It has been revealed that thousands of house sales throughout London have broken down following the Brexit vote as worried buyers pull out of ‘overpriced’ deals.
The rise in the number of sales collapsing has come after it was announced that sales have fallen sharply since the EU referendum on June 23, with some surveys suggesting a drop of around 12%.
The centre of the capital has suffered the most severe impact, with estate agents declaring that over 60% of offers they were handling on the day of the referendum have been renegotiated or withdrawn completely.
As a direct consequence of the shock Brexit vote, several chains of deals involving family homes throughout the residential neighbourhoods of London and into the suburbs have been scuppered.
Propcision, a property analysis firm, has produced data that suggests that the number of London property sales that have fallen through since the EU referendum has nearly doubled from about 5% to almost 10%.
Henry Pryor, a property buyer, said that several agents were trying desperately to make sure that buyer and seller chains remained intact.
Pryor commented: “I have even heard of the people at the top end of the chain offering to buy the £200,000 flat at the bottom end just to make it all work.”
Meanwhile, reallymoving.com, a house move services website, has produced figures that show house prices in Central London have slumped by 12% in the first month following the Brexit vote, 10% of which came in the first week after the referendum at the peak of the political and economic uncertainty.
The company’s Chief Executive, Rob Houghton, said: “That was an unheard of fall, I’ve never seen a week where we’ve seen a change that dramatic.”
Estate agents will be further concerned by the 44% figure of collapsed transactions as the market slowed down, in particular for the more expensive properties in the range of £3 million to £10 million.
