agency.

The share of homes coming onto the market and selling within a week also rose in September – 9.5 per cent of all homes that came onto the market across Britain went under offer within a week, up from 6.2 per cent in August and 7.0 per cent during the same time last year.

Despite this improvement, the average home that sold last month had been on the market for 57 days, making it the slowest September to sell a home in Britain since 2012.  

Hamptons says this reflects the fact that some homes that had been on the market for a while went on to sell last month. One-bed homes saw the smallest year-on-year increase in the time it took to sell (five days longer) whereas it took around a month longer to sell the average four bed home.