Am I competing with more sellers than usual right now?

Two sets of numbers landed in the past fortnight and they pull in opposite directions. Rightmove counted more homes available to buy than at almost any July in the past 12 years. RICS counted the fewest new sellers coming to market in over a year.

For anyone selling this summer, the gap between those two numbers is the story. It tells you who you are actually competing against, and it is not who most sellers assume.

How many homes am I actually up against?

Available stock is the number of homes sitting on the market at a given moment, not the number of new ones added. Rightmove's July 2026 index put that stock close to a 12-year high for the time of year, although it is 1% below the same point last year. Buyer activity is running 6% behind last year.

New instructions are the separate measure that matters to you. A net balance is the share of surveyors reporting a rise minus the share reporting a fall, so the -23% RICS recorded for new instructions in June 2026 means far more surveyors saw fewer homes coming to market than saw more.

Why are fewer people putting their homes up for sale?

RICS also reported market appraisals at a net balance of -22% in June 2026. A market appraisal is the visit where an agent values a home for an owner who is thinking about selling, so it is the earliest signal of what will reach the market in the months ahead. Both measures falling together points to sellers holding back rather than agents losing listings to each other.

• Owners who watched asking prices soften through the spring are waiting to see whether the autumn is stronger.
• Anyone who tried to sell earlier in the year and did not find a buyer is now sitting on the market rather than adding to it.
• Buyer demand is weak but improving. RICS put new buyer enquiries at -29% in June 2026, the least negative reading since February.

Does a crowded market mean I have to drop my price?

Not automatically. It means the price has to be right at the point you launch, because a busy market punishes a wrong opening price far more than a quiet one does.

The average asking price fell 1.0% in July 2026, and Rightmove's own commentary attributes that to sellers pricing to attract summer buyers rather than holding out. Those are the homes moving. The homes that launched high in March and have been reduced twice since are the competition you are being compared against, and they make a well judged new listing look sharp.

• A new listing gets its strongest run of viewings in the first two to three weeks. That window is spent, not saved, if the price is wrong.
• Buyers scanning a portal see your price next to homes that have been sitting for months. Being the fresh, sensible one is the advantage you have.
• Homes that sold in June took 62 days on average to find a buyer, so plan around a longer summer than the spring market suggested.

You are not competing with every home on the market. You are competing with the handful a buyer shortlists after an evening of scrolling.

What should I do differently in a market like this?

• Ask every agent who values your home what evidence sits behind their number, and which recent local sales they are using.
• Ask how many of their own listings in the past six months sold at or near the asking price, and how many were reduced.
• Agree the launch price and the review date together, so a reduction is a plan rather than a panic.
• Get the photography, floorplan and description finished before the listing goes live, because the first fortnight is the one that counts.
• Compare valuations side by side before you pick anyone. A number on its own tells you very little without the strategy attached to it.

ValuQ gives UK homeowners free, side-by-side property valuations from competing local estate agents. In a market with this much stock on it, the agent who reads your street correctly is worth more than the agent who quotes the biggest number, and seeing their answers together is how you tell them apart.