‘My buyers dropped their offer by £15,000 the day before exchange’: Gazundering and how to avoid it

Gazundering is when a buyer lowers their agreed offer just before contracts are exchanged.

It puts a seller under pressure to accept the lower price or risk losing their sale and collapsing their property chain – potentially losing the house they want to buy.

It is possible because in England and Wales an offer is not legally binding until parties exchange contracts. Once an offer is accepted it takes an average of 120 days to complete. One in three house sales fall through before exchange.

This costs sellers £400m and the wider economy £1.5bn each year, according to the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government.

Planned government reforms would cut that time by four weeks and save the average first time buyer £650, it says.

After speaking to her dad and husband Sarah decided to put her house back on the market that same day.

The next day, her buyers “went running into the estate agent’s office saying they were happy to proceed with the agreed sale price”, she says.

“Gazundering is actually awful. 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 says gazundering is a small but growing problem.

“It’s not actually that big, it doesn’t happen very often [but] it’s started increasing though because of the change in the property market that’s made it a buyers’ market.”

There are more houses on the market than people looking to buy, she explained, which means sellers face stiffer competition, forcing them to lower prices.

The government has put plans in place to reform the house buying and selling market in England and Wales which would tackle issues like gazundering although at the moment the timetable for those reforms, external is by the end of the current parliament in 2029.

The Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government told the BBC: “We’re stopping gazundering by introducing legally binding agreements that prevent buyers from walking away at the last minute without a valid reason, with fines for those who do.”