General News

28% OF PROPERTIES IN THE UK NOW FALL THROUGH*

15-August-2005

Being in a chain can be a nail biting experience and with the property market experiencing some very unsure buyers at the moment, it’s a sad fact that on average nearly a third of all property sales in the UK will experience a fall through on the sale of their property. This cannot only be disappointing but in many cases may also result in unnecessary delays, in some cases jeopardising the purchase of your dream property.
 
Waterfords however are delighted to boast that in the first six months of 2005, just 5% of their clients were unfortunate enough to experience a fall through on their property, well below the national average.

So what makes Waterfords different? David Starling, Director of Residential Sales explains;

“At Waterfords we pride ourselves on the thorough and committed levels of service we offer all our clients throughout the sale of their property, to minimise the risk of sales falling through.”

“Firstly, our initial vetting stage of a potential buyer is very thorough. We will find out about their financial position, speak to the associated financial advisors, lenders and banks, then if they are selling a property, we will ascertain just how serious they are, by contacting every agent and solicitor in the chain and if we feel uncomfortable about the information given, will even speak to the buyers to verify the situation. If we feel a buyer is unreliable we will not recommend a client proceeds with them and if we think that the chain of sales behind is too long or has a history of fall throughs we will recommend continuing to look for a buyer with a shorter chain.

Once an offer has been agreed, we will then check that a buyer has removed their name from other agents' mailing lists and stopped actively looking for properties.“

David concludes, “Of course we are never able to guarantee or eliminate the possibility of a sale falling though, but our figures show that there is no doubt that by going that extra mile for all our clients we can considerably reduce the risk of a cancelled sale.”


* Statistic recorded in the report conducted by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, 1999. The figure relates to all transactions that failed between offer to exchange.

The report was the largest study conducted into the home buying and selling process in the UK and is due to be repeated in 2006.

email: philippals@waterfords.co.uk