Being gazumped strikes dread into the hearts of homebuyers and buying agents like me – and for good reason.

In a housing market already plagued by uncertainty, the fact that a seller can accept a higher offer from another buyer after verbally agreeing to a sale is not just outdated, it’s unjust.

If the Government is serious about building a fairer and more transparent property market, then banning gazumping must be a priority.

Let’s be clear: gazumping isn’t illegal. It’s merely unethical. And therein lies the problem.

Once an offer has been accepted, most buyers believe they have secured the property. They book surveys, instruct solicitors, arrange mortgage valuations and – most significantly – start emotionally investing in their new home.

Then, often with little warning, the rug is pulled from under them. A higher bidder appears, the seller jumps ship, and the original buyer is left picking up the bill for a transaction that never happened.

One in five

This happens a lot, too. According to recent data, around one in five property transactions fall through due to gazumping, costing buyers on average over £2,000. Is it any wonder that trust in the property buying process is so low?

We already have models of how this could work better. In Scotland for example the process is more binding from an earlier stage. Once an offer is accepted and confirmed in writing, both parties are committed and pulling out comes with legal consequences. It’s not perfect, but it dramatically reduces the opportunity for last-minute bidding wars.

In England and Wales, we’re still operating with a system that dates back decades – a system that doesn’t reflect the speed or seriousness with which people buy homes today.

We wouldn’t accept this in any other major purchase. Imagine ordering a car, paying for custom specifications, only to be told weeks later that the dealer has sold it to someone else for more money.

It wouldn’t be tolerated – yet in property it’s considered ‘just one of those things’.

It wouldn’t be tolerated – yet in property it’s considered ‘just one of those things’.

There have been attempts to fix this. Reservation agreements have been trialled, with some success, but adoption is slow.

The real solution lies in a change in the law – making accepted offers legally binding within a reasonable timeframe, subject to basic checks like surveys and finance approval.

This wouldn’t eliminate all fall-throughs, but it would eliminate opportunistic gazumping and gazundering.

Ultimately if we want a strong housing market that’s reliable and trusted by the public, then we must root out the practices that weaken it.

Gazumping doesn’t only harm individual buyers, it undermines confidence in the entire system. It’s time we stopped tolerating it as a quirk of the system and started treating it as the barrier to progress it really is and ban it.

Robin Edwards is a Partner and buying agent at London firm Curetons.