House sale fall throughs cost UK sellers £607.5m a year

BreezeMove estimates the cost of each failed sale to amount to £2,700 and, with 225,000 transactions falling through every year, the total lost amounts to £607.5m.

Reducing the rate of property transaction fall throughs by just 10% a year could therefore save UK home sellers as much as £60.75m a year.

Some of the most common reasons for transactions falling through include buyers changing their mind (34%), sellers pulling out due to the speed of the process (15%) and gazumping (10%).

Founder and CEO of BreezeMove, Phil Melia, commented: “As a nation, we’re obsessed with property and so the fact we still rely on such an archaic, protracted property selling process is a little mind-boggling really. There are currently a whole host of reasons that a property sale can fall through and while the long-term goal is to provide greater security for those transacting so that this can’t happen, reducing the number of current fall throughs in the short-term can help save home sellers a substantial amount of money.

"We believe a realistic and achievable goal is to reduce this annual rate of fall throughs by 10% by next year and if we can achieve even this small victory for UK home sellers, we could see a considerable saving.”