Property sale fall throughs cost UK buyers and sellers £880.4m in 2021

Property purchasing specialist, HBB Solutions, has revealed property transaction collapses cost UK homebuyers and sellers £880.4m in 2021, a £74m increase on the previous year.

HBB Solution analysed the number of property transactions to fall through on an annual basis, the cost of this collapse and how it compared to the previous year.

Previous research by HBB Solutions highlighted the nine most common reasons that may cause your property sale or purchase to fall through, with broken chains, survey issues, conveyancing delays, gazumping and a breakdown in negotiations all prone to scuppering a sale.

The average cost of this collapse is £2,700, with buyers and sellers incurring costs such as survey fees, conveyancing costs and the cost involved around certain mortgage arrangements.

With an estimated 326,091 transactions failing to make it over the line in 2021, HBB Solutions estimates that the nation’s buyers and sellers lost out on a huge £880.4m as a result.

While we’ve been enjoying a property market boom during the pandemic, the downside of such heightened market activity is that the estimated number of fall throughs has climbed by 9.2% year on year.

This means that the cost of these collapsed transactions has also increased, up by £74m in a single year.

Managing Director of HBB Solutions, Chris Hodgkinson, commented: “One in every five property transactions will unfortunately fail to make it over the line and not only is this extremely frustrating for those involved, but it can see buyers and sellers incur a considerable cost, having already forked out for requirements such as surveys and conveyancing costs.

Unfortunately an uplift in the number of transactions collapsing is the downside to the pandemic property market boom but there has been on silver lining to such a heightened level of demand.

We’ve seen those properties that have endured a collapse manage to secure a new buyer at a very fast pace and often for a higher price than they were originally due to sell for. While this doesn’t make the cost incurred any easier to stomach, it does mean that they can push on with their sale and minimise the delay in moving.”