Chain-free homes command asking price premiums of 3.9% over homes on sale with buyer-chains – and in one location at least, the premium is over 7%.

Upfront information provider Home Sale Pack has analysed asking price data for chain-free and non-chain-free homes on the market in 10 major English cities.

The research shows that the average price for a chain-free home on sale currently is £259,791.

This is some £9,739 more expensive than the wider average asking price of £250,053, creating a premium of 3.9%.

This rises as high as 7.2% in Bradford, West Yorkshire, where the average asking price for a chain-free home is £186,472 against the non-chain-free norm of £174,016.

Liverpool’s chain-free asking price of £200,836 is 7% compared to the city’s wider average asking price, and in Manchester the premium hits 6.5%

London’s 4.5% premium is the equivalent of £23,782 – the largest across all 10 cities – followed by Newcastle (4.1%), Leeds (3.8%), and Leicester (2.5%).

The smallest premiums were found in Bristol (1%), Sheffield (1.2%), and Birmingham (1.5%).

A spokesperson for Home Sale Pack says: “Property chains are the stuff of buyer and seller nightmares. They take an already complex and stressful sales process and put control of one person’s fate into the hands of another person, or even another ten people.

“So it’s little wonder that homes free of a chain have an increased desirability and can often command a higher asking price. But, for the most part, chains are unavoidable.

“There’s no way of changing the fact that your typical house buyer needs to sell their current home in order to fund the purchase of a new home. So if we can’t get rid of chains, the only option is to improve the homebuying process so that it is faster, more efficient, and more reliable, thus reducing the chances that a sale somewhere in the chain will collapse and have a devastating domino effect for so many others.”