Fall-throughs costing sellers £909m even before peak period

Fall throughs are costing sellers some £909m a year - and that’s even on recent muted sales figures.

Home Sale Pack has analysed residential fall-through data from property consultancy TwentyCi and measured it against the estimated cost of a collapsed sale, based on house price, adjusted for inflation and including likely legal costs.

The data reveals that in 2022, there were 312,770 fall-throughs on the UK residential property market. With each fall-through estimated to have cost the seller an average of £3,229, the total cost of fall-throughs was just over £1 billion for the year.

In 2023, higher bank rates meant that the average cost of a fall through increased by 4.3% to average £3,369.

Despite this increase, quieter market conditions and a drop in buyer activity levels resulted in the total number of fall-throughs seen in 2023 dropping by 13.8% to total 269,728.

As a result of this reduction in fall through volumes, the total cost of fall-throughs dropped by 10.1% in 2023 to sit at a total of £909m.

But with mortgage approvals now on the rise for five consecutive months in a row, Home Sale Pack claims that market activity is picking up. While a positive for the market as a whole, this surge in activity could well see the number and total cost of fall-throughs to rise once again.

A spokesperson for Home Sale Pack says: “Fall-through numbers for 2023 appear to show an improvement for the industry. Less fall-throughs would suggest a more efficient market, but we know that this isn’t really the case. Instead, the numbers are down because market activity slowed significantly during 2023, with the cost of living crisis and rising interest rates forcing many would-be buyers to postpone their searches and weather the storm.

“However, the Bank of England is now showing that mortgage approval numbers are on the rise … This means the real true test of our industry’s ability to keep fall-through numbers at a minimum is now arriving at our doorstep, and unless we make concerted efforts to improve the way the conveyancing and wider home selling process works, I suspect the data will not be pretty.”