Selling when your sale has fallen through

Almost never. In England and Wales neither side is committed until exchange of contracts. Before that point a buyer can walk away without giving a reason, without notice, and without owing you anything, including your solicitor's abortive fees. The one exception is a reservation agreement, where the buyer put down a deposit of roughly £500 to £1,000 when the offer was agreed. If you had one and they pulled out without good reason, you keep that deposit. Ask your solicitor whether anything you signed covers it.

Common enough that it isn't a reflection on you or your house. Q1 2026 figures from Quick Move Now put the UK fall-through rate at about 22.5%. OnTheMarket and Reeds Rains put it nearer 25.8% for the same period. That is roughly one in four agreed sales collapsing before exchange. Survey problems drove 37.5% of them, the single biggest cause. These figures move every quarter, so check the latest published data if you need a current number.

It depends how far things had got. Your solicitor charges for the work they did, so an abortive file usually runs between £500 and £1,000 once searches and enquiries were under way, and a good deal less if it fell over early. An EPC costs £60 to £120 and stays valid for ten years, so it carries straight into your next sale. If your agent works on a no sale, no fee basis you owe them nothing, but check what you signed. The buyer's survey was their cost, not yours. Ask your solicitor for a written breakdown.

Look at how they handled the buyer before you decide. A good agent will have checked the buyer's mortgage agreement in principle and their position in the chain before recommending you accept. If that didn't happen, the same thing can happen again. Relisting with the same agent costs you nothing and is quickest to arrange. Switching means reading your contract first, because sole agency agreements usually have a tie-in and a notice period. Either way, ask the next agent to prove the buyer's funding before you take the house off the market.

Treat silence as a warning, not a delay. The signs of a sale in real trouble are a buyer who has stopped answering their own solicitor, searches that have expired with nobody agreeing to refresh them, a mortgage offer that has lapsed with no update, or their own sale collapsing without them confirming they still want to go ahead. Ask your solicitor to write formally, requesting written confirmation that the buyer intends to proceed, with a clear deadline. If the deadline passes with no reply, you can treat the sale as withdrawn and move on.

A little, and it is worth being honest about it. Buyers and agents can see how long a property has been listed and whether the price has moved. A second listing invites the question of what the survey found. You can get ahead of it by having the issue quoted or fixed, and by telling the next buyer up front. If the property has been listed twice already, or the problem is one a lender won't accept, a sale that doesn't depend on a mortgage removes the question entirely.

With another mortgaged buyer, quite possibly. Survey problems drove 37.5% of Q1 2026 fall-throughs, and the same report will come back on the next survey unless the work is done. Damp, structural movement, subsidence, knotweed and non-standard construction are the usual culprits, and lenders react to them, not just buyers. We don't rely on a mortgage survey, so condition doesn't put our purchase at risk. We look at the property, price it as it stands, and buy it that way.

We complete in 7 to 28 days once we have agreed a price, and the fastest we have done is 7 days. There is no mortgage lender, no survey down-valuation and no onward purchase behind us, so the things that usually break a sale aren't in the way. If you need longer, because you are still finding somewhere to move to, we work to your date instead.

Yes, and this is one of the more common reasons people call us. We buy your property and you become a chain free buyer on the place you want, which is a much stronger position to negotiate from. We can also complete and let you stay on for an agreed period while you finish your own purchase. Tell us the date you are working to and we will fit around it rather than the other way round.

Possibly, so read the agreement before you agree anything with us. Most sole agency contracts have a tie-in period, a notice period, and a clause about buyers they introduced. Ask the agent in writing when you are free to sell elsewhere. Once that is clear, we can put a written offer to you the same day, valid for 14 days.

No, they work quite differently. At auction you pay entry and commission fees, the price isn't known until the day, and completion is normally fixed at 28 days whether that suits you or not. With us the figure is agreed in writing before you commit, there are no fees taken off it, and you choose the completion date. Auction can beat us on price when a property attracts competing bidders. It is worth comparing both rather than assuming.

It helps, and nothing you say will put us off. If a survey turned something up, showing us the report often speeds things up, because it answers questions we would otherwise ask. If the buyer simply changed their mind, that tells us the property is fine and the buyer wasn't. Either way we would rather know at the start than find it during conveyancing, and we would rather give you an honest answer up front than an offer we later have to move.