Why do so many property sales fall through and what can we do to prevent this happening? From June to December 2021 in one small postcode area in England, there was an average of 21.5 sales that fell apart every month. In 2022 so far there have been more than 50,000 fall throughs across the country. This is an average figure and isn't unusually high, but is it something that could be prevented? There are various reasons why sales fall apart, some buyers or sellers may change their minds, there isn't a lot anyone can do about that sadly. Sometimes issues come up in surveys or searches so buyers decide they can no longer proceed with that purchase, could more information given at the time of marketing the property help alleviate those issues? Yes, it could. A lot of the time it is due to agents over pricing homes purely to get that home on the market with them, they give the sellers false hope of achieving a price that is way over the odds for that home in that location. This falls down when the mortgage valuation survey is done and the property is down valued because the surveyor doesn't have comparable information sufficient enough to back up the agents over inflated price. Should this happen, no, but it does, every day. When thinking about selling your home, always select an agent that you feel comfortable with and who you feel is giving you the best advice rather than the highest price just to get you on the market.
What else could be done to prevent fall throughs? More information about the property being available to potential buyers at the time of putting the property on the market would be helpful. When a property is sold at auction a legal pack is available to every interested party, this is organised by the sellers and contains searches etc that means a buyer can consult their conveyancer and go through the legal pack and make an informed decision on whether that property is the right one for them or not. Potentially sellers could arrange to have a survey done on their property that could be made available to potential buyers. Would sellers object to this? If it meant that they didn't lose their buyer then why would they? Also, when they are buying on, their seller would have the survey available for their onward purchase, nobody loses out. Somehow, at some point, the way the house selling process works has to change, at the moment transactions are taking far too long to go through, far too many people are losing money when a sale falls apart and all of this could be prevented by switching around what we are doing and how we do it. A little more hard work done upfront could save a lot more hard work and heartache further down the line. Let me know your thoughts.......