A staggering 214,000 home sales have fallen through so far this year, the highest figures since 2021, according to chain management platform View My Chain.

That is compared to 192,538 during the same period in 2024, 180,429 in 2023, 202,372 in 2022 and 220,644 in 2021. And the average time to complete is now 216 days (from agent instruction to completion), or from SSTC to completion ,139 days.

View My Chain Director Paul Halliwell (pictured) says the figures highlight the urgent need for chain visibility to become standard across the property industry.

Hidden chains

He says: “Conveyancers and agents often blame missing searches, mortgage delays, and slow replies for stalled transactions, but these are only symptoms. The root cause is that the chain itself is hidden.

“Professionals waste hours chasing updates on cases that cannot progress, resulting in four million working days lost every year and £400m wasted in fall-through costs.

“Policy, standards, and momentum have now aligned for impactful change to the transaction process. Invisible chains are no longer an unsolvable problem because the technology and integrations already exist to support transparency.

Cutting completion times will save thousands of wasted professional hours, reduce fall-throughs, and restore consumer confidence.”

“In our pilot with a 1,000-branch national agency, chain visibility cut the time to exchange by an average of 17 days, achieved on a relatively light integration with their CRM – proof that even modest steps can unlock significant gains.”

And he concludes: “Cutting completion times will save thousands of wasted professional hours, reduce fall-throughs, and restore consumer confidence.

“Chain visibility will become standard in CRMs and CMSs, but first it will take coordinated action from platforms, firms, and industry stakeholders to embed it fully, ensure real-time data accuracy, and scale it across the entire market.”