Fall-through costs set to rise after slower 2023 – warning

Fall-throughs are costing home sellers an estimated £909m a year, according to new analysis.

Upfront information provider Home Sale Pack has analysed residential fall-through data from TwentyCI and measured it against the estimated cost of a collapsed sale, based on source value versus house price, adjusted for inflation and including likely legal costs, to understand how much money UK home sellers are losing due to fall-throughs. 

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 £1bn 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 £909 million. 

Ruth Beeton, co-founder of Home Sale Pack, warns that increasing market activity this year could see the number and total cost of fall-throughs to rise once again.

She said: “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, with strong growth over the last five months. This suggests that market activity is about to surge as more and more buyers decide to revisit their buying ambitions. 

“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.”