Sarah faced gazundering when her buyers cut their agreed offer by £15,000 the day before contracts were exchanged. She and her family were already packing to move from a three-bedroom terrace to her parents’ four-bedroom detached house in the countryside.
Sarah and the £15,000 cut
£15,000 was the amount stripped from the agreed price after a phone call from Sarah’s estate agent, who said the buyers wanted to pay less after doing more research about the area. Sarah said, "It was awful, your heart just drops to your stomach" when the demand came through.
120 days is the average time it takes to complete after an offer is accepted in England and Wales, and that gap is where gazundering can happen because an offer is not legally binding until contracts are exchanged. One in three house sales fall through before exchange, which leaves sellers exposed after they have already committed time and money.
Legal fees in England and Wales
£400m is the yearly cost to sellers from sales falling through before exchange, while the wider economy loses £1.5bn, according to the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government. Sarah said, "I can't even begin to go through the financial consequences [if we lost the sale]," because she had already paid one set of legal fees and would have had to pay again for a new buyer.
£650 is the average amount planned reforms would save a first-time buyer, and those changes are also meant to cut the average completion time by four weeks. The Conveyancing Association is calling for those reforms to come in without delay instead of 2029 as planned.
Sarah’s buyers reversed course
Sarah put her house back on the market the same day she spoke to her dad and husband. The next day, she said her buyers "went running into the estate agent's office saying they were happy to proceed with the agreed sale price," after the lower offer had put her sale, legal fees and removal costs at risk.
Sarah’s case ends with a narrow but important turn: the price cut did not stick, but the pressure was real enough to force a same-day relisting and a scramble that many sellers in England and Wales would have to absorb while waiting through the exchange window.
