The first two months of 2021 have witnessed an unseasonal surge in the number of property sales fall-throughs.

This includes a huge leap in the number of flat sales falling through, which is likely to have been caused by the cladding scandal and the subsequent EWS1 documentation problems that thousands of vendors have faced.

Flats are currently 23.2% more likely to fall through than houses, up from 11.6% two years ago.

Overall, research company TwentyCI says 56,500 property sales fell through during January and February, 37% higher than the same months last year.

But it warns that this leap has been created to a large degree by the increase in transactions during the run up to the initial stamp duty deadline of 31^st March.

However, more troubling is the fall-through rate, which normally jogs along at 22%, but which increased to 28%.

Reasons for this will have varied but include buyers abandoning sales as it dawned on them that they were not going to achieve completion in time for 31^st March – a decision many may have rued after the Chancellor extended the deadline during his budget speech.

“It is clear to many within the property industry that the process of progressing a transaction from sale agreed to completion needs to speed up dramatically,” says Ian Lancaster, CEO of TwentyCI Group (pictured).

“Indeed, there are several initiatives currently underway that are attempting to do this.

“Until progression times fall, we will continue to see issues with fallen through transactions and in times where progression to completion lengthens, these issues will be exacerbated.”

Read more about sales fall-throughs.