Sarah was packing boxes in the terraced house her family had outgrown, excited about the move to a four-bedroom countryside home. Then the phone rang. It was her estate agent, sounding “befuddled”. The buyers of her house had just dropped their agreed offer by £15,000 — the day before contracts were to be exchanged.
“Your heart just drops to your stomach,” says Sarah, who asked that her real name not be used.
“Buyer drops offer by £15,000 day before exchange, leaving family scrambling to save sale.”
She had fallen victim to gazundering, a rare but growing problem in the property market in England and Wales, according to the Conveyancing Association. The practice occurs when a buyer lowers their offer just before contracts are exchanged, putting the seller under immense pressure: accept less or risk losing the entire chain, including the home they intend to buy.
For Sarah, her husband and their two children, the sale of their three-bedroom terrace — which they had renovated — and the purchase of her parents’ four-bedroom detached house in the countryside had been going smoothly. Then came the bad news. Their buyers claimed they had done “more research about the area” and would now pay £15,000 less than the agreed price.
“I can’t even begin to go through the financial consequences [if we lost the sale],” Sarah says. Accepting the lower offer would leave them out of pocket. Refusing would trigger costs too: “We had already paid one set of legal fees but would have had to pay again if we needed a new buyer. We’d also paid the removal fees already and would have to pay again if we cancelled the moving date.”
In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, an offer is not legally binding until contracts are exchanged, typically 120 days after acceptance. One in three sales fall through before that point, costing sellers £400m and the wider economy £1.5bn each year, according to the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government. Planned government reforms — which the Conveyancing Association says should be brought in “without delay” instead of 2029 — aim to cut completion time by four weeks and save the average first-time buyer £650.
After speaking to her dad and husband, Sarah decided to put the house back on the market that same day. The next day, her buyers “went running into the estate agent’s office saying they were happy to proceed with the agreed sale price”.
“Gazundering is actually awful,” Sarah says. “It’s not just a business deal. It’s my children’s home and the fact that nothing’s been done about it is ridiculous.”
The Conveyancing Association’s Beth Rudolf says gazundering remains a small but …