Slow sales progression pushes fall-through rate up to 10-year high

The number of house sales falling through pre-completion during the first quarter of 2018 reached its highest level for a decade – with slow sales progression being blamed as a key contributing factor. 

The fall-through rate from 1st January to the end of March 2018 hit 38.8%, according to Quick Move Now, a quick buy firm, which has monitored fall-throughs for many years. This marks a further increase on the 34.9% of fall-throughs seen in Q1 of 2017.

Slow sales progression is being highlighted as a key factor in the sheer volume of unsuccessful property sales, as Quick Move Now says “46% were attributed to the buyer changing their mind or the seller feeling that the sale was not progressing quickly enough”. 

Additional factors attributed to the high fall-through rate include: 

> 23% fell through because either the buyer or seller wanted to renegotiate after the initial deal had been agreed.

> More than 10% fell through because the property survey highlighted issues that caused the buyer to pull out of the sale.

> 11.5% of sales fell through because the buyer was unable to secure sufficient funding from their mortgage provider.

> 8% of failed house sales were the victim of a collapsed property chain.

Jon Horton, Product Director – mio, comments: 

“46% of all fall-throughs being attributed to slow sales progression is alarmingly high, however we all know that poor communication jeopardizes a buyer’s position. 

PropTech companies, such as tmgroup, are rising to the challenge to help agents and their customers by developing technology that connects the transactional parties together – such as the mio app fast-becoming the customers’ choice to see the progress of their home move, as well as send and receive messages with their agent at their convenience. 

The success of this is already being seen in the pilot of our mio solution, which has not only helped estate agents to win more business, but has helped to raise the bar in terms of sales progression and customer engagement throughout the transaction.”