Sarah was packing boxes, excited to move her family from the three-bedroom terrace they had renovated to her parents’ four-bed detached home in the countryside. The next morning, the sale was meant to exchange contracts. Instead, her “befuddled” estate agent called with bad news: the buyers had dropped their agreed offer by £15,000.
“It was awful, your heart just drops to your stomach,” said Sarah, who asked not to use her real name.
“Buyer slashes house offer by £15,000 day before exchange in growing gazundering trend.”
She had become the latest victim of gazundering – a rare but growing problem in the property market in England and Wales, according to the Conveyancing Association. The practice, in which a buyer lowers their offer just before contracts are exchanged, puts sellers under immense pressure to accept the lower price or risk losing the sale and collapsing the entire chain. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, an offer is not legally binding until contracts are exchanged – a process that takes on average 120 days. One in three sales falls 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.
For Sarah, the choice was brutal. Accepting the lower offer would leave her out of pocket, but refusing meant losing the sale and paying twice for legal fees and removal costs. “I can’t even begin to go through the financial consequences [if we lost the sale],” she said.
After speaking to her father and husband, she decided to put the house back on the market that same day. The next morning, her buyers “went running into the estate agent’s office saying they were happy to proceed with the agreed sale price”.
The Conveyancing Association is now calling for government reforms aimed at tackling gazundering and other buying and selling issues to be brought in “without delay” instead of 2029 as planned. Planned reforms would cut the time to complete by four weeks and save the average first-time buyer £650, the government says.
“Gazundering is actually awful,” Sarah said. “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.”
Beth Rudolf from the Conveyancing Association described gazundering as a small but growing problem. Whether the government will heed the call to act sooner remains to be seen.