What a house sale falling through costs and how to relist

Until exchange of contracts, a house sale in England and Wales is not legally binding. The buyer can withdraw the day before exchange and owe you nothing, and you owe them nothing in return. What a collapsed sale costs you is the money already spent on your own onward move, plus the weeks lost, and both are worth counting before you decide how to relist. This is general information rather than legal advice.

What a collapsed sale actually costs

Most estate agents work on no sale, no fee terms, so the agency bill usually dies with the sale. The losses instead sit on the purchase you were making at the same time — the survey, searches and mortgage costs that don't carry over to a new one. Add those up and a collapsed purchase typically wastes well over £1,000, before you count the weeks lost. Rightmove's research puts the national bill at over £900 million a year in lost agency fees and stamp duty, across the roughly 6% of sales that collapse for good rather than eventually completing.

That figure is easy to reconstruct from the individual costs. A RICS Level 2 survey on the home you were buying typically costs £600 to £700, searches run £250 to £450, and a mortgage valuation or arrangement fee can add several hundred more. None of it transfers to a new purchase, because surveys and searches relate to one property, and searches go stale within months anyway.

Your own conveyancer is the variable. Some firms bill for work done when a sale aborts, while others offer no sale, no fee protection if you agreed it when you instructed them. Read your terms of engagement before assuming either. For next time, home buyer protection insurance exists too — it refunds some survey and legal costs if a purchase collapses, for a modest one-off premium.

Why sales collapse, and when

The usual causes are mortgage problems, including the lender valuing the property below the agreed price, survey findings the buyer will not absorb, a break further down the chain, and a change in the buyer's circumstances. Most failures cluster between weeks two and six, around the survey and the mortgage offer. A buyer who has gone quiet past that stage is the one to chase weekly through your agent.

Keep the legal work alive

Sellers routinely throw away work they have already paid for. Your solicitor's contract pack, meaning the draft contract, official copies of the title and your completed property information forms, survives the collapse intact. Ask the firm to keep the file open rather than closing it. A relisted sale reuses nearly all of that work, so the pack can go out to the next buyer's solicitor on day one and save two or three weeks.

If the buyer pulled out over a survey finding, deal with it before you relist. Get a contractor's quote for the defect, then either fix it or disclose it with the quote attached and price accordingly. The next buyer's survey will find the same problem, and a second renegotiation from a weakened position costs more than an honest adjustment at the start.

Relisting tactics that work

Go back to market within days, not weeks. Ask your agent to phone the underbidders from the first launch before doing anything else. They already know the house, they bid close to your price once, and some of them will still be looking.

Then qualify the replacement buyer harder than the first. Ask for proof of funds or a mortgage agreement in principle before the sale is agreed, and get their chain position in writing. It is also reasonable to ask that the survey is booked within two weeks of acceptance, which flushes out buyers who are not serious. Our separate article on how long it takes to sell a house sets out the timetable you are trying to beat.

A relisted sale with a live contract pack, a priced defect and a qualified buyer usually completes faster than the first attempt ever moved. If the legal side is the part you are restarting, you can compare conveyancing quotes from regulated firms in a couple of minutes.