Four stories today, three of them really one story wearing different hats: the maths behind a price tag. Octane Capital shows developers would rather sit on unsold new-build stock than cut prices, a Centre for Policy Studies analysis puts a number on what’s quietly built into that price, and Knight Frank’s latest prime London data shows a market where the incentive to hold rather than sell has finally run out. A fourth story, on second-home council tax in the South West, checks how far a tax rise alone can move a local market. Read together, they’re about who actually carries the risk right now — and it generally isn’t whoever set the asking price.
Why a developer would rather wait six months than cut the price
Octane Capital’s analysis of more than 1,100 live new-build listings across England found 25% have been on the market longer than three months, 13% — roughly one in eight — longer than six months, and 4% for over a year, as Property Industry Eye reports. Applied across England’s roughly 34,831 new-build listings, that suggests around 4,400 properties stuck past six months. Yet only 14.5% have actually had a price reduction. Octane’s Developer Sentiment Survey found 57% of developers are now less likely to break ground on new schemes during 2026, and 83% expect to lean on specialist finance to get through. CEO Jonathan Samuels is blunt: “Every discount comes straight off the bottom line and, after several years of planning, construction and rising build costs, protecting profitability has become more important than ever.”
My read: this is rational behaviour, not stubbornness. A housebuilder holding a completed unit pays finance costs every month it sits empty, but that’s cheaper than crystallising a lower value across a whole phase by cutting one plot’s price — a comparable sold below asking works against every other unit on the site. Developer exit finance makes the patience affordable: refinance the completed units, release capital for the next phase, and let the original prices stand while the clock runs. For a buyer, silence on price isn’t the same thing as a fair price.
If you’re looking at a new-build clearly marketed for months without a reduction, don’t read the absence of a cut as evidence the price is right — ask the sales office directly how long that specific plot has been listed, and treat six months or more as your opening for a serious offer. If you’re advising a small developer on phasing, Samuels’ own figures are the warning: nearly six in ten peers are already pulling back on starting new schemes rather than run this arithmetic twice.
The £55,000 a new-build price tag doesn’t itemise
An analysis by Alan Hibben for the Centre for Policy Studies, reported by the Daily Telegraph and picked up by the Negotiator, estimates that around £55,000 of a typical £450,000 new-build home in southern England reflects costs that never appear on a buyer’s completion statement: roughly £30,000 in planning obligations such as affordable-housing and infrastructure contributions, around £10,000 linked to biodiversity net gain, and the balance in planning fees and delay financing. Hibben’s framing is pointed: “Policy objectives for the country as a whole are being put on the backs of home buyers, rather than general taxation, so that the costs can be hidden and builders to blame, rather than politicians.”
My read: whatever you make of the politics, the mechanism is true and worth knowing cold if you value or advise on new-build stock. Section 106 contributions and biodiversity net gain costs are baked into land value and build cost long before a price board goes up, so they show up nowhere in a buyer’s pack — not the EPC, not the warranty, not the property information form. A buyer comparing a new-build price against a resale on a like-for-like basis isn’t comparing like for like; one price has tens of thousands of pounds of planning-driven cost invisibly built in.
If you’re advising a buyer weighing new-build against resale on value, raise this explicitly — it isn’t a reason to avoid new-build, but the asking-price premium over an equivalent resale isn’t all specification and warranty. If you’re a small developer working out whether a scheme still stacks, get Section 106 and BNG costs modelled early rather than folded into a general contingency — on Hibben’s numbers they can be a fifth of a plot’s value on their own.
Eleven years of prime London losses, and what it isn’t telling you
Knight Frank’s latest prime central London data, covered by Property Industry Eye, shows average prices down 3.3% in the year to July — the 39th consecutive month of annual decline — and 23% below their mid-2015 peak. A property bought for £1m in mid-2015 is worth around £770,000 today; adjusted for 42% cumulative inflation over the same period, that’s closer to a 46% real-terms fall. Exchanges are up 14% across London and 3% in prime central London over the three months to July, though both remain below their five-year average. Knight Frank’s Tom Bill: “The prime London property market is having a better summer than it did in 2025, but that’s not a particularly high bar.” Stuart Bailey adds that buyers “previously unwilling to consider refurbishment projects” are now doing so, given how short exceptional stock has become.
My read: eleven years of stamp duty surcharges, non-dom changes and political noise have done what no single policy could — made the top of the London market behave less like an asset class and more like an ordinary, slow-moving one, where buyers negotiate hard and sellers who need to move accept it. It doesn’t translate directly to the South East — prime central London runs on cash buyers and currency effects the commuter belt doesn’t share — but the refurbish-rather-than-move pattern Bailey describes is worth watching wherever good local stock has genuinely dried up.
If a client is weighing a purchase against extending their current home because nothing suitable is coming up locally, get a condition survey on the existing property before committing capital either way, so the decision rests on the building’s actual condition, not an assumption that moving is the harder option.
A tax rise that moved stock but not the market
Analysis from data firm LandSale, reported by Landlord Today, finds that more than a year after councils gained the power to charge up to a 100% council tax premium on second homes, transaction growth in the areas most affected by holiday lets hasn’t caught up with the national average. England overall saw transactions rise 4.4% in 2024-25; Cornwall managed 3.7% and Devon just 1.5%, despite the South West accounting for 30.2% of LandSale’s tracked holiday-let listings. LandSale’s own conclusion is measured: “There’s evidence that higher council tax charges have encouraged more holiday let owners to bring properties to market, but increasing supply is only one part of the equation… the data suggests the policy has yet to translate into stronger market performance.”
My read: this is a useful check against a specific piece of received wisdom — that taxing second homes out of an area automatically reinvigorates the market for ordinary buyers. It gets the first half right, supply has genuinely increased, but a holiday cottage coming onto the market doesn’t automatically become a first-time buyer’s home; it competes against the same limited local incomes and mortgage affordability that were already constraining the market. Sussex and Kent coastal wards with their own second-home concentrations should treat this as a caution rather than a template.
If you own a holiday let and are weighing whether the premium makes selling worthwhile, don’t assume a stronger local market waiting on the other side — set price and timeline expectations against the area’s actual transaction data, not the theory behind the policy. If you sit on a South East authority considering the same premium, LandSale’s data is worth citing in any consultation response that assumes supply alone fixes affordability.
What I’d actually do
- Looking at a new-build sat on the market for months without a cut? Treat the absence of a reduction as the developer’s negotiating position, not a fair price — ask how long that specific plot has actually been listed before you offer.
- Comparing new-build against resale on value? Roughly £40,000–£55,000 of a southern new-build’s price is Section 106 and biodiversity net gain cost baked in before marketing starts — it isn’t specification, and a resale comparable won’t carry it.
- Weighing a move against refurbishing because nothing suitable is on the market? Get a condition survey on your existing property first — the scarcity-driven logic showing up in prime London holds outside it too.
- Own a holiday let in a second-home council tax premium area? Don’t assume the local market has strengthened just because supply has risen — check actual transaction data before pricing to sell.
If today’s notes have you weighing new-build against resale, thinking through a scheme’s Section 106 and BNG costs, or working out what a holiday let is worth to sell right now, the practice offers full building surveys and Buy to Let Surveys across the South East. Get in touch.
Small print. General commentary, not advice for your specific circumstances — regulations, schemes and deadlines change, and your property is not the average property. Sources linked were accurate when read on 12 August 2026.